The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design

This post is a high-level introduction to Octalysis, The Gamification Framework I created Octalysis is a powerful Gamification Framework created after extensive research and study for over 19 years.

Gamification, a design approach centered around human motivation, takes elements from games and applies them to real-world activities. Octalysis emphasizes “Human-Focused Design” instead of mere functionality, optimizing human motivation and engagement within a system.

The framework comprises 8 Core Drives represented by an octagon shape, including Epic Meaning & Calling, Development & Accomplishment, Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback, Ownership & Possession, Social Influence & Relatedness, Scarcity & Impatience, Unpredictability & Curiosity, and Loss & Avoidance. By understanding and implementing these Core Drives, designers can create engaging experiences that cater to intrinsic motivators and promote positive user experiences.

What is Gamification?

Gamification is a design that places the most emphasis on human motivation in the process. In essence, it is Human-Focused Design (as opposed to “function-focused design”).

Gamification is the craft of deriving all the fun and engaging elements found in games and applying them to real-world or productive activities. This process is what I call “Human-Focused Design,” as opposed to “Function-Focused Design.” It’s a design process that optimizes human motivation in a system, as opposed to pure efficiency.

The Challenges with Function-Focused Design

Most systems are “function-focused,” designed to get the job done quickly. This is like a factory that assumes its workers will do their jobs because they are required to. However, Human-Focused Design remembers that people in a system have feelings, insecurities, and reasons why they want or do not want to do certain things, and therefore optimizes their feelings, motivations, and engagement.

Why Gamification drive human behavior?

The reason we call it Gamification is that the gaming industry was the first to master Human-Focused Design.

Games have no other purpose than to please the individual playing them. Yes, there are often “objectives” in games, such as killing a dragon or saving the princess, and sometimes saving a dragon, but those are all excuses to simply keep the player happily entertained.

Since games have spent decades (or even centuries depending on how you qualify a game) learning how to master motivation and engagement, we are now learning from games, and that is why we call it Gamification.

So in the past decade, I have been digging deep into forming a complete Gamification framework to analyze and build strategies around the various systems that make a game fun.

I saw that almost every game is fun because it appeals to certain Core Drives within us that motivate us towards certain activities. I also noticed that different types of game techniques push us forward differently: some in an inspiring and empowering way, while some in a manipulative and obsessive manner. I drilled down to find what differentiates one type of motivation from another.

The result is the Gamification Framework called Octalysis, designed as an octagon shape with 8 Core Drives representing each side.

With many years of trials and adjustments, I believe that besides a ninth hidden Core Drive called “Sensation,” everything you do is based on one or more of the 8 Core Drives.

The 8 Core Drives of Gamification

1) Epic Meaning & Calling

Epic Meaning & Calling is the Core Drive where a player believes that he is doing something greater than himself or he was “chosen” to do something. A symptom of this is a player that devotes a lot of his time to maintaining a forum or helping to create things for the entire community (think Wikipedia or Open Source projects). This also comes into play when someone has “Beginner’s Luck” – an effect where people believe they have some type of gift that others don’t or believe they were “lucky” to get that amazing sword at the very beginning of the game.

2) Development & Accomplishment

Development & Accomplishment is the internal drive of making progress, developing skills, and eventually overcoming challenges. The word “challenge” here is very important, as a badge or trophy without a challenge is not meaningful at all. This is also the Core Drive that is the easiest to design for and coincidently is where most of the PBLs: points, badges, and leaderboards mostly focus on.

3) Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback

Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback is when users are engaged in a creative process where they have to repeatedly figure things out and try different combinations. People not only need ways to express their creativity, but they need to be able to see the results of their creativity, receive feedback, and respond in turn. This is why playing with Legos and painting are fun in-and-of themselves and often become Evergreen Mechanics, where a game designer no longer needs to continuously add more content to keep the activity fresh and engaging.

