When working on a project, I was forced to dive a bit deeper into gamification. Initially I thought it’s just adding some points and badges, but in reality it’s much more complex and there are many more parts to it.
The purpose of gamification is to help you get motivated to complete tasks in life that you don’t always find particularly enjoyable. It may be doing your laundry, learning a language or simply filling out a couple of spreadsheets. The applications are almost endless.
I’m going to base this discussion based on the Octalysis framework by Yu-Kai Chou. He’s one of the first people to engage in gamification and his explanations really hit the mark for me.
According to the framework there are 8 core drives of gamification – Meaning, Accomplishment, Empowerment, Ownership, Social Influence, Scarcity, Unpredictability and Avoidance. What I find really interesting that there are black-hat and white-hat methods. The black-hat focus on negative emotions, feelings such as Scarcity, Unpredictability and Avoidance. While white-hat focus on positive, feel good goals such as Meaning, Accomplishment and Empowerment.
The problem with this is that it’s very easy to apply the black-hat methods and they’re highly effective. In the wild, online, in sales, in marketing you can see lots of examples where people try to exploit these techniques. They can make you get things you may not necessarily need. Or play on your emotions so that you keep on doing tasks that are not in your best interest.
On the other hand, it’s harder to create white-hat methods. It takes a lot of thought, insight and experimentation to find something that people would find Meaningful, Empowering and Accomplishing. That’s exactly what the best games offer, fulfilling your intrinsic motivations and making you feel good playing it.
With this minuscule look at gamification I wanted to share that it’s much more complex than just points, badges and streaks. Even though that’s the first thing I think about when I hear the word.
It’s also clear that gamification can be used for both good and bad. You personally have to choose which side you cheer on. I guess, as always, it comes down to providing the value by undertaking ethical choices and design. Making the society better as a whole.