Today, we’re going to talk about a new game design technique. I call it the Thornbush Weakness, which is Game Design Technique #125. It’s a somewhat complex concept.
The definition of a Thornbush Weakness is:
“Positioning a weakness that can become a strength.”
First, let me tell you a little allegory I heard when I was a young boy and then build this post into how to use this Game Design Technique.
Origin of GT #125: Story of the Rabbit and the Wolf
Once upon a time, there lived a cunning rabbit, forever chased by his rival, a formidable wolf whose greatest desire was to devour him. Despite the wolf’s efforts, the rabbit’s cleverness and speed always saved him, much to the wolf’s chagrin.
One fateful day the rabbit slipped, and the wolf, seizing his chance, captured him. “Ah, I finally got you, Mr. Rabbit. Now, you’re mine to eat,” the wolf gloated, pride swelling in his chest.
Unperturbed, the rabbit retorted, “Oh, absolutely, Mr. Wolf. Go ahead, eat me. But whatever you do, just don’t throw me into that dreadful thornbush in the valley. I’d suffer anything but that!” His voice dripped with a feigned dread that puzzled the wolf.
“Why is he so willing to be eaten?” the wolf wondered aloud. Determined to frighten the rabbit, he declared, “Then I shall crush your bones and scatter you to the winds!”
“Fantastic!” the rabbit exclaimed, playing along. “A fine end, indeed! But please, spare me from the thornbush. Anything but that!”
The wolf, growing more bewildered by the moment, threatened again, “Perhaps burning you alive will break your spirit!”
To which the rabbit cheerfully replied, “What a splendid way to go! Yes, let’s do that. Just avoid the thornbush, and I’ll be content.”
The wolf, frustrated and convinced of the thornbush’s terror, finally announced, “Enough! It’s the thornbush for you then!” Suddenly, the rabbit changed his previous bravado to an expression of fear: “No no no! I thought we agreed that you wouldn’t do that? Please, please! Don’t throw me into the thornbush! It’s the one thing I beg you!”
“Ha! Too late for that Mr. Rabbit. Now you will see the cost of causing me so much trouble for all these years!” With a sinister laugh, the wolf dragged the rabbit towards the thornbush, relishing in his apparent victory and the rabbit’s panic.
But upon throwing the rabbit into the bush, the wolf’s triumph turned to astonishment.
“Ha, ha, you’ve been tricked, Mr. Wolf!” the rabbit’s laughter echoed from within the thornbush, his voice brimming with mirth. “This is my home, my sanctuary, where I’ve eluded you for years!”
As the rabbit bounded away, the wolf, blinded by anger and deception, leaped into the bush only to be ensnared by its painful embrace. The rabbit’s laughter was the last thing he heard as he retreated, defeated and in agony.
And so, the rabbit’s wit triumphed over brute strength, teaching us the power of cunning over force, and how what seems like a weakness could actually be our greatest strength in disguise.
It’s all about the Gamification Examples & Case Studies
Below is a list of gamification examples and cases with ROI (Return On Investment) stats and figures, with many links to the case studies, so you can see for yourself the tremendous impact it is having on businesses.
I want this list to focus on cases that can confidently be measured as ROI.
The current gamification market size is estimated between $3 billion and $12 billion, depending on sources.
The Octalysis Group: Yu-kai Chou’s Case Studies
A 712% uplift in sales for a well-known hotel chain, through our human-focused designs that boost product attractiveness and market performance.
A loyalty program for a Major Airline with a 175% performance enhancement through a well-crafted reward system.
An employee engagement platform for sales staff led to 28.5% more revenue and 59% higher KPIs.
The Octalysis Group has a decade-long track record of success working with clients across industry and service verticals. We specialize in creating engagement in areas where this is difficult to achieve.
