Octalysis

Content
1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................. 3

2. Yu-Kai Chou............................................................................................................................................................. 3

3. What are games? ................................................................................................................................................... 4

4. Gamification ........................................................................................................................................................... 4

4.1. The Hype Cycle ....................................................................................................................................................... 4

4.2. Do you know why… ................................................................................................................................................ 6

4.3. Human Focused Design ......................................................................................................................................... 6

4.3.1. A case of definitions ...................................................................................................................................... 6

4.3.2. A case of emotions........................................................................................................................................ 6

5. Octalysis ................................................................................................................................................................... 7

5.1. Overview ................................................................................................................................................................. 7

5.2. Epic Meaning & Calling ......................................................................................................................................... 8

5.2.1. Examples ........................................................................................................................................................ 8

5.2.2. The Crazy Ones .............................................................................................................................................. 8

5.3. Development & Accomplishment ........................................................................................................................ 9

5.3.1. Examples ........................................................................................................................................................ 9

5.3.2. Call of Duty..................................................................................................................................................... 9

5.4. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback .......................................................................................................... 10

5.4.1. Examples ...................................................................................................................................................... 10

5.4.2. Play................................................................................................................................................................ 10

5.5. Ownership & Possession........................................................................................................................................ 11

5.5.1. Examples ...................................................................................................................................................... 11

5.5.2. The Endowment effect ................................................................................................................................ 11

5.6. Social Influence & Relatedness ........................................................................................................................... 12

5.6.1. Examples ...................................................................................................................................................... 12

5.6.2. The social norm ............................................................................................................................................ 12

5.7. Scarcity & Impatience.......................................................................................................................................... 12

5.7.1. Examples ...................................................................................................................................................... 12

5.8. Unpredictability & Curiosity .................................................................................................................................. 13

5.8.1. Examples ...................................................................................................................................................... 13

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5.9. Loss & Avoidance ................................................................................................................................................. 13

5.9.1. Examples ...................................................................................................................................................... 13

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1. Introduction
The latest years, gamification becomes a more and more popular term. Gamification literally means ‘using game-
like elements to make something more fun’. As soon as you adopt a score keeping mechanism for a certain task,
or you introduce competition, you are using gamification. Nowadays we see all kind of gamification techniques all
around us. Advertisements, casual games, the internet, super markets, TV. It’s more apparent than we would ever
realize. In our search for tools to help us creating (serious) games, we encountered a framework called Octalysis.
This framework, by Yu-Kai Chou, introduces us to a new way of thinking about how games try to tinker with the
emotions of the user. The unique approach Chou uses, is fresh and gives you get a better insight in what players
think and feel when playing games. Octalysis consists of 8 core drives each describing a certain emotion a player
can feel. Later in this document you can read more about them in detail.

We noticed Octalysis can be a unique tool to communicate about games. Later in this document, we will describe
how it can be used in brainstorm sessions. The unique way Chou presents his framework makes it easy and
comprehendible. His book titled ‘Actionable Gamification: beyond points, badges and leaderboards’ gives the
reader better insights in how to approach gamification. Together with his blog and website, it is a deep exploration
into what gamification really is. Throughout this document, we’ll give a summary of each Core Drive, combined
with some examples from the book or from our research.

2. Yu-Kai Chou
One of the very early pioneers in this domain is Yu-Kai Chou. As a gamer, he played Diablo II quite a lot. He and his
friends spent many hours in the game. He was actually quite the hardcore Diablo II player. With 5 characters above
level 90 and even a couple above level 96, you could tell he had a lot of hours on the counter. As his friends quit
playing Diablo II, he didn’t felt like playing alone, so he decided to also quit the game. It was then that he felt a
big emptiness taking control over him. He realised that all of this hours he had put in the game, were meaningless.
He hadn’t achieved anything in real life by putting that many hours into a computer game. He wanted to play a
game with an outcome that actually had some effect on the real world.

He realized that game was life itself and soon he treated life as some kind of adventure in which he had to level
up, accept and complete quests and where you could steadily advance to some kind of next level. The two main
questions he wanted to solve from then on where:

- How can we make games more meaningful?

- How can we make life more fun?

