What if playing a game with a total stranger could build the kind of trust that takes months of small talk? Jane McGonigal makes exactly that case in Chapter 9 of Reality is Broken, and the three alternate reality games she highlights reveal something powerful about how Core Drives work in physical spaces.
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 Use collaboration, creation, and contribution to create alternate reality games that build new real-world communities.
Table of Contents
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
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 Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Summary
McGonigal explores how alternate reality games (ARGs) can create new real-world communities, not just virtual ones.
She examines three games in depth:
- Comfort of Strangers: a game that teaches players how to offer and receive comfort from people they’ve never met
- Ghosts of Chance: a game designed to reinvent museum membership by building intrigue around a shared cause
- Bounce: a game that bridges the generation gap by connecting older and younger community members
Each game succeeds by making collaboration, creation, and contribution fun, not forced.
Octalysis Analysis
What makes these three games fascinating from a behavioral design perspective is how each one relies on a different dominant Core Drive to create engagement.
Most community-building programs default to extrinsic rewards: points, badges, discounts for participation. McGonigal’s examples show that intrinsic motivation produces far deeper social bonds.
The common thread across all three games is that they activate Right Brain Core Drives (creativity, social influence, unpredictability) rather than Left Brain ones (accomplishment, ownership, scarcity). This matters because Right Brain drives create engagement that feels voluntary and meaningful. That is exactly what you need when asking strangers to trust each other.
Left Brain Core Drives (2, 4, 6) run on extrinsic motivation: the reward, the milestone, the thing you might lose.
Right Brain Core Drives (3, 5, 7) run on intrinsic motivation — doing the thing because the thing itself is worth doing.
Core Drive Breakdown
Comfort of Strangers works primarily through Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity. Players don’t know who is a “lover” or a “dancer” (good or bad actor) in the game. This mystery drives engagement because you can’t simply optimize your way through it. You have to stay present and curious.
Ghosts of Chance operates through Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling. The cause (reinventing how people connect with museums) gives players a reason to participate that transcends personal gain. When people believe they’re part of something bigger, they contribute more freely.
Bounce relies on Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness to connect people across age gaps. The game creates intrinsic reasons for different generations to interact, not because someone told them to, but because the game structure makes those interactions enjoyable.
What Do You Think?
Which real-world communities could benefit from this kind of intrinsic motivational design?
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 8 — Leveling Up in Life
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness
- Core Drive 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity
- What is Gamification?
- Books by Yu-kai Chou