4) Ownership & Possession

This is the drive where users are motivated because they feel like they own something. When a player feels ownership, she innately wants to make what she owns better and own even more. Besides being the major Core Drive for wanting to accumulate wealth, this deals with many virtual goods or virtual currencies within systems. Also, if a person spends a lot of time customizing her profile or her avatar, she automatically feels more ownership towards it too. Finally, this is also the Core Drive that makes collecting stamps or puzzle pieces fun.

5) Social Influence & Relatedness

This drive incorporates all the social elements that drive people, including mentorship, acceptance, social responses, companionship, as well as competition and envy. When you see a friend that is amazing at some skill or owns something extraordinary, you become driven to reach the same level. Also, it includes the drive we have to draw closer to people, places, or events that we can relate to. If you see a product that reminds you of your childhood, the sense of nostalgia would likely increase the odds of you buying the product. This Core Drive is relatively well-studied too, as many companies these days are putting a lot of priority on optimizing their online social strategies.

6) Scarcity & Impatience

This is the drive of wanting something because you can’t have it. Many games have Appointment Dynamics (come back 2 hours later to get your reward) – the fact that people can’t get something right now motivates them to think about it all day long. This is the Core Drive utilized by Facebook when it first started: at first it was just for Harvard. Then it opened up to a few other prestigious schools, and eventually all colleges. When it finally opened up to everyone, many people wanted to join because they previously couldn’t get into it.

7) Unpredictability & Curiosity

Generally, this is a harmless drive of wanting to find out what will happen next. If you don’t know what’s going to happen, your brain is engaged and you think about it often. Many people watch movies or read novels because of this drive. However, this drive is also the primary factor behind gambling addiction. Also, this Core Drive is utilized whenever a company runs a sweepstake or lottery program to engage users. The very controversial Skinner Box experiments, where an animal irrationally presses a lever frequently because of unpredictable results, are exclusively referring to the Core Drive of Unpredictability & Curiosity, although many have misunderstood it as the driver behind points, badges, and leaderboard mechanics in general.

8) Loss & Avoidance

This Core Drive is based upon the avoidance of something negative happening. On a small scale, it could be to avoid losing previous work. On a larger scale, it could be to avoid admitting that everything you did up to this point was useless because you are now quitting. Also, opportunities that are fading away have a strong utilization of this Core Drive, because people feel like if they didn’t act immediately, they would lose the opportunity to act forever.

Left Brain vs Right Brain Core Drives

Within Octalysis, the Core Drives on the right are Right Brain Core Drives, being more related to creativity, self-expression, and social aspects.

The Core Drives on the left are Left Brain Core Drives, being more associated with logic, calculations, and ownership.

Note: the Left Brain/Right Brain Core Drives are not considered true brain science; they are merely symbolic as it makes the framework easier and more effective when designing. It’s useful dividing things up between the logical and the emotional, and I just named them Left Brain/Right Brain Core Drives so people can remember them easily.

Interestingly, Left Brain Core Drives are Extrinsic Motivators – you are motivated because you want to obtain something, whether it be a goal, a good, or anything you cannot obtain; on the other hand, Right Brain Core Drives are Intrinsic Motivators: you don’t need a goal or reward to use your creativity, hang out with friends, or feel the suspense of unpredictability – the activity itself is rewarding on its own.

This is important because many companies aim to design for motivation based on Extrinsic Motivators, such as rewarding users at the end. However, many studies have shown that once you stop offering the extrinsic motivator, user motivation will often decrease too much lower to before the extrinsic motivator was first introduced.

Companies should design experiences that motivate the Right Brain Core Drives, making something in itself fun and rewarding, so users continuously engage in the activity.

White Hat vs Black Hat Gamification

Another element to note within Octalysis is that the top Core Drives in the octagon are considered very positive motivators, while the bottom Core Drives are considered negative motivators.

Techniques that utilize the top Core Drives are called “White Hat Gamification”, while techniques that utilize the bottom Core Drives are called “Black Hat Gamification”.

If something is engaging because it lets you express your creativity, makes you feel successful through skill mastery, and gives you a higher sense of meaning, it makes users feel very good and powerful.