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3. What are games?
There is a lot of discussion about the exact definition of a game. Games can be very complex, but also very simple
if need be. Therefore, an exact definition that encloses all specifications of a game is far from easy. Several
researchers have tried to formulate one:

GAMES ARE…

- Jane McGonical : “A voluntary attempt in overcoming unnecessary obstacles.”

- Jesse Schell : “Problem-solving activities, approached with a playful attitude.”
- Ernest W. Adams : “Are a type of play activity, conducted in the context of a pretended reality, in which
the participant(s) try to achieve at least one arbitrary, nontrivial goal by acting in accordance with rules.

This are only three of many possible definitions. There are many more, but here you can already see that the
opinions about the exact definitions differ. Defining a games is thus a very hard task. From the above definitions,
we can filter out that games are perhaps something we do voluntarily, that they are playful and that there are
goals to be achieved or (un)necessary problems that need to be solved. It could or could not be a pretended
reality. Games could be based on an existing ruleset, e.g. FIFA, but they can also have a ruleset that the game
designers themselves came up with, e.g. Skyrim.

4. Gamification
We now know that games are fun and, most of the time, voluntary activities which encourage problem solving
thinking by following certain rules. Games are as old as humans and have evolved a lot throughout the history.
Together with this evolution, the usage of gaming elements in non-game related activities has evolved too. From
this evolution, gamification was born. The last 4 years, gamification really hyped because of social networks like
Facebook on which we saw games like FarmVille and Candy Crush appearing. Each of this games mastered the
art of gamification in some kind of disturbing way. Zynga maybe earned a lot of money with their games, but they
are mostly based on Black Hat Gamification, which will be discussed later in this document. And in this case, this is
not really a positive thing.

4.1. The Hype Cycle1

Every year, Gartner releases a Hype Cycle on which we can measure how far a certain technology or ideology
has evolved as a mainstream phenomenon. It shows how a technology or an application will evolve over time,
how mature and adapted the technology is and how viable it is, now or in the future, as a commercially viable
product. In 2011, the term gamification was about to reach the peak of inflated expectations. This means that some
companies had success stories implementing gamification, but that it wasn’t something everybody was
acquainted with. You can see the graph for 2011 in the following image:

1 http://www.gartner.com/technology/research/methodologies/hype-cycle.jsp

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 F IGUUR 1. G ARTNER 2011 HYPE CYCLE

The graph states that gamification would need another 5 to 10 years before it would become mainstream. First it
has to pass the trough of disillusionment before it would reach the point of becoming mainstream. This through
symbolized the point where experiments fail to deliver and companies have to adapt their products to the
satisfaction of the early adopters using it. After that a technology reaches the slope of enlightenment on which
more instances of the technology start to crystalize. More and more companies start to use this technology and
they feel more comfortable in using it because the early adopters proved that it might be working. The last stage
of this hype cycle is the plateau of productivity. At this stage, a technology has proven itself enough to start paying
off. It is easily accessible and mainstream adoption starts to take off. If we look at the Hype Cycle of 2014, we see
that gamification just passed the peak of inflated expectations. So it is on its way to become mainstream.

F IGUUR 2. G ARTNER 2014 HYPE CYCLE

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4.2. Do you know why…
Yu-Kai Chou started to investigate why people got addicted to certain games or even certain products. He gives
the example of some children not having a great work attitude at school, easily being distracted and in general
don’t have a strong work ethic. Except when it comes to playing games. Suddenly they turn into very hard working
individuals wanting to beat that one, single mission the best they can. Why do kids get out of bed at 3 a.m. to help
in a raid in World of Warcraft with some people on the other side of the planet? Is it just because they have to? Or
is it because they like to miss some sleep?

According to Chou, children are excited about levelling up their character. They really want to get those extra
points or that particular new skill. Until they do, they won’t be able to defeat that nasty boss waiting at the end of
the level. The ‘why’ is clear for them here. Compared to school tasks in which for the child itself, the ‘why’ is not
always as clear. Adults know that you have to learn to write and read, to calculate and to know some basics about
geography. It is important for your life later on, but as a child, you don’t know that. In that game the child plays at
night, the ‘why’ is lying somewhere in the near future being the end of the level, or the next raid. In the real life,
these goals are much more subtle and less clear. This is where gamification can come in. By creating goals that are
much more graspable and reachable in a short period of time, the child can be motivated to overcome the
obstacles to get there. The same goes for adults, but then it’s just on a whole other level of communication.

