Behavioral Design - Yu-kai Chou

Points, Badges, Leaderboards – Part 3 of 3

Last two weeks we discussed how behavioral design goes much further than the widely used Points, Badges, and Leaderboards.

We discussed how points and badges can be a powerful addition to your design if used right. This week we will talk about how Leaderboards (GT #3) can make an experience more engaging when implemented correctly.

The most common mistake made when designing Leaderboards

Leaderboards (GT #3) is a common Game Technique that is often implemented. Both in explicit gamification (where the user acknowledges they are playing a game), and in implicit gamification (a design that subtly employs gamification techniques into the user experience).

The most common mistake made when designing a Leaderboard, is creating a basic leaderboard. These leaderboards show where the user ranks in a list from the first to the last place. Such leaderboards do motivate, the top 5-10% will compete with each other and often times work hard to climb higher. However, the mid and bottom tier will usually feel demoralized, as they feel there is no point in even trying to reach the top.

Urgent Optimism – Why You Need It

A leaderboard should make all your users feel urgent optimism. This term is from Jane McGonigal (watch her TED talk). Urgent optimism is the desire to act immediately to tackle an obstacle, combined with the belief of having a reasonable shot of success.
When you have many users on a leaderboard, most users will perceive their rank as meaningless, even if it is a high rank percentage-wise. (E.g. rank 582 out of 6,024 is percentage-wise impressive (top 10%), but it does not feel like an accomplishment.) In this scenario, you can choose to only show your users their percentile.

The user should feel that if they try, they can reach the win-state, and that there is urgency so they feel they have to act now. If a user sees that they have 500 points, but the users in the top ten all have 1,000,000 or more points, they are not motivated, they are demoralized. The user will feel like they can never catch up (no urgent optimism) and will give up.

Leaderboard Designs That Do Work

Micro leaderboards show the ranking of the user in their region, or among their friends (a social leaderboard). These kinds of design will instil a sense of optimism (the user can try and will then have a reasonable chance to reach the top of the leaderboard) as well as a sense of urgency (how can I lose from my mother?).

Make sure your leaderboards are refreshing. If a leaderboard exists for a longer period of time, new users who are just starting will feel overwhelmed as they are not able to catch up and will give up.

The top ten users like their status, so show their names. But don’t show their statistics as to not demoralize other users. Instead, only show the statistics of the user herself and the 5 users above and below her.

The thing that really matters, is that the user is motivated to climb higher than those above her on the leaderboard (win-state), and not let those below her catch up.

When designing Leaderboards, make sure your users only see what is meaningful to them. Click To Tweet

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Points, Badges, Leaderboards – Part 2 of 3

Last week we discussed how behavioral design goes much further than the widely used Points, Badges and Leaderboards.

It is, instead, about the right implementation of the right Game Technique at the right time and place, that makes for a successful design, and an engaging experience.

However, points, badges, and leaderboards can be a powerful addition to your design, if used right.

Badges vs. Achievement Symbols (GT #2)

When crafting an experience, we want to use the terminology that is most enticing to the user experience. The term ‘badge’ is overused, and there are better names: achievements, icons, iconic figures…

Achievement symbols can also be 3 stars systems, a uniform change, belts in martial arts, certificates. They symbolize accomplishment.

Why Are Badges overused?

Many companies like to put badges on experiences because they only see the shallow side of the game. A game is supposedly designed to have a fun and exciting gameplay. As you play this exciting game, you want to strive for certain milestones (that not everybody can achieve). If you hit them, you want to get recognized, brag about it, or feel good about yourself.

A lot of gamified experiences and products make the user do a boring thing for 20 or a thousand times, and reward this with a badge. Unless the achievement is ‘persistence’, this does not make much sense.

Do not make an achievement more special than it is supposed to be.
Instead, create a fun experience, with the Right-Brain Core Drives (Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback, Social Influence & Relatedness, Unpredictability & Curiosity). If people then uniquely use their creativity or their skill set to do something that others can not or will not do, symbolize this achievement. Reward them on top of the already fun game. The user will be proud of it, feel excited about it, and might even brag about it.

The Core Drives

Badges focus most on Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment.

Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling – If the Achievement Symbol ties to something greater, you’re an evangelist, save lives, plant threes. If the user actually made a difference in the world, they wil feel proud of it.

Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback – Badges that require creativity and problem solving.

Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession – Badges can be turned into a collection set, a collectable theme.

Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness – E.g. when everyone who has the achievement can interact with each other, but if you don’t you can’t. You want to get in the club to mingle with those who also did amazing things. Or rewarding generosity, reaching our and helping other people.

Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience – Badges can be made very scarce, but well-known. Dangling in front of the user who knows what to do to get it (Earned Lunch GT #7) and they want to grind and do it.

Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity – Badges can be stealthily released as an easter egg badge.

Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance – Achievement symbols that can be lost if you mess up. Keep in mind that you don’t want to make the user so nervous to lose their achievement symbol that they’re Black Hat motivated.

At the core of Achievement Symbols is Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment.

The one rule for whether a badge is meaningful or not: If you give it to people, how likely are they to share it and brag about it to other people?

Implement Badges Correctly

When designing an experience, keep the Strategy Dashboard in mind. What are the Desired Actions, who are your Player Types? Then decide what the best Achievement Symbol design is to implement in your experience.

Next week we will take a closer look at Leaderboards and what they can bring to your experience if implemented correctly.

Points, Badges, Leaderboards – Part 1 of 3

Behavioral design goes much further than the widely used Points, Badges and Leaderboards. This principle is one that is at the core of Yu-kai Chou’s book: Actionable Gamification.

The right implementation of the right Game Technique at the right time and place is what makes for a successful design, and an engaging experience. Click To Tweet

However, points, badges, and leaderboards can be a powerful addition to your design, if used right.

In Octalysis gamification we define two types of points:

Status Points (GT #1)

Status points allow the user to grow in status as they do more of the desired behavior. These are often experience points.

They focus on Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment, they make the user feel accomplished and a sense of progression.

With Status Points the user can level up and unlock permanent powers.

Exchangeable Points (GT #75)

Exchangeable points are points that you can redeem, exchange, gift. These are often virtual currencies.

They focus on Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession, they allow accumulation and exchange. As well as Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience, make sure there is scarcity in coins and items are useful to buy. This is where The Big Burn (GT #88) can be used by introducing a very expensive item that will only give a small cosmetic change. The user can tell other users about her succes in coins accumulation by showing off this cosmetic change. This mechanic, where the user can quickly burn the majority of her points for something, helps you to control your economy.

With Exchangeable Points the user can redeem points for items that have a one-time use. Occasionally they might be used to unlock permanent powers, but this is less common.

Important Differences

It is important to be aware of the differences between these two types of points as to not mix them up. Most games use both points: experience to level up as status points, and currency to use and redeem as exchangeable points.

Next week we will take a closer look at Badges and what they can bring to your experience if implemented correctly.

4 Keys 2 Fun (Game Design Framework by Nicole Lazzaro) – Part 1 of 4.

This series looks into Nicole Lazzaro’s work. As a game designer, Lazzaro worked on Tilt, Myst, Sims, and Star Wars Unleashed. Lately, she’s working in VR, AR, and MR.

Gameful Design in 4Keys2Fun

Nicole runs a company called XEODesign and they published the 4Keys2Fun.

Hard Fun, Easy Fun, Serious Fun, and People Fun are the 4 Keys.

From the 4Keys2Fun blog, we see:

These four main reasons why people play games are how best sellers create more emotions for more captivating play. Each key unlocks a different set of play experiences. Because players alternate between them during a single play session best selling games offer at least three of the 4 Keys 2 Fun. Only XEODesign’s methods take advantage of the 4 Keys 2 Fun to heighten player emotions.

Types of Fun

Hard Fun is about Mastery, “The Brass Ring”, and when one succeeds in this area, one feels fiero.

Easy Fun is a vehicle for imagination

Serious Fun provides meaning and value and we feel excitement upon success.

People Fun is experienced with others, where we experience amusement upon accomplishment.

Player Experience

As you read the 4Keys2Fun chart, notice that the visualization attempts to focus on the Player Experience (PX). Some experiences will move between the 4Keys, for example between Hard Fun and Easy Fun, or from Serious Fun to People Fun.

Gamification and Operant Conditioning

Written by Christine Yee

For those of you who are truly interested in creating compelling games, here is something to consider: Should a game be judged favorably because players find it hard to break away from and spend countless hours immersed in it?

It would seem so, wouldn’t it? However, it is quite possible to feel compelled to keep playing even though the entire experience has become tedious and the novelty has worn off. Likewise, this same game might instead conjure the strong emotional rewards of true gratification and accomplishment which motivates the player to keep playing.

The difference has to do with two key areas:

The standard use of behavioral conditioning principles
The strategies which engage a sense of Unpredictability as well as Curiosity (Core Drive #7), inspiring the player to find out more.

An understanding of “operant conditioning” will help you understand the fundamental principles that drive behavior. But to go beyond this level, it is important to engage the players’ mental and emotional thirst for curiosity so that they would want to continue playing and explore circumstances that are unpredictable, despite having little sense of control. This experience is vastly more rewarding than simply being in a conditioned state, practically on autopilot. Knowing this distinction will help you become better at recognizing and discerning the finer points of quality game design.

