by Yu-kai Chou
Easter Egg Game Technique captures. When a person explores Octalysis Prime, random creatures will appear that each represent a Game Design Technique. If you defeat the creature with the knowledge you learned on the site, then it drops that Game Design Technique for you to collect.
Set Mystery Boxes when users commit large Desired Actions. Whenever the user does a significant Desired Action, the dice rolling feedback mechanics can appear and certain rewards will be given. The variability of the rewards, assuming the Desired Action is not drawn out, may increase strong engagement with the experience.
Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance
FOMO Punch. Remind users what they would lose every day when they don’t have this Octalysis knowledge to employ within their lives.
Addressing an Anti Core Drive: give users a guaranteed full refund if they did not obtain justified value from the service.
The character growth chart and Chou Coins, if implemented, would make it a bit harder for people to quit the system. However, I’m generally not interested in designing for the Sunk Cost Prison since I don’t want anyone to think that they can’t quit my site simply because they will lose many things that they have accumulated. If I am not delivering awesome value to my users, I don’t feel comfortable collecting a single dollar.
Repeating the Octalysis Process
Once you go through the 8 Core Drives, don’t stop there. Do it again. More sophisticated ideas will often flow out. As a real example, after a few cycles of the process above, I derived a new type of player progress journey. This player journey intricately involves multiple Core Drives and could be a fun engaging experience throughout the Scaffolding and Endgame phases. The new concept is the below:
If possible, each Desired Action is assigned different Core Drives based on what a user can learn from those actions. For instance, participating in the community and helping others will increase a user’s Core Drive 5 stats, while playing with the Octalysis Tool and coming up with creative solutions, will increases their Core Drive 3 stats.
Each player will start off with a basic octagon shape. Their octagon will eventually expand in the direction or directions where the corresponding Core Drives are being “leveled-up.” Reading my Chapter-by-Chapter Takeaways from Daniel Pink’s Drive will get experience points in Core Drives 1, 2, and 3, while taking advantage of a promotion at the very last minute will obtain Core Drive 8 points.
When each Core Drive levels up to a certain degree, specific boosters/power-ups and rewards will take place.
Here is a preliminary thought on how different leveled-up Core Drives might grant different benefits:
Core Drive 1: If a user reaches Level 10 in “Meaning”, they can vote for which non-profit 3% of Octalysis Prime revenue goes to.
Core Drive 2: If a user reaches level 10 in “Accomplishment,” her profile page will turn into a gold color that is nicely textured and displayed to everyone you interact with. Her profile photo will have nice gold frames wherever she goes on the site to show off her status
Core Drive 3: The ability to start researching and hosting your own sessions to the community, enabling you to express a great deal of creativity and receive immediate feedback. It will also allow you to build your personal brand.
Core Drive 4: Earn more Chou Coins for your Desired Actions. Perhaps every Desired Actions can earn a certain amount of Chou Coins to unlock more content. However, if your Core Drive 4 is leveled-up, you receive a 30% bonus on each Desired Action you perform.
Core Drive 5: The ability to moderate and lead the community. You will be able to mentor people, give support, perhaps be able to give out Social Treasures, and more. This will improve your ability to get helped from the community when you need it.
Core Drive 6: Penetrate through unlocked content faster. As an example, perhaps require less Chou Coins to unlock new content.
Core Drive 7: Unlock additional lucky dice rolls to obtain rewards such as Chou Coins. Perhaps every user gets a lucky dice roll every day or when they complete the Desired Actions. But people who have leveled-up their Core Drive 7 gets two lucky dice rolls to increase their odds of winning.
Core Drive 8: If a user reaches Level 10 in “Avoidance,” his monthly membership fees will be deducted by 40%. That way they masterly skills of “Avoiding” paying fees suddenly come into effect.
With this preliminary concept, there is a strong reason for all the users to execute the Desired Actions while finding their own paths to level up in the experience. Socializers will get socializer benefits, while Achievers will get achiever status. Each can play the game differently.
If people start to master more Core Drives, it even allows for Chain Combos (Game Technique #40), which usually feels amazing when a person pulls it off. For instance, if a player achieved mastery in Core Drives 4, 6 , and 7: he will get more dice rolls to maximize the chance of getting Chou Coins; each time he wins, he would obtain more Chou Coins compared to others; and he needs fewer Chou Coins to unlock content. The three benefits compounded together would create hyper-powered gameplay that people can feel proud of.
Of course, I need to design Chain Combos for the other Core Drives too, so that being a leader or moderator of the community can also facilitate the gaining of rewards or unlocking new content. The experience design goes on.
Summary of Level 1 Octalysis in Action
As you can see, lots of new ideas can come out by thinking through the 8 Core Drives, setting a guiding roadmap to design for an engaging experience. Of course, the designing work is far from over.
When designing, it’s great when lots of ideas go into the top of a brainstorming funnel. However, it is usually a bad sign when lots of ideas come out of the funnel towards implementation because it shows a lack of focus. Most companies can only implement a subset of the creative ideas in a timely manner.