7) Galderma: a pharmaceutical company, uses gamification to train their sales division regarding new products. Despite the voluntary participation, nearly 92% of targeted employees ended up playing
12) Danske Statsbaner: through their “Engaged” platform, employees share their actions that support the value and strategy of the company, resulting in 92% positive ratings in content
21) EMC RAMP: with their gamification platform, the company rewarded positive behavior from employees, partners, and customers which led to a 10% increase in documentation, 40% more videos watched, and 15% more discussions
22) DirecTV: uses gamification to overcome the fear of failure
26) Slalom Consulting: participation in the employee name recognition program increased from 5% to 90%, and recognition scores improved from 45% to 89%
4) Step2: children’s retailers used PowerReviews’s social loyalty scheme to boost sales with a 300% increase in revenue from Facebook and 600% in content uploaded
5) Domino’s Pizza: created the gaming app Pizza Hero and increased sales revenue by 30% by letting customers create their pizza with an app
6) Moosejaw, a clothing company, used an innovative gamified system that saw 76% of sales revenue come from gamified activities, including 240k social media impressions, resulting in a 560% ROI from initial marketing expenditures
7) Silver Grill Cafe: received a 66% Return on Investment for having its waiters/waitresses play a cross-selling game)
9) Popchips: uses games to personalize mobile advertising and has seen its sales rise 40% leading to $100 million in sales.
10) Teleflora gamified its store with a social engagement scheme offering points for actions, increasing traffic from Facebook by 105% and conversion rates by 92%
11) America’s Army:30% of Americans aged 16 to 24 had a more positive impression towards and recruited more people than all the other methods combined while costing a fraction of the marketing cost
2) Leadership Academy: within three months, daily visitors increased by 46.6% with one user earning the Leadership Academy Graduate Badge, which was expected to take 12 months
3) Microsoft: obtained 16x more feedback from people through its Communicate Hope gamified system
4) EMC2: increased the amount of feedback it received by 41%
2) Joiz: a Swiss television network increased sharing by 100% and social referral traffic by 54% with social infrastructure and gamification technologies
7) Allkpop: during the week-long promotion of game mechanics, the online news site experienced a 104% increase in shares, 36% in comments, and 24% in pageviews
13) BlurbIQ: introduced Interactive Video Interruptions and within two weeks obtained 915% more interaction, 1400% increase in click-through rate, and 95% increase in recollection
22) Ask.com uses game mechanics to increase user engagement through real-time notifications and activity streams, increasing answered questions by 23% and votes by 58%
3) Deloitte Leadership Academy, an executive training program, increased by 46.6% the number of users that returned daily to their platform by embedding gamification mechanics into it
4) Stray Boots & A.L.Penenberg: the professor taught journalism through gamification and saw student grades increase by more than a letter grade
5) Devhub: a place for Web developers, added gaming feedback and watched in awe as the percentage of users who finished their sites shot up from 10% to 80%
Scientific research related to the effect of Gamification
1) Research findings support the impact of levels, badges, and a (dummy) feedback system connected to a study course, results were significant, with 18.5% higher average grades for students enrolled in the gamified course
2) Research findings support the impact of levels, points, leaderboards, streaking, and visual storytelling to improve participation in crowdsourced assessments. Results were significant with an increase of 347% of participants returning for recurrent participation. (compared to the control group)
3) Research findings support the impact of point-based levels (Status titles) and leaderboards on IBM’s internal social network service. Short-term impact showed a 92% increase in comments posted, within this research long-term engagement was also measured and a rise of 299% more comments posted was found compared to the control group
4) Subsequent research in the same social network service above showed the effects of removing the point-based levels, status titles, and leaderboards. The removal of the game mechanics showed a significant result as across-the-board activities on the social network service dropped by 52%.
5) Research findings support the impact of narratives, leaderboards, and countdown timers on online training. Results were significant with a 61% increase in participation in online training.
The Octalysis Group has a decade-long track record of success working with clients across industry and service verticals. We specialize in creating engagement in areas where this is difficult to achieve.
Welcome to the world of Streak Design, a powerful motivational tool that can boost user engagement, create urgency, and enhance the overall experience.