BF Skinner and Operant Conditioning

Some games compel players to reliably perform certain behaviors again and again. Why is this? Psychologists have discovered that behaviors are fundamentally learned through a process of association. Individuals learn to react in a certain way in response to a particular stimulus. This is done by rewarding the behavior. The subject ultimately learns to react in a specific way to the stimulus.

Skinner’s Experiments

Initial studies in this area involved animals and involuntary reactions such as salivation. Later, a psychologist named BF Skinner took these findings by applying reward associations to voluntary behaviors.

Continue reading Gamification and Operant Conditioning

How to Use Music to Gamify Productivity

This is a sample from a daily blog I write for premium Octalysis Prime members, sharing practical and immediately applicable information related to gamification and behavior design. In other words, a daily blog for OP inspired by James Altucher and Seth Godin and others with a daily writing practice.

You’ve probably noticed background music and music to learn, like this Akira the Don album (YouTube) on Joseph Campbell‘s Hero of a Thousand Faces, which uses spaced repetition combined with original music production.

From Akira the Don

(I wager that Akira the Don’s retention is off the charts given he creatively composed this album, requiring him to select the most important aspects of Campbell’s work.)

I’ve read various authors and then followed up with musical compositions like this, which to my mind serve a similar purpose to a bookshelf, where, after reading a book, I can simply notice it on the shelf and remember its contents. It’s almost like magic!

Maybe it has to do with flow (Fadi and Yu-kai recently discussed on Linkedin).

Speaking of music, one of our very own Octalysis Prime members, Frank Parker, is familiar with gamified learning and community building through music. I happen to know his son Ashlin Parker has used the Octalysis framework to ideate and improve the Trumpet Mafia experience. (If you haven’t read about it, head over to the OP Store and purchase the Getting Started Guide, only 500 Chou Coins!)

I will keep an eye (and ear) out for member projects I like to expand on in this blog… For example, I’m curious to know more about Bo joining the Yang Gang (former US presidential candidate) even though he cannot vote in the election–Bo lives and teaches in Denmark.

In other news, I recently transcribed Yu-kai’s video on Endgame Loot Design (which is a downloadable resource received after completing the video).

One idea in the video is that in WoW and Diablo, Blizzard game designers implemented mystery box designs… but Yu-kai noticed a problem.

As a reminder, this is only the 2nd day of my new Daily OP quest, where I share a few notes every day with each of you here in the community. Since a lot of you are annual members, I thought ‘What better way than to have a daily conversation?’

For completing this blog reading, here’s your loot! (a random video from OP) … only for Primers.

Erik van Mechelen
Your Octalysis Prime Community Manager

PS Send any requests for downloadable resources, like ‘How to Get Started on My Octalysis Level I Certificate’ or ‘The Octalysis Guide to Parenting’

Linked content from this email:
Akira the Don – Joseph Campbell, full album – “what is this mystery…?” (CD1/7)
Joseph Campbell (wikipedia)
Endgame Loot Design video on OP Island

Prime On! (parting thoughts)

Congrats to member Sergio Ligato for his recent guest post on a top Italian gamification site!

Martín Villegas Wins the Octalysis Prime & Food Heroes II Design Challenge

Martín Villegas Food Heroes II Octalysis Prime & JUCCCE Design Challenge (WINNER) from Yu-kai Chou (yukai@yukaichou.com)

In a tough field for a difficult challenge, Martín emerged the Winner of the latest Octalysis Prime Design Challenge and will eventually be headed to Shanghai to work with the Food Heroes team.

To see the Design Challenge details for Food Heroes II, read this article.

After the initial submissions in the OP Island Challenge area, Each of the participants was asked by Food Heroes for additional conversations, and from what I heard from Food Heroes, those conversations were helpful to them and also to the participants.

Additionally, @Sergio and @Iñaki were named Finalists, congratulations! Watch out for their submissions in the coming weeks.

This was, as usual, a very tough decision.

What we liked about Martín’s Submission

As you can see when reviewing Martín’s submission, he is a worthy winner showing 1) a solid understanding of the Octalysis gamification framework, 2) how to apply Octalysis knowledge to improve a product and service in Food Heroes, and 3) attention to detail in all aspects of his presentation.

From my personal perspective, it was amazing to see the quality of submissions improve from our last Food Heroes Challenge to this one. That is a testament to the dedication each of you has committed to improving your design skills. Well done and Prime On!

As always, if you are looking to improve your Octalysis Gamification design skill and expertise, Octalysis Prime is a great place to start or gain experience above and beyond your innate attributes.