There are other methodologies and processes to narrow down all the features to a feasible set within my own workflow, but this is somewhat beyond the scope of this book. I mostly want to explain how applying the 8 Core Drives allows us to creatively design for engaging experiences, when previously we only knew how to decide on functionality and features, or simply slap on badges. Beyond that, there are also things that need to be refined such as reward schedules, activity loops, balanced economies, and concept wireframes.
At the end of the day, Octalysis allows you to ask the right questions for your experience design, but you still need to answer them in a sophisticated and empathetic way. If you just treat Octalysis as a checklist, your design will only have the shell but not the essence within. Only if you utilize your creative intuition as well as sensitive empathy skills throughout the process will you come up with concepts that truly help increase all your Business Metrics and allow users to enjoy the entire process - from the Discovery Phase all the way to the Endgame.
To get the most out of the book, Choose only ONE of the below options to do right now:
Easy: Review this chapter again. There are many complex ideas within this chapter that assume a strong knowledge of the 8 Core Drives. If this book is your first encounter with the Octalysis Framework, it would likely be a rather challenging read. Don’t worry, slow down, and take a deep breath. If you go back and read it again, I promise you it will make a lot more sense than it did the first time.
Medium: In Chapter 15, you were asked to come up with your own project and design for it. I laid down the foundation for you to create your own Octalysis Strategy Dashboard. Now that you have seen it in practice, start refining your Octalysis Strategy Dashboard and make sure each component is precise. This is essential for designing any gamification campaign, and will be even more critical when you one day utilize the powerful but nebulous Level IV Octalysis.
Hard: Now that you have seen me go through the design process myself, go through the entire process on your own project. Create the appropriate Octalysis Strategy Dashboard and go through each Core Drive over and over again until you have come up with a fun
and dynamic experience. Did many more creative ideas - ones that appeal to our Core Drives and motivate us towards the declared Desired Actions - come out during this process?
Share what you come up with on Twitter or your preferred social network with the hashtag #OctalysisBook and check out what ideas other people have.
Become an Octalysis Hero
As you can see, I am completely passionate about sharing my studies and knowledge to the world in hopes of making it a better place. With that said, I have a great team that makes sure I protect myself and my intellectual property from those who seek to maliciously profit upon the Octalysis reputation and methodologies. My team has helped setup a licensing arrangement called the *Octalysis Hero” program, where individuals and companies can get properly trained to represent Octalysis and “save” their region from depressing boredom.
Anyone can use Octalysis for their own personal improvement, education purposes, or for non-profit causes. However, for those who want to generate profits based on it, they should look into signing up as an Octalysis Hero. If anything, we want to make sure each person’s work does not reflect “Second-Hand Sushi Making” and hurt the Octalysis reputation.
I am excited to expand the good work further through your help as an Octalysis Hero in your region. For information on how to become an Octalysis Hero, check out: octalysisgroup.com/licensing.
Chapter 18: The Journey Goes On
We’re finally here.
It has been a fun and meaningful two-year journey writing this book. I hope it has been equally fun and meaningful for you reading it.
This book is not an easy read. It is packed with complex psychological principles as well as design instruments that I have acquired over the past decade. Even though I have tried to make the content more intriguing and relatable by filling it with my own personal stories, being able to finish this book is a remarkable achievement for you, just as much as it is an achievement for me. You should give yourself a big cheer.
No, literally. You should put the book down, fling your arms in the air, and exclaim, “I finally did it!” This is actually an emotional reward when hitting the desired Win-State, and it does all sorts of good things to your brain chemicals, your health, and your happiness. Go ahead - do it. I’ll wait for you. In fact, I’m doing it right now as I write this.
………
Now that there are two line breaks before this paragraph instead of just one, I trust that there has been enough time for you to actually do the self-cheer. A measly badge would not appropriately reflect the epic win you just bestowed upon yourself.
As I was finishing this book, I realized that one of the biggest fears of a writer is that no one will read his book after pouring out his heart and mind into the tiny confinements of letters, pages, and grammar rules. In fact, I even wonder if my wife or parents will ever get to read the text in this chapter, even though they have all enthusiastically stated that they will “of course” read my book when it comes out.
This reminds me of a story in the Bible303, where Jesus performed miracles abundantly everywhere he went, but when he returned to his hometown in Nazareth (largest city in the north of present-day Israel), he performed very few miracles. People there recognized him as the “Carpenter’s Son” that they had watched grow up. They couldn’t muster enough faith for Jesus to perform miracles there304. Jesus left the town with a note that stuck with me, “A prophet is honored everywhere except in his own hometown and among his relatives and his own family.”305
Regardless of whether my family will have enough stamina to finish my book, I am completely honored to have paragon readers like you who carefully study my work in order to create more good in this world.
What might be exhilarating to many but discouraging to a few, is that you are actually still at the onset of this exciting journey in learning how to make things fun and engaging. So far we have only covered Level I Octalysis, while there are many more levels and peripheral knowledge to learn, utilize, and master.