There is a reason that there are popular brands such as Apple that manage to reach whole new levels of success.
People wait hours in line to get to the newest iPhone, just because they can. Why do people bid on eBay like crazy
addicts? These are questions that you can solve thanks to gamification. With Octalysis, it becomes clear which
game techniques trigger the necessary emotions.

4.3. Human Focused Design

4.3.1. A case of definitions
Gamification is the broadly accepted term for making non-game related activities fun by using fun and engaging
elements derived from games. Chou has a new term for this process. He rather calls it Human-Focused Design. Most
systems these days are Function-Focused in which the emphasis lies on the efficiency of the system itself. It demands
that each worker within the system does his job, just because he is required to do it. Human-Focused design focuses
on the human motivation of why somebody would want to do the job. A human being is a sensitive creature with
its feelings, ambitions, insecurities, and reasons for whether he or she wants or not wants to do certain things. Human-
Focused Design is a movement that focuses on optimizing certain systems to support this feelings. This way, humans
are more engaged in the process of which they are part of. The term gamification, according to Chou, origins from
the fact that the game industry was the first industry to master the art of Human-Focused Design.

4.3.2. A case of emotions

The reason why we put people at the centre of the Human Focused Design principles is because humans are living
creatures with their own emotions and ambitions. As said before, human beings can think or feel something about
certain things. They can reject something. They can make offers. They can feel sympathy or grudge. All of these
emotions can be triggered by game designers. A London photographer, Mr Toledano, carried out a little, but
interesting experiment. As an artist, he is interested in hidden emotions, feelings, characteristics that normally are
hidden from the world. Sometimes people display emotions without being aware of it. As an example, he wanted

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to take photos of people playing games. The result is remarkable and explains exactly why games are so
compelling to a lot of people. Eight portraits show people that are probably not realizing they are expressing
extreme emotions. Because of the events happening in the games they were playing, these people expressed the
emotions displayed. Octalysis is a tool that helps game designers think about how to trigger these emotions. Chou
analyses brings several techniques forward on how to approach different kinds of game design problems.

F IGUUR 3. M R. TOLEDANO ' S G AMER PROJECT

5. Octalysis

5.1. Overview

F IGUUR 4. O CTALYSIS OVERVIEW

Octalysis exists out of 8 core topics, or Core Drives like Chou calls them. Each of them represents different types of
motivation that drives a player forward in playing games. The name Octalysis is derived from the shape of the
framework. By placing these eight cores strategically, you get an octagonal shape. The top half of the shape

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contains the White Hat elements, whereas the bottom half of the shape contains Black Hat elements. Further in this
document, this will be further explained. Chou also splits the framework in a left and right section. In the left part of
the framework, you’ll find Left Brain elements. Obviously, the right part contains the Right Brain elements. Let’s have
a quick overview of all the Core Drives.

 Epic Meaning & Calling : The core drive that triggers when a player is on quest that makes him doing
something ‘greater’ than himself. He is the chosen one and he can actually make the difference.
 Development & Accomplishment : People want to achieve things, they want to feel great by being
challenged and succeeding in that challenge.
 Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback : When a player gets the freedom to combine things and be
creative with the game mechanics he is presented, this Core Drive comes into play.
 Ownership & Possession : Controlling something, or having accumulated certain things, is very appealing
to some people.
 Social Influence & Relatedness : A human being is a very social animal. Showing off and getting together
with others can be very rewarding.
 Scarcity & Impatience : When you have the feeling you desperately need something because its unique,
you’ve probably been influenced by this Core Drive.
 Unpredictability & Curiosity : Knowing that something big and rewarding can happen, but not knowing
when it will happen can be very addicting.
 Loss & Avoidance : Avoiding to lose something can be a trigger to keep focused and stay active on a
game or task.

5.2. Epic Meaning & Calling

5.2.1. Examples
Have you ever wondered why Wikipedia is one of the largest knowledge databases that people can freely
contribute to? It even goes one step further. Some people moderate the database and flag inappropriate content
without even being paid for it. They even are more willing to donate to Wikipedia than their non-contributing peers.
Why are people so loyal to Apple products. They don’t even have to consider to buy that new iPhone that was
released a year after the previous version. They just do it. Another fine example is Waze. This GPS app lets people
contribute to the system by inserting traffic jams or roadworks into the system. Of course this can all be done by
voice commands!

