Author: Yu-kai Chou

Beginner’s Guide to Gamification (5 of 90): 4 Experience Phases of a Game

*New to Gamification? Check out my post What is Gamification & the Gamification Framework: Octalysis*

Click here to see all videos in this Series

Episode 5 Gamification Notes:

  • The four Experience Phases of a game.
  • Most people treat interacting with a product as one experience.
  • The product is good, bad, easy to use, funny.
  • You can look at your product as 4 different products
  • 1st day of LinkedIn is very different from other days of linkedin
  • A good “human focused” designer needs to optimize one product to appeal to all these phases.
  • If a product attracts people at the beginning, but as time goes by becomes boring and uninspiring…
  • that’s not very useful.
  • Similarly, if a game offers an amazing experience after 20 hours of play, but before that its a grinding and boring experience…
  • that’s not very useful either.
  • Note that the 4 Phases in Octalysis is a little similar to Prof Werbatch’s theory, as I did have the honor to watch his online lectures in coursera. But I made a few changes based on my experience as a gamer.

Continue reading Beginner’s Guide to Gamification (5 of 90): 4 Experience Phases of a Game

Beginner’s Guide to Gamification (4 of 90): The Octalysis Framework

*New to Gamification? Check out my post What is Gamification & the Gamification Framework: Octalysis*

Click here to see all videos in this Series

 

Gamification Notes:

This is the 4th Episode out of 90 on Gamification, and it introduces my core framework: Octalysis. For those who are following my work, you’ll see a lot of repeat information, but after this episode, we’ll start diving into new content that I haven’t covered yet (there’s a reason why I set it to 90 episodes).

In this episode, we cover:

  • What Octalysis is
  • Reason behind creating Octalysis
  • Review of the 8 Core Drives in Gamification
  • Basics of Octalysis
  • Left Brain and Right Brain Octalysis
  • White Hat and Black Hat Gamification

As I’m still doing a lot of new experiments in these videos, please leave as much feedback as possible (perhaps there is a way to gamify “brutal feedback”)

By the time I finished all 90 episodes, my video editing skills will most likely surpass my Gamification skills…if that is even possible!

 

 

Yu-kai Chou made Top 40 on the List of Gamification Gurus

Update: in August of 2013 through 2014, I improved my position to #1 in the Gamification Guru list. It was a good game to play for me and my bio.

Gamifying the competition between Gamification Gurus

It’s been 2 months since I heavily focused my blog on Gamification (although I started working in Gamification since 2003…it just wasn’t called that back then).

I’ve published my Gamification Framework called Octalysis, which was a massively successful and was received very well with companies and professors wanting me to demonstrate more on how to use this framework to make good business (and personal) decisions.

I’ve also finished 3 Episodes (out of 90) of the Video Series: The Beginner’s Guide to Gamification, which is a video education program that combines learning with fun (an actually gamified video course).

This is more of a slow but persistent play, where it probably won’t take off like crazy at the very beginning, but once I finish all 90 episodes, there will be nothing like that on the internet. (Episode 4 coming out in a few days) Also, I’ve already been approached by many parties regarding how they could use Gamification for their organization, after viewing my goofy but hopefully educational videos.

But even with that, it came as a complete surprise to me when I saw myself making the Top 40 List of Gamification Gurus.

Continue reading Yu-kai Chou made Top 40 on the List of Gamification Gurus

How Gamification can help you Get out of Bed by “Killing” Time

Wake Up Gamification

New to Gamification? Check out my post What is Gamification & my Gamification Framework: Octalysis

Wake Up Gamification

Gamification doesn’t always need to about Saving the World.

Tired of waking up every morning? Is getting out of bed a drag? A Japanese company decided to add some Gamification into the process and make waking up Epic and Fun!

They call it the Gun O’Clock. A Gun that is only designed to shoot a clock.

