Gamification to improve our world: Yu-kai Chou at TEDxLausanne

Summary

Yu-kai Chou shares insights on how gamification can revolutionize the world by integrating game elements into everyday tasks, making them more enjoyable and engaging. He addresses misconceptions about gamification, emphasizing that it goes beyond points, badges, and leaderboards, and instead focuses on core motivational drives. Chou presents his Octalysis framework, which identifies the eight core drives that encourage meaningful interaction and productivity in both gaming and real-world contexts. By harnessing these drives, society can transform mundane tasks into exciting challenges, improving motivation and well-being in the process.

Highlights

• The average gamer is 35 and nearly half are women. Gaming is for everyone! 👾
• Games like Foldit demonstrate the power of gamification in solving scientific challenges. 🔬
• The Octalysis framework outlines eight core drives that motivate our actions. 💪

Key Takeaways

• Gamification is more than just points or badges; it's about motivation and engagement. 🎮
• The Octalysis framework helps understand the eight core drives of motivation. 🧠
• Games can solve real-world problems, like scientists using 'Foldit' to solve a long-standing puzzle. 🧩

Overview

Yu-kai Chou takes us on an exciting journey into the world of gamification and its potential to revolutionize how we approach everyday tasks. Forget the stereotype of gamers as isolated or lazy – the truth is, gaming can engage people of all ages and backgrounds, including adult women. Through gamification, we can reframe mundane activities and increase motivation, making our world a better place, one game at a time.

Chou dismantles the misconception that gamification is simply about incorporating points, badges, and leaderboards into non-gaming contexts. Instead, he presents the Octalysis framework, a detailed map of the eight core motivational drives that underlie meaningful engagement in both games and life. By tapping into these intrinsic and extrinsic motivators, gamification can inspire creativity, foster development, and promote social influence.