5.2.2. The Crazy Ones

In 1984, Apple launched one of the most successful commercials ever made during 1984’s Super Bowl XVIII on CBS.
The ad generated millions of dollars’ worth of sales. Since then, Apple has been a huge success in the computer
business. Ten years later, Apple had some struggles with their brand. Steve Jobs returned to the board, after being
thrown out a couple years earlier, and he knew he had to change something. They made a new commercial with
Steve Jobs telling a story about ‘the crazy ones’. In this story, he doesn’t mention Apple or one of its products one
single time. It’s all about selling a vision, inspiring people to do the right thing, to change the world. How can they
do that? That’s up to you, but in the mind of Steve Jobs it was buying an iPod of course. A thousand song right into
your pocket.

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The same goes for Waze, the GPS app people can contribute to, to help the community avoiding traffic. In the
beginning, traffic was symbolized as a big, evil snake that you had to defeat by avoiding it. Think of snake, but then
in real life. By pointing out the community where there are road works or traffic jams, you could help them avoiding
the snake. Other people do the same, and you could be helped in return. This is a very powerful mechanism.
People feel part of a greater and bigger story. What they do can really help other people. And that feeling is
priceless. Especially when, by using the app, they can get benefit themselves.

5.3. Development & Accomplishment

5.3.1. Examples
The latest years, social networks like Twitter and Facebook gained in popularity enormously. There are several
different reasons for this and one will be covered later: the social part of it. Social networks tend to be a platform
to show off how popular one is. You can gather likes, followers, endorsements and much more to let people know
how good you are. On LinkedIn, people can recommend other people. They can endorse the skills of their peers
or they can write some recommendation. This gives the other user a great sense of accomplishment and makes
him feel good. The same goes for twitter. The more followers one gets, the more accomplished he will feel. Followers
are directly linked to influence. The more someone is followed on Twitter, the more a person will feel like he is really
important and has something to say.

Foursquare is based on the same principles. If you check in somewhere regularly, you will become the major. You
will feel important and everyone will see that you are the major. You’ve not become major by going there once,
you are a regular and people tend to ‘defend’ that position by keep going there.

5.3.2. Call of Duty

If we look at existing games using this Core Drive to keep people playing, we can pick out Call of Duty. This game
is an immense success. Especially on the multiplayer side, people stay playing this game. Why is that? If we look at
how people get rewarded, we see that they can gather badges and earn more prestige. The prestige mode is
something they introduced in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. By levelling up to the highest possible level, people
can feel good. But at that point, you can choose to lose all of your progress and start over again. Why would
somebody wants to do that?! When someone decides to go up a prestige level, he gets a new, special badge
that gets added to his nickname when playing in multiplayer. This way, other players can see that he has already
levelled up a certain amounts of time. The higher the level of prestige, the more respect you’ll earn by other players.
This is a system to show of your skills, but for the developers especially a system to keep player going and playing
the game.

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 F IGUUR 5. P RESTIGE BADGES IN C ALL OF D UTY : M ODERN WARFARE 2

5.4. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback

5.4.1. Examples
Each year, big e-sports tournaments are held all around the world. One of the most popular games in this area is
Starcraft II. The latest years, this strategic game has become a million dollar business. A lot of teams all over the
world get huge amounts of sponsoring, just to train themselves and become the best players ever lived. Why is this
game so immensely popular and why do people even want to compete on such a big scale?

Chess is one of the oldest games that we know. The basic rules are very simple and straightforward, yet the game
can gave a complexity that can be very daunting to begin with. People have been obsessed by being good at it
and becoming the world champion is the result of years of hard work and study. Since the invention of the computer,
people have been intrigued by creating a computer that could beat a human in playing chess. They’ve already
succeeded, but the question you could ask is: Why is it so hard to beat a human in a game of chess? Computers
can think much faster than us and can generate much more possible moves. Why do they have such a hard time
in beating the world champion? This has everything to do with this core drive.

