Yu-kai’s team at The Octalysis Group, which has worked with the likes of Lego and Volkswagen to create meaningful experiences for their customers, has learned from him about how to create Game Loops. Now you can too!
Yu-kai built his career based off of a deep understanding of how games work. How they work from the design side. How they work for the players. How they work for the companies that publish them.
This deep understanding needed synthesis.
Which is part of the reason Yu-kai developed the Octalysis framework. He wanted a way to not only better describe games and game-like experiences, but also to be able to tweak or even redesign them. Perhaps from scratch.
That is one of the great features of the Octalysis framework. Where other models are more difficult to make practical, the Octalysis framework is almost immediately practical from almost any stage of project or experience design, whether pre-design, pre-launch, or post-launch.
Did you, like me, permanently delete your Facebook account last year? Why did you do it?
I asked myself this very question a few days ago. To my analytical yet generous mind, there is a distribution of reasoning.
These range from ideological to practical. From concerns of privacy to a desire to create free time to reallocate toward my updated medium-term goals, like learning to code at an amateur level and to grasp the history of money.
Since I subscribe to theories of mimetic desire, part of me feels as though I quit Facebook because other people were doing it, which in itself is not always by itself a good reason for doing anything (if you’ll allow me to understate my point).
I didn’t pause or suspend or disable my account: I permanently deleted it. Part of me feels that I permanently deleted it to prove to myself that I could. (When I played online poker, I occasionally entertained folding pocket aces pre-flop to demonstrate I could make a bad play, to illustrate that I–whatever I is–was in charge.)
A year later, what are the Pros and Cons of the decision?
Pros of Leaving Facebook Behind
More Free Time: I do have additional time each day which I’ve reallocated to other activities. Note: This was part of my digital minimalism kick–to use digital technologies selectively, in other words to choose those which amplify my velocity toward my goals.
More Attention: Understanding one’s conscious attention is a detailed and complicated topic. To my way of thinking, understanding how one’s attention works is a private and personal activity. A journey that you have to take on your own. Even useful meditation apps like Waking Up will only get you part of the way.
Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Take a moment to notice how this sentence affects you. That sentence wasn’t so emotionally resonant. Neither was that one. So what?, you might reactively ask. But that is the point. (For one thing, I’ve learned to read better…and to notice less good writing and better writing.)Â
“Slowing down” in appropriate ways lets me see the forest and the trees. It also lets me examine products and services and how those human-product or human-service interactions engage my attention. There’s a layer of meta-cognition here which is difficult to appreciate, but rewarding. In Octalysis Prime, we are doing our best to help our members notice how the activity or game loops they create for their players, members, and customers acknowledge the human there.
Cons of Leaving Facebook — And Trying to Return
The Value of Your Network: Last night at a holiday party, I was where I grew up. Gabon, Indonesia, China, USA. Most of the friends and contacts I made in those places were filed in Facebook. Gone are the digital branches connecting me with those people. (It is hard, but not impossible, to regrow them. Some people have found me again, and me them.)
Managing Facebook Groups: I want to manage a Facebook Group for work–Octalysis Explorers–which is the largest gamification group on Facebook. In one sense, it is the largest base (outside our mailing list of 30k+) of people who we as a company enjoy talking and hanging out with. Since I’m the Community Manager for Octalysis Prime, it would be useful to understand who those people are too, but I haven’t been able to get back on Facebook, at least not within Facebook’s standard rules.
For example, I recently added a new user–first name “Octalysis” last name “Prime”– and included my personal details, birthday, email, and phone number.
After using Facebook for about 30 minutes, I was asked to upload a picture “with a face” at which time I was locked out of Facebook. A few days later, I’m still not allowed on.
I guess we should acknowledge that Facebook is honoring its commitment to permanently delete my account with them.
What services have you canceled?
What services have you canceled, vowing to never return, but eventually came back?
What was the return like?
Did the service welcome you back? Did they make it easy to jump back in? Hard?
How did it make you feel?
I also left behind Quora, which was one of my favorite social sites, where I had a reasonable following and was a top writer in some topics…in different but meaningful ways, that was a harder decision than leaving Facebook.
Are you ready to try unleashing the Stallion within?
Many researchers, theorists, and practitioners throughout history have studied, imagined, and attempted to be more creative. Here’s Yu-kai’s take. As always, consider that creativity resides within Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback in the OctalysisGamification framework.Â
Today’s post is about letting go, and letting the stallion run, and roam, free.
Unleash the Stallion: Take 3-5 Minutes to Let Go
For some of us, taking 3, much less 5 (gasp!) minutes to sit still with our eyes closed is a lot to ask.
This is your chance to let the Stallion run free.