Today, I’ll share some key insights on how to effectively implement streak design in your products or services and discuss its impact on user behavior.
Understanding Streak Design (Game Technique #78)
A streak is formed when users repeatedly perform a desired action without failing. Streak design focuses on creating a sense of Accomplishment (Core Drive 2 in the Octalysis Framework), urging users to keep their streaks alive.
However, it often ends up being driven by Loss and Avoidance (Core Drive 8), as users feel compelled to maintain their streak to avoid losing it.
Streak design is highly effective in driving short-term bursts of activity, but it’s not always suitable for long-term engagement as people burn out the moment they lose their streaks.
Implementing Reward Structures and Streak Ramp-Up
One way to enhance streak design is by tying it to your reward structure. Offer users rewards for maintaining their streak and create a sense of progression by gradually increasing the rewards as they continue.
For example, in a game, users could receive:
10 coins on Day 1
20 coins on Day 2
30 coins on Day 3
40 coins on Day 4
50 coins on Day 5 and subsequent days
If users fail to maintain their streak, they’d drop back to zero coins per day. This creates a sense of both Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment, Core Drive 4: Ownership & Possession, Core Drive 6: Scarcity & Impatience, as well as Core Drive 8: Loss and Avoidance, prompting users to continue their streak.
Introducing Gentle Loss and Avoidance with Streak Ramp-Down
A gentler approach to the above mechanic is the Streak Ramp-Down technique. Instead of resetting users’ rewards to zero when they break their streak, gradually reduce the rewards over time.
For instance, if a user stops performing the Desired Action, their rewards would decrease as follows:
50 coins to 40 coins
40 coins to 30 coins
30 coins to 20 coins
20 coins to 10 coins
This method creates scarcity and urgency without completely demoralizing users, as they don’t lose everything at once. The threat of losing rewards is often more powerful than the actual loss, making the steep ramp-down an effective motivational strategy.
Most importantly, users can gain back their Streak progress relatively easily if they just missed one day, so they are driven to come back instead of burning out immediately after.
Key Takeaways for Effective Streak Design
Streak design drives short-term bursts of activity but may not always be suitable for long-term engagement.
Tie streak design to your reward structure to encourage users to maintain their streaks.
Implement a streak ramp-up to create a sense of progression and increasing rewards.
Introduce gentle loss and avoidance with a streak ramp-down to create urgency without demoralizing users.
In a future discussion, we’ll explore another game design technique called the “Bootleg Quest,” (Game Technique #107) which is similar to streak design but leads to a permanent bonus that users cannot lose. This method offers an even more effective way to design engaging experiences.
Remember, the key to successful streak design is balancing the desire for Accomplishment (Core Drive 2) with the fear of Loss and Avoidance (Core Drive 8).
By carefully implementing these strategies, you can create a compelling and engaging experience for your users.
Today, we’re going to dive into a small bundle of game design techniques that can make a huge difference in your product’s user experience. These techniques are the Glowing Choice (GT #28), Desert Oasis designs (GT #38), and the Step-by-Step Overlay Tutorial (GT #6).
By understanding and implementing these design strategies, you can create an engaging and enjoyable onboarding experience for your users.
Based on Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment, people want to feel smart and capable. They don’t want to feel lost or confused. If they don’t know what to do in an interface for maybe about four seconds, they start feeling stupid. So, when designing your user experience, keep in mind these two important principles:
You never want to let users accidentally stumble upon a bad experience. Everything they can possibly choose, or they will probably choose, should be a good experience.
You want to think about the First Major Win-State, which is the moment where the user first says, “Wow, this experience is so awesome!” Guide them towards that First Major Win-State as quickly as possible.
Now, let’s explore how you can guide people into a good experience using these game design techniques.
Glowing Choice (Game Technique #28)
The Glowing Choice is a game design technique where something on the interface stands out, like a pointy arrow, a light bulb, or even a jiggly, wiggly button. This eye-catching element attracts the user’s attention and encourages them to interact with it.