One of the standout examples highlighted by Chou is 'Foldit,' a game that engaged gamers to unravel a complex scientific problem that had stumped experts for years. This case illustrates the untapped potential of gamification in transforming our approach to various challenges by making them engaging and solvable through collective effort. Ultimately, Chou invites us to join his vision of a world celebrated for transforming the everyday into the extraordinary through the power of play.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction to the Power of Play The chapter introduces the concept of a world where labor has become obsolete, yet everything functions better than ever. It hints at a miraculous alternative to a robot-run society by emphasizing the power of play instead of traditional work.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Redefining Gamers The chapter discusses the concept of 'harnessing the power of play' and suggests that there is much to learn from games in creating a better world. It focuses on the role of gamification in improving life and challenges the traditional perception of gamers. Gamification is highlighted as a transformative tool in redefining who gamers are, moving beyond the stereotype of 'little kids and guys.'
• 02:00 - 03:00: Understanding Gamification The chapter 'Understanding Gamification' examines common misconceptions about gamers. Contrary to stereotypes, the average gamer is 35 years old, with almost 70% being over 18. Interestingly, about half are women, indicating more adult women play than males under 18, especially when considering popular social mobile games like Candy Crush and Angry Birds. The chapter concludes by emphasizing that anyone can be a gamer.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Misconceptions of Gamification Gamification is about integrating game-like elements into non-game contexts to make them more engaging. Everyone can enjoy games if presented in a compelling context, whether they are clients, employees, children, or parents.
• 04:00 - 05:00: The Octalysis Framework The chapter introduces the concept of gamification, clarifying common misconceptions such as the belief that simply adding points, badges, and leaderboards (PBLs) to a product will make it engaging. The speaker reflects on their personal journey in the field, which started in 2003 when gamification was not widely recognized or understood. However, its popularity has increased significantly in recent years.
• 05:00 - 07:00: Epic Meaning and Calling: Pain Squad The chapter discusses the growing popularity and interest in 'Epic Meaning and Calling' across various sectors such as companies, organizations, and schools. Despite this interest, there seems to be a lack of true understanding of the concept. In essence, 'Epic Meaning and Calling' can be likened to what makes a game enjoyable, which is not merely the points system but factors like the challenges it presents, the creative engagement it demands, the opportunities it provides to socialize with friends, and the capacity it has to help players exceed their current limits. These elements are termed game elements and game mechanics, and they are fundamental to the allure of gaming.
• 07:00 - 09:30: Development and Accomplishment: Nike+ The chapter titled 'Development and Accomplishment: Nike+' explores the complexities of integrating gamification into products and experiences. It critiques the simplistic approach of merely adding game elements to make products engaging. Instead, it emphasizes the importance of understanding and leveraging core motivational drives. The chapter introduces a gamification framework called och Tallis's, which serves as a design blueprint for creating meaningful and engaging experiences that successfully motivate users.
• 09:30 - 10:30: Empowerment of Creativity and Feedback: Foldit This chapter explores the eight core drives that motivate individuals in both gaming and real-world contexts, based on a unique octagonal model. The focus of the discussion is on the first core drive, 'Epic Meaning and Calling,' where individuals feel motivated to engage in activities that make them part of something grander than themselves. The chapter uses examples like the game Foldit to illustrate how these drives can lead to impactful, world-changing innovations.
• 10:30 - 13:00: Ownership and Possession: DragonBox The chapter discusses themes of ownership and possession through a narrative involving an impending world-ending event where the protagonist is uniquely qualified to save the world. It highlights the metaphorical sense of feeling 'big' by portraying various scenarios, particularly focusing on empowerment and self-worth.
• 13:00 - 14:30: Social Influence and Relatedness: Opower The chapter discusses a concept where individuals may lack motivation to consistently monitor something as simple as a 'pain journal.' To counteract this, a creative approach known as the 'Pain Squad' is introduced. This squad is described as an elite secret police force with a mission to combat persistent pain, reinforcing the importance of documenting pain occurrences twice daily. Additionally, to enhance engagement, the chapter highlights the app's method of including 'epic minion' calls and an enthusiastic welcome message to maintain user interest and participation.
• 14:30 - 16:00: Scarcity and Impatience: Kickstarter The chapter discusses a scenario involving a detective in the 'Pain Squad,' an organization fighting pain effectively. The narrative describes the progress and accolade a member receives for their extraordinary contributions, hinting at the gamification of tasks related to pain management. It highlights the motivational aspect where completing tasks related to pain is rewarding, similar to progressing in a game. The use of a child updating her pain journal signifies not only a necessary task but one driven by motivation and achievement.
• 16:00 - 18:00: Unpredictability and Curiosity: Speed Camera Lottery The chapter explores two core drives of motivation: 'Epic Meaning and Calling' and 'Development and Accomplishment'. The first drive talks about the motivation derived from participating in something significant and being part of a team that battles challenges, like pain. This instills a sense of purpose. The second drive discusses the motivation that comes from personal improvement, leveling up, and achieving mastery. An example given is the Nike Plus Nike FuelBand, which enhances motivation through health and fitness tracking.
• 18:00 - 21:00: Loss and Avoidance: Zombies, Run! This chapter discusses the psychology behind exercise motivation, emphasizing the difficulty of focusing on long-term health benefits versus the gratification of short-term achievements. It highlights how the Nike+ app successfully encourages users by showcasing immediate accomplishments, such as increased distances run or higher scores, which strengthens the feeling of progress and improvement, thus motivating continued effort.
• 21:00 - 25:30: Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation In this chapter, the focus is on the distinction between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. A character is introduced to celebrate with users as they achieve new milestones, such as earning 10,000 Nike points, creating a sense of accomplishment and happiness. Additionally, the chapter touches on the 'empowerment of creativity and feedback,' likened to playing with Lego, where users are given basic blocks to creatively explore and build in countless ways.
• 25:30 - 27:00: Conclusion and Call to Action The chapter 'Conclusion and Call to Action' discusses the combination strategy of seeing feedback and adjusting, describing it as an engaging process. It highlights a significant example from the game Foldit, used in core dr3, where a serious game was created to solve a complex scientific problem regarding the AIDS virus protein structure. Despite the top PhDs being unable to resolve this issue for 15 years, the game successfully provided a solution. The chapter concludes by emphasizing the effectiveness of gamification in solving scientific problems.