To be honest, when I first started writing this book, I was concerned about whether I had enough content to write a full book. However, midway through writing it, I realized I could actually write three books instead of one. One on pure Octalysis design, which is this book. One on Lifestyle Gamification, which will likely be titled 10,000 Hours of Play, and will focus on how to apply gamification principles to improve your life and turn everything into a game as I did since my youth. The third one may be a book titled Subtle Differences where I share my research between two games/apps/systems that look almost identical to each other but where one is a fluke and the other a great success. That way readers can observe the subtle differences that truly make something successful (hint: they focus more on appealing to the 8 Core Drives more).
Even with this first book, I initially designed it to have 29 Chapters. But when I started to actually write through the content, my personal stories, and other intriguing examples, it became clear to me that the book was becoming too bulky and I would have to divide it into two separate volumes. Instead of 29 Chapters, I reduced it to 18. This has created space to write another future book on more advanced Octalysis Design via The Strategy Dashboard, 4 Experience Phases, and 8 Core Drives. The potential sequel down the road will allow us to really learn to implement Level II or even Level III Octalysis into an experience from step one to completion. The nice thing is, I already made tangible progress into writing that book since I originally thought it would be part of this one.
Of course, your acquired knowledge in Level I Octalysis is by no means trivial. Level I Octalysis alone will allow you to create much better Human-Focused experiences on a day-to-day basis. You will begin to see everything differently, including your own motives. You will learn many other psychological and behavioral theories much quicker and more intuitively. You will also be able to close deals or negotiate your salaries better when you can appeal to the right human motivations. At the same time, you can develop an internal red flag response when an experience utilizes too much Black Hat technique where users will likely burn out soon - before it becomes too late to prevent the crash.
I regularly get emails from startups, product designers, and educators telling me that just reading my blog posts has changed how they do business and that they have seen immense improvements in their desired metrics. I urge you to not simply treat this book as a feel-good item that you just check off your to-do list. If you continue to pay attention to Human Motivation and the 8 Core Drives as much as I do, you will truly reap benefits from it on a daily basis. Octalysis is a design tool and a way of thinking. If you don’t use the tool or don’t follow the way, it becomes completely useless. Just another book to show off on your trophy shelf306.
Lastly, if you feel that this book will benefit your life even a tiny bit, it is my hope that you share this knowledge with others, especially to those doing good. As you have seen, the understanding of human motivation and behavior is very powerful, but it could be used for changing the world for both positive and negative causes. If designed properly, people in these systems will all be enjoying their time more while executing the Desired Actions. However, whether people are joyfully performing tasks that benefit society or tasks that harm society completely depends on the objective of the experience designer.
It is my desire that this knowledge falls into the hands of more people who are creating positive change, meaningful work, and inspiring causes, as opposed to those who just try to profit off of others’ misfortunes. As with anything, immoral people will use the best tools available to fulfill their objectives, and I myself am unable to stop that. But you can truly play a role in making sure my work also goes into very good hands that make the world a better place to counterbalance the mere profiteers. You would be making a true impact if you pass it forward - if you heard about the book from Twitter, please share it on Twitter; if you found the book on Amazon, please leave a review there.
At the end of the day, we know that because of
Core Drive 1, we as humans prefer to be joyfully doing work that positively impacts the world, as opposed to joyfully doing work that makes the world worse - assuming all other Core Drives are equal. If there are an equal number of behavioral designers using Octalysis for selfish reasons compared to designers using Octalysis for beneficial reasons, end users will naturally be inclined towards the good.
I hope that you not only use the knowledge from this book for good, but can also pass on the torch to others who have similar aspirations. You would be making a true impact when you pass it forward (I have made it easy to leave a review on Amazon with this Pretty Link URL: http://www.yukaichou.com/books). That way, my vision of making the world a better place through productive play, exhilarating work, and fulfilling camaraderie will finally become a reality.
It has been an honor writing for you, and I hope this won’t be the last chance I get to communicate with you in our journeys. With or without me, your journey of interacting with others and motivating them will continue. I hope at one point our paths will converge again, perhaps on my website, Octalysis Prime, or in my next book.
I’m sure it will take us to even greater heights than ever before.
Wall of Gratitude
I’m completely in-debt to a great deal of people who made this book possible. More people than I can name. Regardless, I would like to express appreciation for those who shaped me to become who I am, which manifested into the content of this book.
Those who directly contributed to the book
I want to thank Wendy Lim (who prefers to be known as Average Joey), as well as Zen Trenholm, who have relentlessly combed through my book and fixed up many of my careless mistakes, as well as pointed out unclear or inappropriate content within my blind spots. I want to thank Jerry Fuqua for bringing his Ph.D. discipline into editing my book and making me a better writer. This book would have embarrassed me without me knowing it if it wasn’t for you. Many thanks to Ping-Hsiang Chen for designing all the logos for my personal brand as well as the book cover of this book.