Imagine entering a vast virtual world with numerous directions to explore. The user knows what they should do because there’s a character with a big exclamation mark on their head, signaling that they should talk to this person to receive their first quest. This is the Glowing Choice in action.
Now, imagine a smaller software interface. It’s much less complex than a virtual world, but the Glowing Choice works wonders here as well. By highlighting a specific action or feature, you can guide users and make them feel smarter and more capable.
Desert Oasis (Game Technique #38)
The Desert Oasis design is an interface where the rest of the interface is relatively plain, but the desired action stands out with bold colors, making it impossible to miss. It’s like being in a desert and seeing a lush, green oasis in the distance; you’re naturally drawn towards it.
A good example of this design is the stop sign on the road. The red octagon is a strong visual cue that’s hard to miss, and it effectively communicates the desired action.
The key difference between the Glowing Choice and Desert Oasis is that the Glowing Choice is an overlay that disappears after interacting with the desired action, while the Desert Oasis is a permanent part of the interface.
Step-by-Step Overlay Tutorial(Game Technique #6)
When users first join an app or game, they want to be guided through the process. They don’t want to feel lost or overwhelmed. The Step-by-Step Overlay Tutorial is a collection of Glowing Choices that guide users through a tutorial, allowing them to learn a whole set of actions.
Sometimes, the tutorial takes place in a simulated situation, while other times, it’s within the actual application.
For instance, imagine a mobile app that helps you get gas delivered to your car. When users download the app, they might not need gas immediately. However, by providing a simulated tutorial that guides them through the process of scheduling a gas delivery, the app ensures that users understand how the system works.
The onboarding process shouldn’t end when users have set up their profiles. Instead, it should guide them through the desired actions at least once, so they feel confident in using the app or platform. By providing a Step-by-Step Overlay Tutorial, you can create a smooth onboarding experience that effectively reduces cognitive load and fosters a sense of achievement.
By incorporating these techniques, you can guide users towards the Desired Action, create a sense of progress, and help them achieve their First Major Win-State.
By highlighting a mission, quest, or a cause that users can be a part of, you can evoke a sense of Epic Meaning & Calling. Use the Glowing Choice or Desert Oasis designs to draw users towards actions that contribute to a larger narrative, making them feel like they’re part of something greater than themselves.
Core Drive 2: Development & Accomplishment
Help users experience a sense of progress and achievement by using the Glowing Choice to highlight milestones, levels, or other indicators of progress. The Desert Oasis designs can be used to make these achievements more visible and enticing. Additionally, the Step-by-Step Overlay Tutorial can guide users through a series of tasks, leading them to experience their First Major Win-State, creating a sense of accomplishment and motivating them to continue using your product.
Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback
Encourage users to experiment and innovate by emphasizing tools, customization options, or creative features through the Glowing Choice or Desert Oasis designs. With a Step-by-Step Overlay Tutorial, guide them through the creative process and showcase the possibilities of your platform, fostering a sense of empowerment.
By using the Glowing Choice or Desert Oasis designs to emphasize rewards or virtual goods, you can tap into users’ desire to own and accumulate. Showcasing the value of these possessions can deepen their engagement with your product and encourage further investment.
Leverage the Glowing Choice or Desert Oasis designs to make social features prominent, such as connecting with friends, joining groups, or engaging in collaborative activities. The Step-by-Step Overlay Tutorial can help users understand the social dynamics of your platform, making it easier for them to form connections and establish a sense of belonging.
Highlight limited-time offers, exclusive items, or rare opportunities using the Glowing Choice or Desert Oasis designs. By making these scarce resources stand out, users will be more likely to feel the urgency to act on them, leading to increased engagement.
Incorporate elements of surprise or mystery into your user experience by using the Glowing Choice to draw users’ attention to hidden features or content. A well-crafted tutorial can also introduce an element of unpredictability, teasing upcoming challenges or experiences that users will encounter as they progress.
Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance
Use the Glowing Choice or Desert Oasis designs to emphasize actions that help users avoid negative consequences, such as losing progress, missing out on rewards, or falling behind in a competition. A carefully crafted Step-by-Step Overlay Tutorial can also teach users how to prevent setbacks and overcome obstacles.
By understanding and incorporating the Glowing Choice, Desert Oasis designs, and the Step-by-Step Overlay Tutorial, you can create a user experience that appeals to all 8 Core Drives of the Octalysis
In conclusion, designing an effective onboarding process is crucial for user retention and engagement. With these game design techniques, you can create a smooth, enjoyable experience that helps users feel confident and accomplished. By incorporating these strategies within the Octalysis Framework, you can tap into the full potential of your product, ensuring long-term success and user satisfaction.
The obvious and ultimate point of creating games is to satisfy players. But to do this successfully requires a complex process to develop a game that adequately anticipates and meets its target audience’s motivations. As you’ve seen reflected in previous posts, people are not always driven by logic alone, which makes this development process all the more difficult.
What we might assume to be true about human motivation and thought processes may require further examination and analysis.
While the Octalysis framework focuses on the core drives of players, these principles are expanded upon by other fields. These include behavioral science, human cognition, and other areas that focus on how and why we make decisions or naturally think the way we do. A holistic understanding of cognitive behavior will deepen your understanding of motivation, drives and how to shape experiences for desired responses.
Without further adieu, here are five insightful psychology books that will expand your perspective on the workings of human cognition.
Considering this information within the context of game design will further your ability to create truly winning experiences for players.
Epic Meaning & Calling is the First Core Drive of the Gamification Framework Octalysis. This is the drive where people are motivated because they believe they are engaged in something that is bigger than themselves.
Games trigger this Core Drive often. Many times in games, the world is about to be destroyed, and somehow, you as the player are the only qualified candidate to save the world. Sound exciting and motivating?
How about real life? Do we ever encounter scenarios where we are driven by Epic Meaning & Calling?
Have you ever wondered why:
People contribute to the non-profit website Wikipedia? What would make someone spend hours updating a site that doesn’t pay her or even help her build her resume?
Why are people so loyal to Apple products, to the extent that they know they want to buy the next product even before they know what it is?
Why are school rivalries so engaging, driving radical behaviors such as pranks, streaking, violence, and profit for the schools?
Why do Asian kids work so hard for their parents throughout their life?
Why do people buy Life Insurance, giving up current cash they could enjoy for potential future cash that they know they cannot enjoy?
At the most extreme front, why do people sacrifice and even become martyrs of ideals they believe in? Certainly it is not comfortable, and it’s hard to imagine anything they will gain from and enjoy after such a big sacrifice.
What is Epic Meaning & Calling?
Epic Meaning and Calling is the need or the urge to be a part of something much bigger than just yourself. When this drive is activated, participants choose to be members of your system and will take action not because it necessarily benefits them directly, but because it turns them into the heroes of the company’s story.
This core drive is activated when your system inspires people and gets them excited about being part of a bigger purpose or plan.
When your system or product demonstrates deep and sincere passion towards a higher vision, others will want to believe in you and be on the journey with you, even if it means foregoing financial compensation (which is our Left-Brain Core Drive #4 – Ownership & Possession).
This is where the magic happens. By activating Epic Meaning and Calling, you’ll gain active participants and grow your customer base or audience through their passion and commitment to your cause, sometimes to an irrational degree.
Epic Meaning and Calling can possibly be implemented anytime within a player’s journey, but is most often introduced when people are starting to interact with your system, which is the Discovery Phase and the onboarding phase.
But how do you instill Epic Meaning and Calling into your users or customers?
Here are five Game Techniques to incorporate Epic Meaning and Calling into your system in ways that will build engagement, motivation, and loyalty. For each concept, there will also be examples of organizations across all different industries that use these concepts to improve user interaction within their systems.
Narrative (Game Technique #10)
Most games start with a narrative that gives the player some context about WHY she should play the game. Many of them are related to saving the world, a princess, solving a case, or even just helping a dragon or crocodile take a bath.
