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.
Game Loops vs Activity Loops
An Activity Loop is any repeated cycle of Desired Actions.
Game Loops are Activity Loops with Boosters.
What’s a booster?
Boosters directly change how the next loop can be played or navigated by the player.
Boosters relate directly to Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback. The player thinks? What boosters are available? How can you gain them? What strategy will you take on to acquire them?
Boosters inspire meaningful play, White Hat and Intrinsic, in other words, Evergreen mechanics.
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