Readalong: Reality is Broken, Ch 11 – The Engagement Economy
This continues the Readalong by Erik van Mechelen of Jane McGonigal’s ‘Reality is Broken’ with insights from Yu-kai Chou’s Octalysis Framework. For in-depth discussions of this book and others, join Octalysis Prime.
tl;dr More people than ever are online; how can we get some of their participation bandwidth into large-scale projects for good?
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.
Summary
McGonigal makes the case that if we divert attention to large-scale projects like Wikipedia, Investigate your MP’s Expenses, FoldIt, and Free Rice — essentially projects for large-scale or global good — for an extended period of time (through long-term design), we can collectively make the world a better place.
These projects tap into Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling — the feeling that you are doing something greater than yourself.
Analysis
McGonigal correctly finds potential in success stories like Wikipedia, Investigate your MP’s Expenses, FoldIt, and Free Rice for political activism, scientific problem solving, and fundraising.
She draws attention to the problem of attention. How can we convince people to play a little less World of Warcraft or spend a little less time on Facebook (both autotelic activities) and a bit more of their participation bandwidth on these crowd-sourced efforts?
Two comments.
The first is about Facebook. In 2011, when this book was published, Facebook wasn’t as powerful as it is today. Its algorithms are stronger and more convincing, perhaps more addictive.
I’d argue that Facebook is still autotelic. In my personal case, my Facebook feed doesn’t offer that much world-changing interest. Facebook’s advertising system is a lot stronger now, so my feed includes ads I didn’t ask for :)
If spending time on Facebook is an increasing waste of time, this actually may work to the benefit of projects competing for “brain cycles and heartshare” and “better or more competitive engagement” — which maps closely to Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness.
Even so, there are better distractions online than ever before. In my view, movements toward a more altruistic and productive and well-being approach (like the Center for Humane Technology, formerly Time Well Spent) represent the future I want to live in.
What do you think?
What crowd-sourced online initiatives have you participated in this year?
Let me know in the comments or on Octalysis Prime‘s community.
Related Reading
- Readalong: Reality is Broken, Ch 10 — Happiness Hacking
- Readalong: Reality is Broken, Ch 14 — Saving the Real World Together
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling
- Five Examples of Gamified Crowdsourcing
- Books by Yu-kai Chou