5.4.2. Play
This Core Drive can also be referred to as ‘Play’. If you look at a child, you know what this means. A child can be
endlessly creative when it comes to playing with simple toys. It combines, it imagines, it envisions, in short, a child
‘plays’. A human being can be very creative. If we are being put in a certain situation with some tools and/or
methodologies, we are able to combine these to find unique strategies and create our own compelling experience.
Granted we are assigned a certain goal of course. As mentioned before, Starcraft II is immensely popular. The
game fits the description perfectly. It puts the gamer into some kind of war situation with a defined goal: defeating
the enemy. The game also gives the player a range of tools and possible methodologies he can use. Each race in
the game has its own perks and benefits, but also has some negative sides. It’s up to the player and his creativity
to combine the given tools and methodologies to use all these to his advantage and beat the other player. The
combinations are endless and that is probably why this game is so popular.

Another very good example of this Core Drive is lego. It is a child’s favourite toy to play with. Lego has a couple of
different blocks to play with, but the possibilities are endless! This toy unleashes creativity in children or even adults.

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You can do a little test by giving the same amount and the same type of blocks to two children. Ask them to build
something with it and you’ll get two totally different outcomes. The children let their imagination come to life with
this toy and they just ‘play’. Nathan Sawaya was a lawyer before becoming a LEGO artist. He creates beautiful
‘sculptures’ only using LEGO bricks. Being part of a creative process can lead to happiness!

F IGUUR 6. A SCULPTURE BY NATHAN SAWAYA

5.5. Ownership & Possession

5.5.1. Examples
These days, everyone uses Google. And you might be surprised by what Google knows about you. Actually they
tailor the complete search engine experience personally to each user. This is something Chou calls the Alfred effect,
according to the butler in the Batman movies. Google remembers your searches, your history, what you browsed
for and it tries to adapt your search experience to all of these parameters. At a certain point, you’ll have the feeling
that Google is personalised just for you. It is like a personal assistant whom you can ask anything. Ownership and
possession is not only about tailoring and crafting a personal experience, people can also be attracted to the
feeling of building something up and owning something that they need to protect or safeguard. In Skyrim, you build
up a character from a nobody to a hero. Throughout the journey, you experience several quests and you meet a
lot of other individuals, but most of all, you shape your own avatar like you want. This way, the empathy with the
character becomes greater.

A more real world example would be IKEA. At IKEA, everybody buys Build-It-Yourself furniture. The fact that you build
the furniture yourself is very important. It makes you very proud of having built it yourself. IKEA uses the Core Drive
of ownership and possession to their advantage. You’ll be more eager to take care of something you have created
or built yourself than something you just buy in one piece. The same goes for collections. You’ll want to continuously
expand the collection while taking care of it as something very precious.

5.5.2. The Endowment effect

A psychological effect that fits this core drive perfectly is the Endowment Effect. This effect comes into place when
a user has to ascribe value to something they own. People would pay more for something they own than to
something they do not own. Even it is exactly the same, the user still values his own objects more than the ones of

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somebody else. An example of a company using this effect is eBay. If users are the highest bidder in an auction
they are more willing to bid aggressively to stay the highest bidder. A remarkable thing about this effect is that it
disappears as soon as you own something as a token ‘for exchange’. For instance, a shoe seller won’t feel any
attachment with the shoes he has to sell.

5.6. Social Influence & Relatedness

5.6.1. Examples
As mentioned before, social media networks have a strong impact on people because of the social aspect of it.
Not only do people share their whole lives with each other through these network, they also feel related to each
other in some kind of way. If we look at why games like Candy Crush or Farm Ville have succeeded the way they
did, it is closely related to the fact that you have to involve your friends in these games somehow. You can invite
people over to your farm, show them how good you are doing. There is a leaderboard showing who is performing
best and in Candy Crush you can see how far behind or in front your friends are in the level overview. All of these
nifty mechanics constantly remind you of how you are performing.

In Parallel Kingdom, as a new player you get a mentor. This mentor is a more experienced player who is willing to
teach you the tricks of the trade. By giving you some basic gear to start with and taking you along in the new world
you are exploring, gives you a kickstart in the game. You look up to your mentor as the one who helped you and
learnt you about the game. You get inspired by him. It’s even that bad that you can’t quit the game because you
would have the feeling that you are letting down your mentor. After all, he put all his time in you so you could
become a valuable asset for his own guild. Mentorship is a powerful tool to keep players in the game. They don’t
want to upset their peers by quitting the game, so they keep playing.