I found this thanks to the cool blog Geekologie. The idea is simple: you set your alarm on Gun O’Clock the night before, and at the designated time in the morning, on top of the usual PiPiPiPi sound (or any custom sound that you can record), a bull-eye target will come up and the “user” will need to grab a gun and shoot at the target 5 times in order to get it to quiet down.

Here’s a video of how it works (“Iz Coool!”):

Gun O’Clock: 1
Bed: 0

“Iz Coool!”

Tackling the “Waking Up” Industry with Gamification

The “Waking Up” Industry, or…Alarm Clocks, has been in a constant battle in finding out the best way to get people out of bed happily and vigorously.

Continue reading How Gamification can help you Get out of Bed by “Killing” Time

Beginner’s Guide to Gamification: What Is Gamification (2 of 90)

*New to Gamification? Check out my post What is Gamification & the Gamification Framework: Octalysis*

Click here to see all videos in this Series

Episode 2: What is Gamification

Here’s a quick outline of this episode:

  • Intro
  • Gamification is not new
  • Gamification is really “Human-Focused Design”
  • It remembers the “feelings” of the humans in the process
  • Some examples of Gamification
  • Since Games are the first industry to get Human-Focused Design right, we now call it Gamification
  • Gamification is not part of the gaming industry
  • A big problem in the industry is that people believe that gamification is just adding points, leader board, and badges.
  • Points, badges, and leaderboard are a result of Gamification, but they do not define it.
  • All games have game elements in them, but only a handful are fun and addicting

New Video Series: The Beginner’s Guide to Gamification (1 of 90)

*New to Gamification? Check out my post What is Gamification & the Gamification Framework: Octalysis*

Click here to see all videos in this Series

New Video Show: The Beginner’s Guide to Gamification (1 of 90)

Some friends have recommended me to make a video show on Gamification and so I decided to start a Video Guide that shares everything I know about Gamification.

This is a video series where I talk about all the aspects game mechanics and fun stuff of Gamification.It will involve 90 episodes, each lasting between 5-10 minutes.

Above is the first video, which includes:

  • Intro
  • Objectives of the Guide
  • Yu-kai’s Qualification
  • Brief intro on what is Gamification
  • Example of how Games make kids hardcore grunt workers
  • How Gamification is a booming field
  • Rules to his Keyword Collection Game and a Weight Loss plan

As you can see in the video, I made a variety of experiments to make the guide a bit more playful (and random).

Look forward to Feedback!

How Zamzee uses Gamification to make Running Around Epic

Offline Gamification in Action

A while ago, I covered the Playpump, which is a good example of how a physical product can use Gamification to create social good (and save millions of lives).
Equally important in the developed world, is getting kids and adult alike to exercise more. Zamzee is a physical device that tracks how people move around, and hence complete “Quests” based on their activity level.
 I’ve had the pleasure of talking to the Zamzee team about what they do, so I’ll let them explain why they are great at making running around fun and addicting! Also, the Zamzee team has generously offerred to give a 25% discount to my blog viewers, so consider going to Zamzee.com now and input this discount code: LUVZZ2012.

1. What is Zamzee?

Zamzee is a game that gets kids moving. Zamzee uses an activity monitor and website to make movement fun and rewarding.
 
Zamzee Gamification

2. What was the motivation behind creating Zamzee?

The purpose of Zamzee is to make moving fun so that more kids enjoy being active. Today over 1/3 of Americans are overweight and/or obese. Research and real life, practical experience tells us that physical activity declines around ages 9 to 15, right when kids are forming lifelong habits. That’s why Zamzee is targeting this age-group with a product designed for kids (with their help, too!) that makes physical activity more fun. 
 
HopeLab Foundation (with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation) recently completed a 6 month scientific research study on Zamzee, showing thatZamzee increases physical activity by almost 60% and reduces key biological risk factors for diseases associated with obesity. Here’s more details:http://blog.zamzee.com/2012/09/26/new-research-shows-zamzee-increases-physical-activity-by-almost-60/
 

3. How does Zamzee motivate kids to be more active?