Gamification to improve our world: Yu-kai Chou at TEDxLausanne Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 imagine a world where labor is obsolete where work is something of the past but miraculously everything's still functioning better than ever before no I'm not talking about a society run by robots I'm talking about a world
• 00:30 - 01:00 harnessing the power of play and I believe that there's a lot we can learn from games to make that world happen so today I'm going to talk to you about how gamification can make our world a better place so let's start with games who plays games most of the people when they think of a gamer I think about people like these little kids and guys who
• 01:00 - 01:30 probably single probably unemployed and eat pizza onto their shirts but the actual statistics could be very surprising to many the average gamer is actually 35 years old almost 70% of them are over 18 about half of them are women which means there's actually more adult woman playing games than male under 18 if you consider social mobile games like candy crush or Angry Birds so what does this mean this means that everyone can be a gamer this is a very generic
• 01:30 - 02:00 demographic this could be your clients could be your employees could be your children could be your parents everyone has the capacity to enjoy games if there's a good reason to do so so what is gamification gamification is the craft to take all those fun exciting elements of games and pouring them into boring non-game contexts things you have to do but you don't necessarily want to
• 02:00 - 02:30 do so when I say gamification some of you might start thinking about what we call the PBL's the points badges and leaderboards and this is where a lot of people think oh if I just take points and put into a product or badges it'll make it fun and exciting and that's a big misconception when I started in gamification in 2003 it was a very lonely passion for me very few people cared about it and very few people understood it now about three four years ago gamification became a
• 02:30 - 03:00 buzzword and a lot more people and companies organizations schools started to care about it but still very few people truly understand it so if you think about what makes a game fun if you ask gamers that they're not going to say oh because the game has points they'll say oh because it challenges me and makes me use my creativity allows me to hang with friends it makes me be more than who I am today and if you think about it every single game out there has game elements and game mechanics in them
• 03:00 - 03:30 but most games are still boring most games are still not engaging so it's very naive to think that oh if I just take these game elements mechanics from that you can find in games that are even boring and pour them into products and experiences it'll automatically make it super fun and exciting so what we know here is that good gamification does not start with game elements but really starts with how it motivates our core drives so I spent many years developing a gamification framework called och Tallis's and it's a design framework
• 03:30 - 04:00 based on an octagon shape and in the center of our taluses are eight core drives I believe these are eight core drives that motivates motivate us to do everything that we do in games out of games so I'm going to go through these eight core drives and show you one example about sighs how something amazing out there changes the world with it the first core drive is epic meaning and calling this is the core drive that says you're motivated because you feel like you're part of something bigger than yourself so in a game it does that often the
• 04:00 - 04:30 world's about to end and for some reason you're the only person qualified to save the world you feel big but there's a lot of other examples to make people feel bigger than there are it can be used to get children with cancer in Children's Hospital to update their pain journals and that's what pain squad does so pain squad is an app that gets kids to record their pain journal so doctor can diagnose them better and you can imagine if you're a child and you have cancer you feel lonely you feel like no one cares about you you're in pain
• 04:30 - 05:00 you're not very motivated to keep keep track of your pain Journal so the paint squad is AB that tends that you're in the secret police force dedicated to hunt down the stinkle pain and the moto is keep pain in its place whenever there's pain two times a day you got to record it down but to reinforce on that epic minion calling look what they do in the app hey okay welcome to pain squad it's really great you're here we need all the help we can
• 05:00 - 05:30 get to help with pain in its you are now officially a full-fledged detective in pain squad well done at this rate you know I didn't get the next chief they just don't make them like you anymore you truly are one of pain spots best and brightest keep it up but this case isn't closed yet your squad is still fighting we couldn't have done it without you it's a way to go so now when the child updates her pain journal she's not just doing something because she has to she
• 05:30 - 06:00 feels like she's part of something important a team depends on her she's fighting with the team against this force called pain and that motivates her that's epic meaning and calling the second core drive is development and accomplishment and this is the core drive that says you're motivated because you feel like you're improving you're leveling up you're achieving mastery and one of the most well known examples of this core Drive is the Nike Plus Nike FuelBand so we all know that health and
