Octalysis: A Framework for Effective Gamification

Gamification has become a popular buzzword in recent years, as businesses and organizations look for ways to engage and motivate their employees, customers, and users. Octalysis is a gamification framework developed by Yu-kai Chou, a recognized leader in the field, that aims to help businesses and organizations design and implement effective gamification strategies. Let’s take a look at what the Octalysis framework is and how we use it at BettorFantasy to help improve our platform’s user experience.

At its core, Octalysis is a system for analyzing and understanding human behavior, and for identifying the various motivators that drive people to take action. The framework is based on the idea that people are motivated by eight core drives, which can be divided into four categories: intrinsic, extrinsic, left brain, and right brain.

The first four core drives are intrinsic motivators, which means they are driven by internal factors such as personal fulfillment, autonomy, and curiosity. These drives are related to the left brain and include the following:

1. Epic Meaning & Calling: The desire to be part of something greater than oneself
2. Development & Accomplishment: The drive to improve skills, knowledge, and abilities
3. Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback: The desire for autonomy and the ability to express oneself
4. Ownership & Possession: The drive to own and control things or ideas

The next four core drives are extrinsic motivators, which means they are driven by external factors such as rewards, recognition, and social status. These drives are related to the right brain and include the following:

1. Social Influence & Relatedness: The drive to connect with others and gain approval
2. Scarcity & Impatience: The drive to acquire things that are scarce or limited in availability
3. Unpredictability & Curiosity: The desire for novelty, surprise, and the unknown
4. Loss & Avoidance: The drive to avoid negative consequences, such as loss or punishment

Here’s a quick example of how we’ve implemented a slice of the framework at BettorFantasy – specifically, via the development & accomplishment core driver. Everytime a user wins a certain DFS contest, they gain what we call a “crown level”. The user’s crown level is displayed publicly and at certain thresholds the crown changes colors. It is a tangible representation of a user’s achievements. As silly as it may seem, growing your crown level has been a huge motivator for users of the BettorFantasy app and has helped us hit key business metrics.

The Octalysis gamification framework is a very deep topic and I hope this quick article inspires you to learn more about it. I’m certain that if you take some time to consider how you can use the core drivers to help improve your user experience, your organization will benefit just like ours has.