So why don’t we use narrative to give people content in other things?
One of the most straightforward ways to install Epic Meaning & Calling into your user base is through an engaing Narrative, which allows you to introduce a story that gives people context for a higher meaning in terms of interacting with your company, product, or website.
Zamzee, a “wearable technology” company for children, uses narratives to instill a fantasy Epic Meaning & Calling into children in order to make them exercise more.
Through its online software interface, Zamzee gives kids fantasy quests, such as becoming a sorcerer’s apprentice. In order to learn your first spell, you run up and down the stairs 15 times.
Even though the action itself is disconnected from the narrative, just having them make-believe a magical meaning inspires the kids to exercise more because now they are motivated by their own imaginations.
Zamzee shows that kids who participate in these imaginary missions move 54% more than kids who don’t.
Humanity Hero (Game Technique #27)
If you can incorporate a world mission into your offerings, you can gain even more buy-in during the on-boarding process. The way this works is to tie the actions you want people to take to something that will make the world a better place.
One company that does an incredible job of installing a sense of Humanity Hero is TOM’s Shoes, which sends one pair of shoes to a child in a third-world country whenever you buy from them.
The idea that you can put shoes on someone else’s feet every time you make a purchase is extremely motivating. Additionally, when customers wear the shoes, they let others know that they are helping the world, which is a method of Touting (Game Technique #64) within Social Influence & Relatedness.
Free Rice is another example that utilizes the Humanity Hero technique. FreeRice.com is a website that donates 10 grains of rice for every correct answer on the educational questions they have on their site. The funding comes from the ads and the number of page views they generate from question answerers.
To date, FreeRice has donated 6100 metric TONS of rice, consisting of 93 billion grains of rice and enough to feed 10 million people.
If you tie your system to a cause that a lot of people care about, you can build an entire business on the goodwill of others.
Elitism (Game Technique #26)
Allowing your users or customers to form a prideful group based on ethnicity, beliefs, or common interests makes them feel like they are part of a larger cause.
Elitism instills group pride, which means each member tries to secure the pride of the group by taking specific actions. The group also attempts to frustrate its rivals, which can lead both groups upping their actions to beat the competition.
This is why University Rivalries are so engaging. When I was attending UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles), it was very difficult to not feel the strong rivalry against USC (University of Southern California).
Starting from orientation as a Freshman, there is no lack of content and jokes that sets the scene of the USC rivalry. During sports seasons, this rivalry reaches its pinnacle, with both sides aggressively, sometimes violently, insulting each other.
There are even T-Shirts printed with the text, “My 2 favorite teams are UCLA, and whoever is playing USC.”
Both sides believe that this rivalry is bigger than themselves, and with this newly instilled sense of Elitism, they go about doing many irrational activities because they “should” as a proud representative of that school.
Even though rivalries are engaging, even fun, for students, who benefits the most from the school rivalries? It is the universities themselves.
By creating an outside enemy that students “should hate with a passion,” it creates more “school spirit” where students bond together and commit “Desired Actions” in frenzies. Tickets to games against USC sell out quickly, with everyone gearing up with UCLA merchandise and war paint.
More importantly, students feel a stronger tie towards their Alma Mater, which means that later on in their careers, they are more prone to donate to their schools since that’s what successful alumni “should” do.
I too implicitly feel that I “should” donate to my Alma Mater, but not because of any personal gains, but for a purpose beyond my own selfish and family matters.
Another great example of Elitism is demonstrated by the microlending platform Kiva.org, which allows developed countries to pseudo-donate their money to help third world country villagers start their small businesses to sustain their families.
To create a sense of Elitism, Kiva.org created groups and showed statistics that allowed Christians and Atheists to compete against each and see who contributes more money to help third world countries.
The Christians believed that, since the Bible tells them to love God and love one another beyond all things, they should demonstrate generosity to the world and help those in need, and so they increased their contributions. The Atheists, on the other hand, wanted to prove that one does not need to believe in a god to be kind to fellow human beings, so they also increased their contributions.