• 06:00 - 06:30 exercise is very important but it's a health as a long-term thing and our brains are terrible at processing long term benefits we like short-term gratifications so what the Nike+ does really well is it shows you short-term accomplishments it shows you how hey you have run an extra mile compared to last week you're improving your Nikes plus score is getting higher and so you feel accomplished you feel I'm growing I'm getting better and leveling up and that motivates you and to further drive that
• 06:30 - 07:00 feeling of accomplishment and also to introduce the character to celebrate with you whenever you hit a new milestone this little character jumps up and down so excited so happy falls on its face and is like yeah 10,000 Nike few points earned you feel accomplished the third core drive is empowerment of creativity and feedback so that's kind of like Lego you give users the basic building blocks and there's an infinite amount of ways for you to utilize your creativity to try a different
• 07:00 - 07:30 combination strategy see feedback and adjust and that's a very engaging process so my favorite example in core dr3 is the serious game called folded so scientists have been trying to figure out this AIDS virus protein structure problem and the top PhDs in the world couldn't figure this out for 15 years so they decided to make a game called Foldit and as you can see you have a big protein there's things you can do with it you have an objective such as maximizing surface space and miraculously this problem that no one
• 07:30 - 08:00 could solve was sold by a gamer in ten days so when you think about how a 15 year old problem is sold in ten dates through a game you have to see how powerful games can be in making our world a better place the fourth core drive is ownership and possession this is the core drive that says because you feel like you own something you want to improve it you want to protect it and you want to get more so this is the core drive that powers a lot of virtual goods virtual
• 08:00 - 08:30 currency things like that it's also the core drive that motivate us to accumulate wealth but it can also get us to learn math dragonbox is a learning game that gets little kids between five to nine year olds to be obsessed with solving hundreds of middle school algebra questions now I don't know about you but when I was a kid math was the ultimate school grind like everything else could be fun you know physics can be fun science history can be fun but math now math is not fun math you just sit there and you have to do it
• 08:30 - 09:00 so your parents don't get mad at you so let's check out how dragonbox gets this to be fun for little kids so the premise of the game is that you have a box and inside the box there's a baby dragon this baby dragon only wants to come out when nothing's around it so it can eat so this is the onboarding state teaching the rules these green circles you see are zeros in disguise zero means nothing so you tap on it disappears zero means nothing it scans the dragon wants to come out and eat happy now on stage
• 09:00 - 09:30 three it introduced some basic math principles positive robot and negative robot cancel each other out become zero negative two and positive two cancel each other out become zero and now the dragon scans and the dragon wants to come out eat again and you can see the little dragon turns from the egg to a little baby nice and one at one point it gets pretty complex the dragon box becomes a X and you're trying to isolate that eggs so you have C you have to do things like balance both sides of the equation multiply everything by two you also need to make sure the numbers are
• 09:30 - 10:00 optimally solved so no 2 over 4 so you can see it this process the child is trying to make sure something this is optimally solved and the dragon will eat it because it's yummy but the other two they're not so dragon refuses to eat it that those will be yuck as you can see it be young yeah yeah you know bad numbers dragons don't like bad numbers so the child only gets one star out of three so now the child doesn't even know his doing math he's just trying to feed his dragon girls dragons like Oh huh why don't I get three stars I got to figure out a better way to isolate this so the dragon wants
• 10:00 - 10:30 to eat everything something really really amazing the fifth core drive of autologous is social influence and relatedness this is pretty straightforward this is basically what you do based on what other people think do your say and my favorite example here is Opower Opower is a utility SAS company that tries to get people to lower their utility bills and they saw that the best way to change people's behavior is to show them how their neighbors are doing you show them their
• 10:30 - 11:00 utility how much you're using your best neighbor and your average neighbor and everyone who always thinks they're somewhat a little above average which is impossible if you can't have everyone above average when they see that oh I need to change my behavior so with Opower within a year they saved over 250 million dollars of utility bills and that's a lot of electricity over one territory terawatt the sixth core drive of octal Isis and scarcity and impatience so this is a core drive that
• 11:00 - 11:30 says you want something just because you can't have it like if grapes are on the table you really don't care about the grapes but if they're on a shelf just beyond your reach you're always think about those grapes you know can I have them when can I have them are these even sweet and Kickstarter is a great example that utilize a lot of great game design techniques they first dangle this great reward this great prize in front of your cool technology then they show you what we call a countdown timer 21 days to go you have to act now if you don't act now you won't get this prize so the sense of