On the other hand, if you are always doing something because you don’t know what will happen next, you are constantly in fear of losing something, or because there are things you can’t have, even though you would still be extremely motivated to take the actions, it can often leave a bad taste in your mouth.

The problem with Zynga games, according to the Octalysis framework, is that they have figured out how to do many Black Hat Game Techniques, which drive up revenue numbers from users, but it doesn’t make users feel good. So when a user is finally able to leave the system, they will want to, because they don’t feel like they are in control over themselves, just like gambling addiction.

Keep in mind that just because something is Black Hat doesn’t mean it is necessarily bad – these are just motivators – and they can be used for productive and healthy results or malice and manipulative ones. Many people voluntarily submit themselves to Black Hat Gamification in order to go to the gym more often, eat healthily, or avoid hitting the snooze button every morning.

A good Gamification expert will consider all 8 Core Drives as a positive and productive activity so that everyone ends up happier and healthier.

How to apply Octalysis to actual systems

Now that we have the Gamification Framework laid out, the next step is to figure out how to utilize this framework.

Generally, any good and engaging product or system will have at least one of the Core Drives listed above.

The way to use Octalysis is to identify all the game mechanics that are used to appeal to each Core Drive and list it next to the Core Drive of the Octagon.

Afterwards, based on how strong these game mechanics are, each side of the Octagon will expand or retract.

If a side crosses the inside Octagon, then that side is extremely weak and the Gamification expert needs to improve on that area.

Of course, this is all very abstract, so let’s look at a few examples.

A few Gamification examples with Octalysis

Here’s an Octalysis did for a few products online:

And this is just Level 1 Octalysis

20 years of Gamification study and implementation resulted in a very robust framework that can become actionable towards driving higher user metrics. As people get more and more advanced in Octalysis, they can learn higher levels (up to 5 Levels…there are only a handful of people in the world who know what level 4 and above), which incorporates much more advanced design principles and in-depth analysis.

Level 2 Octalysis

Once level 1 is mastered, one can then apply it to Level 2 Octalysis, where we try to optimize experience throughout all four phases of a player’s journey:

1. Discovery (why would people even want to start the journey)
2. Onboarding (how do you teach users the rules and tools to play the game)
3. Scaffolding (the regular journey of repeated actions towards a goal)
4. Endgame (how do you retain your veterans).

Factoring in the 4 Phases of a Player’s Journey

Getting a feel about what players feel across the journey.

Level 3 Octalysis

Once you mastered Level 2 Octalysis, you can then push it one level higher to Level 3 and factor in different player types, so you can begin to see how different types of people are motivated at different stages of the experience.

Pushing up a level further – Factoring Bartle’s Player Type

This way the Gamification Designer can feel that there’s something for everyone at every stage.

The Octalysis Tool

Many fans of Octalysis over the years have helped contribute to making the framework more available to the public. They made an Octalysis Tool, which is not 100% perfect from an UX standpoint, but it has been a very useful tool for my clients and many people practicing Octalysis. Click here to check out the Octalysis Tool.

The Long Journey to GOOD Gamification

As you can see, creating a rich gamified experience is much more than simply slapping on various game mechanics to existing products. It’s a craft that requires a lot of analysis, thinking, testing, and adjusting.

While there are 5 Levels in total, Level 1 is usually sufficient for the majority of companies trying to create a better-designed gamified product and experience. Higher Level Octalysis processes are there for organizations that are truly committed to making sure that they push their metrics in the right direction while improving the longevity of a gamified system. Many games are only popular for 3-8 months, but ones that have good Endgame design can last decades or even centuries.

If the world adopts good gamification principles and focuses on what truly drives fun and motivation, then it is possible to see a day where there is no longer a divide between things people must do and the things they want to do. All people have to do is play all day. This way, the quality of life for everyone will be significantly higher, companies will perform better because people actually want to do the work, and society overall will become more productive. This is the world that I have dedicated my life to enabling.

Check out the video walk-through of the 8 Core Drives

Check out the video walk-through of Octalysis

Watch all of the videos in the Gamification Video Guide here.

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