Again, both sides contributed more than they would have otherwise, simply because they felt they were doing it for a bigger purpose than themselves.
Beginner’s Luck (Game Technique #23)
This is the “Calling” in Epic Meaning & Calling. Calling makes people think they are uniquely destined to do something. And one of the Game Techniques that can introduce the sense of Calling is Beginner’s Luck.
With Beginner’s Luck, people feel like they’ve been one of the few chosen to take action—which makes them much more likely to take it.
If a gamer, upon the first day of playing a game, randomly earns one of the most powerful swords in the game that even veteran players couldn’t get easily, chances are he isn’t going to quit on day one. He’ll likely be using that powerful sword to kill monsters fanatically until the next hook in the game shows up.
The game designer would likely also add in Social Influence & Relatedness (Core Drive 5) by designing in Touting Horns (Game Technique #64), which are mechanism that allow the user to implicitly show off what they are proud of.
If the game designer also adds Scarcity & Impatience (Core Drive 6) through a Generals Carrot (Game Technique #11) by telling the user he can only equip this sword once he defeats a particular level that is very difficult, now the user becomes obsessed and tries to figure out all sorts of ways to defeat that level.
Free Lunch (Game Technique #24)
Along the lines of the “Calling” theme, giving freebies that usually cost money for others to certain people in a way that ties to a larger theme can make customers feel special and encourage them to take further action.
For example, Spoleto, a Brazilian restaurant chain with over 200 restaurants throughout Brazil, Spain, and Mexico, gave a literal free lunch to any female who told them she was beautiful, in celebration of International Women’s Day.
This helped promote a positive message and made the women feel special for that day, and it will probably bring them back on other days too, as this is the place that made them feel uniquely special.
Believability is Key
Even though Epic Meaning & Calling is powerful beyond measure, it can also backfire and fail in epic proportions. As you use these concepts, keep in mind that you can really turn people off when you’re appearing disingenuous in your efforts to create Epic Meaning and Calling.
For example, if a major gasoline company that is known to “profit from evil” tried to convince people to use their brand by saying, “pumping with us protects the planet.” Customers would not only be unimpressed, they will feel insulted.
Or if a certain fast food conglomerate that is known for cheap unhealthy foods that happens to never decompose run a marketing campaign that says, “Eating our food protects your health and your family,” people may also see that as a manipulative slap in the face.
Even in fantasy make-believe settings like Zombies Run, where users are motivated to run more because they are trying to save their village from hypothetical zombies, you want to make sure the user is prepared to believe in the fantasy higher meaning in that context. Pretending there are zombies in the room during large corporate board meetings to get everyone to stand up more would likely not fare too well (and don’t tell the Board Directors that you did it because you read my book on Epic Meaning & Calling).
Once you have firmly established believability of your Epic Meaning & Calling, then you have a good chance of appealing to this Core Drive effectively to bring out the fun and selflessness out of people.
One of the most popular debates and criticisms in the gamification industry is what is considered gamification and how it relates to Serious Games and Advergames.
For those who are unfamiliar with these terms, Wikipedia defines serious games as, “a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment.” In other words, games that are generally built for a productive purpose, such as training, education, healthcare, and the like (Hence, the term “serious”).
BusinessDictionary.com defines advergames as, “A video game which in some way contains an advertisement for a product, service, or company.” These are games that basically act as interactive advertisement campaigns which draw potential customers onto a website or into a business. When I refer to “shoot-the-duck banner ads” as early and embarrassing forms of marketing gamification, those banner ads are technically classified as Advergames.
As you can see, both definitions have the word “a game” in them, which seems to go against the core essence of what “gamifying” something means. In my own writings, I talk about how you can gamify anything that involves human motivation, as long as it is not already a game, just like how you can’t liquefy liquid. You can however, apply better game design to games.
So because advergames and serious games are “games,” by that standard you can’t really gamify them. Right?
The Semantics of Gamification vs. The Value of Gamification