What if one game technique could make a player feel creative, competitive, and socially connected — all at once? That’s synergetic motivation, and it’s the difference between a design that triggers a single Core Drive and one that chains multiple Core Drives into an unstoppable combo.
This article breaks down how advanced Octalysis practitioners layer game techniques to create multi-drive activation, using the Bandwagon Streak as a worked example.
Table of Contents
About the Creator of the Octalysis Framework
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
This article was written by Contributing Writer Erik van Mechelen with content provided by Yu-kai Chou.
Synergetic Motivation
Synergetic motivation is when multiple Core Drives fire simultaneously, producing a combined motivational effect greater than the sum of the individual drives. It is the advanced practice of layering game techniques so that each one amplifies the others, turning a simple prompt into an irresistible pull toward the Desired Action.
This article is for experienced designers already familiar with Beginner Octalysis and some Intermediate Octalysis who are looking to up their game on designing experiences.
We are making the jump from identifying the 8 Core Drives of motivation to using them to build experiences.
‘Synergy’ always makes me think of business school applications (I’ve helped a few friends edit theirs).
But it is a real thing.
Google defines synergy like this:
The interaction or cooperation of two or more organizations, substances, or other agents to produce a combined effect greater than the sum of their separate effects.
For Octalysis, synergetic motivation means any time multiple motivations (any of the 8 Core Drives) are at work at the same time.
As you build your own projects and products, or dissect what isn’t working on the same, pay attention to potential for synergies and drawbacks of them.
For example, situations where our Player might have multiple motivations but we’re only catering to one of them in the design and thus failing to reach the Desired Action.
As always, we’ll use the 8 Core Drives in this analysis.
In the Wild (Twitter)
Of course, we do see chains of motivation working in the wild. Consider Twitter.
If I notice something worthwhile and comment on it, I stand the chance to receive likes and retweets (or quotes) and replies from followers or people tracking the same news.
If I’m first, I stand to receive more repeat exposure than if I join the conversation later (unless I’m adding value or a new line of thinking, perhaps a humorous quip about the type of responses that are popular at the moment).
What’s happening here?
Twitter is playing into my CD3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback (to create a tweetable added-value comment about something in under 140 characters, a CD6: Scarcity & Impatience response), CD2: Development & Accomplishment and CD5: Social Influence & Relatedness motivations to achieve that and get recognition from peers and the world.
How much response I get is unexpected, and that’s CD7: Unpredictability & Curiosity.
If I don’t comment, I’ll miss out on that recognition, which triggers CD8: Loss & Avoidance (having a great idea and passing on it).
Stacking Motivation, or Combos
It’s easy to see what is happening motivationally in the above example, but it isn’t clear that Twitter designed for this or if it was an emergent behavior.
Think back to the beginning. Twitter was simple. A 140-character text-based one-to-many broadcast communication system.
I’d like to give an example of how to design a multiple-motivation interaction.
The Bandwagon Streak
Earlier this week in Octalysis Prime Office Hours, Willow Neilson (OP member) asked:
I notice some Game Techniques and Core Drives can be combined in chains. Do you have any general suggestions for some natural affinities or commonly occurring combinations?
Yu-kai led into this conversation that most of his Tier 7 combos come from deep analysis with clients.
It’s hard to generalize how to create these because any experience design starts with understanding who the Players are and what the Win States are.
The Bandwagon Streak, according to Yu-kai, is a Tier 7 game technique (extremely effective!).
You need to be a member of Octalysis Prime to view the full Bandwagon Streak lesson, so continue below with the article.
Before going into a generic example, let’s imagine there are two types of ways to earn points:
- Performance-driven: rewards based on quality and impact
- Labor-driven: rewards based on sheer quantity
Think back to the Twitter example. The quality and timing of my tweet (performance-driven) will garner more retweets.
If I spam the same hashtag (labor-driven), it won’t help me gain influence or reach. (People are incentivized to ‘game’ the system without quality and meaning.)
Bandwagon Streak Tagging Example
Let’s say you are a men’s clothing brand trying to encourage your community or customers to tag your clothing on Instagram with a few choice hashtags you know will help bring additional exposure.
This could be a moment to implement a Bandwagon Streak.
You might start by rewarding your customers with additional discounts for tagging pictures featuring your clothing on Instagram (with the customer wearing them).
If you applied a labor-driven reward structure where tags earn points…and if points are valuable, people will tag quickly without thought to how they approach.
Because they aren’t adding value, they also won’t feel proud.
However, if we apply a performance-driven approach (more likes and comments on your posts the better), we can help the customers take an insightful action (inspiring creativity).
The customer will think carefully about how to present themselves on Instagram and use the hashtag creatively. This is still mostly CD2: Development & Accomplishment but layering some CD3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback.
Next, we could layer in a Magnetic Cap. This isn’t strictly possible on Instagram, but you could create a system (using a community manager) to only “count” the first 3 posts from any user/customer on Instagram for the period of the promotion.
This effectively limits posts to 3x per day.
This cap will make people think carefully before making their 3 posts.
You could grant people a larger cap once they reach certain success metrics (likes and comments or click-throughs to your merchandise on your menswear site). Success breeds success.
Let’s add some scarcity next via a Booster. Limit the submission period to a single day, 24 hours.
At the end of the period, the customer can no longer add posts unless they bring in one more customer and that customer credits them for informing them about the post.
This is a CD5: Social Influence & Relatedness design because friends will be brought into the campaign.
In the final hour of anyone’s period, you could add a register element (to your newsletter to your premium clothing line) for an additional Booster.
These limitations (CD6: Scarcity & Impatience) help the customer be more precise in order to reach the Win-State.
Of course, as the menswear company, you will be gaining user-generated content to share down the line in addition to the short-term buzz and newsletter signups.
The Result?
Customers stay in their creative mode longer, post more pictures of themselves with your product, get discounts to future purchases, help to build word of mouth, and get signed up to your premium clothing line newsletter.
This was only possible because we thought about why our customer might want to be motivated to do this and how to boost that experience and loop the Desired Actions if possible toward additional Win-States (for the customer and the menswear company).
What Are You Seeing in the Wild?
There are numerous examples of synergetic motivation and many ways to stack techniques into combos that create loops of attention and effort (maybe even flow!) from the Player.
If this is new to you, start by noticing situations where multiple motivations led you to seek an action.
If you can pinpoint them, then ask: did the design of this experience cater to each of these motivations, or just one of them?
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- How to Use the Octalysis Framework to Determine Game Design Techniques
- The Strategy Dashboard for Gamification Design
- 4 Experience Phases in Gamification
- What is Gamification?
- White Hat vs Black Hat Gamification
- Books by Yu-kai Chou