Beginner’s Guide to Gamification (9 of 90): Development & Accomplishment

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The Beginner’s Guide to What is Gamification: Development & Accomplishment.

This is an episode about Core Drive #2 in Octalysis: Development & Accomplishment.

In this episode, I cover:

  1. What is Development & Accomplishment
  2. How to utilize PBLs (Points, Badges, and Leaderboards)
  3. How to make sure the reward is balanced with the challenge
  4. Which Experience Phase is better with this
  5. Guest commentary from smart guys, including Cool Guy Steve
  6. How to position leaderboards correctly

Hope you guys enjoy the post!

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26 thoughts on “Beginner’s Guide to Gamification (9 of 90): Development & Accomplishment”

  1. Leader Boards:

    Many times the “top scores” are so far above what anyone else has scored, that it is obvious that the high scorer has completely “gamed” the game.

    Completely demotivating

  2. It has been easy to get carried away with commercial programs that award “points” for a behavior such as spending money on a specific credit card. Earlier on folks found ways to “game” the Gamification and earn HUGE rewards.

    There was a gent using his Airline card to buy Travelers checks, then depositing the checks to pay off the card. He earned top rewards, with very little effort.

    Not it is a lot more sophisticated

  3. Reminds me of Piaget’s ZPD (Zone of Proximal Development)… where you have a challenge, but it should not be too challenging, or if the student is stuck, you have a way (teacher?) to help them through that step.

  4. Hey I’ve gone over this video a few times and haven’t seen a secret word, but in subsequent videos it’s accounted for. Is the numbering system off or should I look harder?

  5. Hey!!! Jeffrey! NO, Captain UP can not be down… noooooo=( I need to raise 55 exp with this comment to get LVLV 22 (Elite)… please Yu-kai, don’t let all these EXP dissapear=)
    In fact about Development and Accomplishment – this is maybe, one my favourite core drives. When you get smth done, that gives an extra superb shot of happiness and motivation indeed.
    And achievements given and it’s not maybe the easiest one, but the fastest understandable one.
    Seeing a goal, then reaching it, earning a badge for it and lots of other actions+rewards maybe give some sort of infinite possibilities for design and going either on the overall level, or so deep, than there is no even no end visible!
    Maybe that is why Yu-kai, as real YODA, wants to finish only 70 of these 90 videos and leave others to his children so that everyone who visitet this blog will give their children a mission to complete =))
    PS after this comment, there should be a new LVL so DON’T you dare to fall Captain UP! We’ll find you!

  6. Yu-Kai how did you evaluate next level hardness grow: 20% – 40%? Why exactly this range? Not 10-20 or 30-50

  7. In the system i am developing I use Missions to guide users into a process, rewarding them with Badges and Points.
    This have several purposes, first to kinda guide them through rewarded exploration, to know better all the website features, second, to get familiar with the rewarding system and what they can achieve with that.
    Being a completely new conception in the industry, this would need some training and patience to get to actually understand it and master it. Gamification in this terms looks perfect and PBL looks like the perfect way.
    What do you think?

  8. Hey Yu-Kai,

    I wonder what the stratagy behind the badges of the “Captain Up” plugin on your site is. A large portion of them have a pretty vague hint on how to achieve them, which leads to a lot of frustrating guess work.

    Did you keep the badge description vague on purpose? If so, which core drive do you want to satisfy in this case?

    In my case it would be even more motivating to exactly know how to achieve a certain badge.

    1. It’s actually Core Drive 7. Most sites tell you exactly what to do, like “Tweet 20 times and get this badge!”

      It’s more clear, but it is more Left Brain (Extrinsic) design and people lose intrinsic motivation on the content. This isn’t perfect but prevents a bit of overjustification and makes it a bit more playful (and requiring strategy). The badges become a bigger achievement for those who actually have them.

      1. As I posted recently the badget system of this site funtions just perfect for me.

        As it’s no clear how to obtain it you must guess, try and when you find you was correct you feel clever… even if you rationally knows it was no really difficult to find out 🙂

        But we must not forget the next step, once the Discovery has ended, you start focusing more on the real objective of the site: learning gamification. The Badgets you continue to gain are simply a reward, a refreshing impulse to continue digging around.

        As far as I can see, this is exactly the expected behaviour.

        Stay awesome!

      2. The badge description hints at what you must dot to earn the badge. I like trying to figure it out because I believe I’m smart and when I figure it out I reinforce the idea that I’m smart.

        I think Yu-Kai assumes that the people who are taken the time to look at the badges and points system are the people who actually are interested in his system, not someone who happened to stumble upon his site.

  9. You touched on it a little bit, but meaning making is critical for award systems.  An award has to be meaningful for users otherwise the user will not value the award or badge.  After using your badge system a little bit, the badges are confusing for me for example, what does an artesan mean to me, not very much because I do not relate to this particular meaning when identifying myself.  You can identify a badge or award as meaningful to the extent someone wants to brag or tell their friends about the accomplishment.  Do I really want to tell my friends I have achieved the artesan level on your website.  Maybe with your tiered system I will care more about your badge system at some point. If you have additional insight regarding meaning making great.  good video

  10. Awesomeness! This section was the easiest to envision in my classroom. I have already introduced some elements. I can see from this how to add layers.

    1. DanielHolmes Thanks Daniel for the encouragement. Things are quite hectic but I’m trying to make them faster 😉

      1. Yu-kai Chou DanielHolmes  No worries dude – you keep it up anyway you like, speed is good but, your work on the videos does take time.  We do love them!

      2. DanielHolmes Yu-kai Chou Haha, thanks. It actually mostly just takes 1 dedicated day to put it together…but it’s so hard to get a dedicated day!!

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