If you’ve never tried this–or, if you’re like me, you only try it once or twice per year–you might be surprised by what happens next.
It is very likely an entire host of images and thoughts and feelings will present themselves to (or within) your conscious experience.
Maybe some of these will be useful in your creative endeavors. Or maybe not! It just might be worth your while, even if all I can tempt you with is some unpredictability and curiosity.
Isn’t this just Meditation?
There are many forms of meditation, some of which Yu-kai practiced as a child.
Letting the Stallion run free is not precisely a meditation technique. If anything, it is meditation super-lite.
You don’t need to prepare for it. You just have to sit down, close your eyes, and see what happens.
Want More Creativity?
This technique alone won’t change your life. But maybe it will become one of your Tiny Habits, which could compound over time as part of a daily routine (or help you finish writing that book!).
Tiny Habits are a small task attached before or after another habit in your routine.
B.J. Fogg described his own application: Whenever I go to the bathroom, I do two pushups.
Only two?
Yes, just two. Maybe you’ll end up doing five or six, or ten. But if the goal was ten or twenty, and felt hard, you might not even start.
Lowering the pushup count increases the Ability in the B=MAT(P) equation.
With plentiful triggers (you go to the bathroom several times per day), the habit of pushups can be formed.
How Tiny Habits Helped Yu-kai Make Progress
Yu-kai had been asked to write a book about the Octalysis Gamification framework. And he wanted to write it.
He even promised attendees of an upcoming workshop that he would provide them a signed copy at the event.
The problem? Yu-kai’s approach was overly Black Hat. He didn’t want to disappoint attendees, and yet he didn’t have enough balance in the Core Drives to get him to the finish line.
Shifting from Black Hat to White Hat Motivation
Yu-kai found a solution.
After completing email or client tasks, he usually took a break with some light gaming.
He made one change, though.
Before gaming, he would read the last paragraph he’d written in his book. Can you guess what happened?
How Twitch Usees Achievement Symbols to Motivate Streamers
For starters, we’re going to go through over 100 game techniques. This is just Game Technique #2!, called Achievement Symbols. And I’m taking a look at Twitch today, which by the way is a platform I think you should all look into and understand. It’s good to know because they are doing a lot of things from a design perspective that have really captured the imagination of a lot of streamers right and those streamers have captured the attention of a lot of advertising dollars. There’s really a big ecosystem right around this.
I remember my aunt asking me about twitch several years ago when one of her students wasn’t showing up for class, so it’s definitely something that is capturing attention from a number of different ways–that student by the way was streaming games on Twitch and on his way to becoming a pro gamer, or at least trying to.
How Twitch is Deploying the Achievement Symbol
Let’s look at this Achievement Symbol (icons for use) from the perspective of Twitch as a streamer.
Lately, I’ve been streaming a game that I like play which is actually a board game called Diplomacy. If you haven’t played before I strongly recommend you get in touch with me and I’ll help you get started.
An achievement symbol is simply a way to show that I’ve developed or accomplished something: developing a skill or accomplishing some kind of goal. And, yeah, it’s part of this larger reality of humans as goal-oriented beings. We like to see progress towards a goal. If we’re lost in the woods not sure how to get to the destination, not so much.
Recapturing my Attention (and Investment of Creative Labor)
Achievement Symbols that Twitch is using here help move me through the Onboarding process. I’ve already experienced some friction in establishing my stream and getting my equipment right, and over 9 hours of streaming, but I’m not monetizable yet. Eventually, I’ll attract advertising dollars to the platform and draw an audience. That’s the value tradeoff between the platform and me, the creator.
Right away you can see they have several achievement symbols to indicate what I can do here. Community, affiliate, partner, and so forth. After viewing my Achievement Symbol from previous efforts, the reward acts as a trigger to view other possible goals.
New Day, New Stream
Twitch recaptures my attention to bring me back into that activity loop. So, that is an extrinsic, but white hat; it feels good. Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment is just one of the 8 Core Drives. And Achievement Symbols (GT#2) is just one of over a hundred Game Techniques.
If you’ve been curious about how games impact design in non-game experiences, and how companies like Uber and Apple and Amazon use them, this series of articles is for you.
(Keep this working definition in mind: Gamification is the integration of game elements into non-game experiences.)
Why Game Techniques?
Yu-kai wrote Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges, & Leaderboards several years ago at a high point in gamification’s hype curve. His argument was simple: there is something in gamification–what he calls Human-Focused Design–that is important and useful in designing experiences for humans. Gamification is not a fad, and it isn’t going away.
Yu-kai wanted to differentiate the knowledge he had acquired from lifelong games research and consulting work with hundreds of companies from other organizations who were jumping on the gamification trend without the same expertise.