5.6.2. The social norm

When people are being compared to others, they don’t want to be a bad performer. The closer they are to the
social norm, the better. About the social norm, an interesting experiment exists. In hotel rooms, there is a known
practice that towels you throw in the floor are replaced when room services passes by. That is not the most eco-
friendly way. The first test was to see what percentage of the people in a specific room would hang their towel on
the rack to reuse it when there was a sign that says: “75% of the hotel guests reuse their towels!”. The result was that
44% of the people reused their towel. In the next step they changed the sign to: “75% of the hotel guests in this room
reuse their towels!”. This led to a remarkable percentage of 49% percent of the people reusing their towel. The
difference? The second norm mirrors the guests more closely, so they are more tempted to follow the social norm.

5.7. Scarcity & Impatience

5.7.1. Examples
As human beings, we have the natural tendency to want what we don’t have or can’t have immediately. This is
because of the effect of scarcity. Something that is rare, has a weird effect on people. They suddenly all want it.
This is why paintings by Van Gogh or Picasso sell for huge amounts of money. As soon as you have something
exclusive, you seem important. This is why some games restrict certain skills or rewards to only the very few that get
far enough in the game. Another way to create a sense of scarcity is by limiting the amounts of life a player gets to
get through a certain level. In the game Monsu, you have only a limited amount of lifes before you have to wait a

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bit to refill them. This is a commonly used game technique and is called the Torture Break. You have to quit the
game, unless you pay, and wait for your lives to replenish.

In Geomon, a pokemon-like game, players could collect and catch monsters by being in a certain place at a
certain time. Some monsters had simple conditions to be found, but others really were hard to get by. The Mozzy,
for example, could only be catched when you were in a really hot place close to the office of Mozilla Organisation.
This makes this monster very rare, so players would do anything to get one.

5.8. Unpredictability & Curiosity

5.8.1. Examples
Animals, so also human beings, are curious creatures. They want to know what happens next. Game designers can
cleverly implement game techniques that trigger this curiosity in people who play. Grand Theft Auto 5, one of the
biggest games of the last couple of years is full of Easter eggs. These are little surprises for the players to discover
while roaming the world in the game. They could be references to other games or movies, funny game elements
or funny storylines that unfold. In the game Little Inferno, players have to combine toys to burn in a fireplace. By
combining toys, they earn money and get special badges. By using their own creativity they can search for new
ways of combining and buying these toys. The game constantly triggers the curiosity of the player.

One of the biggest games of the last decades is without doubt World of Warcraft. This game keeps millions of
players locked to their screens for days. How do they do that? The world of WoW is so diverse and big that it contains
a lot of unpredictable stories and quests. You never know what will happen next. Above all, the developers keep
creating new content for the game each year to keep the players hooked.

5.9. Loss & Avoidance

5.9.1. Examples
Last but not least, we have the loss and avoidance category in Octalysis. This is kind of a darker core drive because
it triggers emotions that no one really likes. A very known example is Facebook. After you build up your community
on this social network, you’ve built your profile page and you gathered a lot of friends, it is very hard to leaver
Facebook from one day to the other. This is because we don’t like to leave everything behind we have built up in
the past. We might miss out on some excellent opportunities friends are inviting us for and the idea of deleting all
of your history is very overwhelming. There is a reason that Facebook has a built in pause function so you can disable
your account for a while and recover it later.

In poker, the worst hand you can get is not the smallest hand, but the second greatest hand. If you have a great
hand, you will be tempted to call or bet along with your fellow players. This could lead to a real betting war in which
you put a lot of money at stake. Let’s say you have called the flop and bet on the turn, and on the river the
opponent goes all in. It is very hard for you to not call that all-in, because you know at that point that all of your
bets and calls are lost. You don’t want to give up on the money you’ve already put in. Therefor you call the all-in,
only to see that you had the second greatest hand instead of the winning hand. Talking about a bummer, this is
quite the negative feeling. All because of the Loss & Avoidance Core Drive. Good players know when they need
to turn down, but before you get that good, you need to play a lot.

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