• 11:30 - 12:00 urgency then it shows you what will the last mile drive oh there's only $3,000 left the only 2000 more and we'll get it you'll get it and finally it's all together this what we call a group quests you can only get you can only accomplish the quest when entire team will move sword together on it the seven core drive is unpredictability and curiosity this is the quadrant that says because you don't know what's going to happen next you're always thinking about it and this is the core drive that's heavily utilized in gambling industry but it's also the core
• 12:00 - 12:30 drive that makes us want to finish a book or watch a movie and can also be used for a lot of other good things like getting people to obey the speed limit this is speak am lottery how it works is whenever you drive by the speak am lottery and you're speeding it will take a picture of your car and you'll give you a fine pretty straightforward but when you're going by this became lottery and you're within the speed limit it'll enter into a lottery pot where you can when you have a chance to win the money from those who are fine so even though
• 12:30 - 13:00 it your chances of winning is fairly low and it's not a lot of money to begin with because everyone thinks that oh maybe I'll win this time maybe I'll win this time you try to change your behavior slow down ha you know so speak em lottery successfully reduces the speed of passing cars by twenty percent very tangible the eighth and final core drive is loss and avoidance and this is also straightforward it's your doing something to avoid a loss you don't want bad things to happen and my favorite
• 13:00 - 13:30 example here is called zombies run now remember we in court drive t we talked about Nike+ motivating people to run to make them feel accomplished feel like they're growing feel like they're improving now zombies run makes people run because they don't want to be eaten by zombies so zombies run is a game that pretends you're in this apocalyptic world where zombies have taken over everything and you're this runner in the in the wilderness in the world of zombies and you're running with earphones on and
• 13:30 - 14:00 there's a radio station with with with binoculars talking you say hey careful runner 5 there's a horde of zombies on the west Oh careful there's a zombie right behind you and he's gaining on you and then you hear south and you're like crap I got to run faster I don't be eaten right so again now you're eating because you don't know what you're running because you don't want to be eaten by zombies very strong motivation so these are the eight core drives ah calluses and like I said I believe every single thing you do is
• 14:00 - 14:30 based on one or more of these core drives but it's also put together on an octagon shape for a reason the left side core drives are more extrinsic motivation core drives which means you're doing these things for a goal for a purpose for a reward the ones on the right are the intrinsic motivation core drives which means you're doing it because it's just enjoyable you don't need a reward to use your creativity you don't need a reward to hang with friends and you don't necessarily need to gain anything by being in the suspense of unpredictability in fact most people have fun losing money in casinos and if
• 14:30 - 15:00 you notice the core drives on the top are more positive I call them white hat gamification techniques so if you're always doing something because you feel like you're being something part of being part of something bigger than yourself and you're growing you're improving and using your creativity it feels very very good it feels like you're in control you're powerful the ones on the bottom I call them black hat game techniques and if you're always doing something just because you want to avoid a loss just because you don't know what's gonna happen next or you can't
• 15:00 - 15:30 have something it's going to be very very powerful motivation but sometimes in the long run leaves a bad taste to your mouth and it's not a very sustainable long-term design so once you have that framework you can start analyzing why different things are engaging and motivate you can look at Facebook how it's how it motivates us and maybe last a little bit an epic minion calling maybe a little bit of scarcity you know you can there's it basically everything you want you can get on Facebook you can look at things like LinkedIn right in LinkedIn yeah there's not a lot of space to utilize your creativity I'm like you create a profile you look at people that's about it
• 15:30 - 16:00 but it is relatively important there's ownership it's your own life there's a lot of things in LinkedIn that's that engages people so that's just level one autologous there's actually five levels in total and it gets a lot more complicated later on but the premise is this good gamification design is a complex subject it's not just slapping on points badges leaderboard game mechanics onto an experience it's never a cookie cutter Ellucian and so when I started in 2003 I
• 16:00 - 16:30 had a vision I foresaw a world where there's no longer a divide between what you have to do and what you want to do and in this world all you have to do is play all day and everything you need to do is getting done you support your family you have better relationships your organizations perform better and society overall becomes more productive and I work every single day of my life to push towards that vision but there's
• 16:30 - 17:00 only so much I can do by myself so that's why I need you to be part of that journey with me so that we create a world where whenever we wake up in the morning we'll say wow that dream was amazing but I'm so glad I woke up and back to reality because that's where the real fun is at thank you