No harm in that, except for Yu-kai there was more to the idea of gamification–adding game elements to non-game experiences–than slapping on points, badges, and leaderboards.
Thus, the subtitle of the book: ‘Beyond Points, Badges, & Leaderboards‘.
A few Game Techniques listed in their Dominant Core Drive
Throughout the text, Yu-kai sprinkles Game Techniques he has collected through his own gameplay and through the development of engaging experiences with clients.
How does Yu-kai create them? That would require me to read his mind. However, what I’ve observed is that he starts with the client problem and then applies the Octalysis Gamification framework–including the 8 Core Drives–to build engagement and interaction design. These designs, when tied together, create a game loop for the user. Ideally, a game loop that brings the user back again and again.
Now, there are over 100 of these so-called Game Techniques which Yu-kai is freely sharing and making videos about in Octalysis Prime (his community teaching the Octalysis design framework).
This post will serve to introduce you to one of the most basic techniques.
Status is important and practical
The desire to improve one’s status is a huge motivator. Recognition of status stems from our neurobiological settings.
And status is practical. When I have a problem learning to code, I go to Stack Overflow, a website with high status in the question/answer space for pro and amateur programmers. When I want high-quality food, I go to a high-status restaurant. When I want to suggest to strangers I have status, I might wear certain kinds of clothing.
One of the highest margin status items today might be Apple airpods.
Contrary to this post’s declaration on November 18, 2019–which suggests Apple has solved a deep customer problem–I see airpods as an example of a product linked to Apple’s larger ecosystem, which oozes status. Because Apple customers have an affinity to the brand and gain a sense of status by owning and wearing them, they are happy to pay for a high-margin product that has cheaper alternatives. (Admittedly I am cherrypicking this example: I don’t own airpods, but I am using a Macbook Pro from 2013, which may have been overpriced too.)
From the perspective of the Octalysis framework, Status is linked with two Core Drives, which I will get to shortly. But first, let’s define our terms.
Game Technique #1: Status Points (they still matter)
Now that we’ve commented on a few ways status works in our society, let’s drill down into Status Points.
Status Points are a numeric tracker that shows the growth of a player in the user journey, often symbolizing higher status in the ecosystem.
For now, we won’t go into visual design nor interaction design related to Status Points. Of course, how something looks and feels will also impact the user experience, often to a large extent.
BJ Fogg’s triggers are integral to his behavioral model, which we are analyzing from the perspective of the Octalysisgamification framework. This continues the discussion from our last blog post.
Note: BJ Fogg’s triggers recently became ‘Prompts’.
BJ Fogg talks about there are actually three types of triggers.
There’s a spark. There’s a facilitator, and there’s a Signal. So, the spark is when a person has the ability to take the action, but no motivation. So BJ Fogg says the spark is basically a trigger that adds motivation to the desired behavior. So, if you get an email that says, “Hey! Your friend on Facebook just sent you a message!” That’s a spot where you have ability to click on it and go to Facebook, a few clicks away, few brain cycles.
Facilitator for high motivation, low ability
Make the Spark a Black Hat Trigger
In most cases, the Spark should be a Black Hat Trigger.
This happens with our Octalysis Design Challenges, where we also include the upcoming deadline. If we chose to serve up a White Hat Trigger like, “Good luck as you continue working on your Design Challenge,” the trigger may not actually drive the desired action of the Octalysis Prime member continuing to work on their Challenge designs and submission.
Three types of Prompts
The Facilitator Makes Hard Things Easier
Now the facilitator is the scenario where the user has a lot of motivation, but they just don’t have the ability to do it. The action feels confusing or hard. How to solve this?
Enter the Facilitator. Let me make it easy for you. Maybe it’s it’s a software wizard that helps you install something. Maybe it’s it’s a counselor who guides you through your career choices. So, the facilitator, again, is the use of trigger to remind you, “Hey, you should do it. And also if you didn’t do it because it’s hard, let me make it easy for you. Let me explain it to you. Let me reduce your brain cycles. Let me give you a discount rate that’s that’s really good. Let’s give you a coupon a discount so now it’s easier and cheaper to do this action.”
The Signal Nudges High Motivation – High Ability users to Take an Action
So that’s a facilitator, and then finally you have what we call a signal, which is the user already has high motivation, they have high ability, they just aren’t doing it. And in that case, it’s very easy to just have a simple “Hey, do it.” And there is a high chance the user will take the desired action.
BJ Fogg is definitely a pioneer in our industry. And although I don’t love his change from triggers to prompts, there is a lot we can learn from him and his methods, including Tiny Habits, which I recommend highly. However, I also wanted to offer my opinions to show how you can examine a model and think for yourself.
