Book Image

Actionable Gamification

By : Yu-kai Chou
Book Image

Actionable Gamification

By: Yu-kai Chou

Overview of this book

Effective gamification is a combination of game design, game dynamics, user experience, and ROI-driving business implementations. This book explores the interplay between these disciplines and captures the core principles that contribute to a good gamification design. The book starts with an overview of the Octalysis Framework and the 8 Core Drives that can be used to build strategies around the various systems that make games engaging. As the book progresses, each chapter delves deep into a Core Drive, explaining its design and how it should be used. Finally, to apply all the concepts and techniques that you learn throughout, the book contains a brief showcase of using the Octalysis Framework to design a project experience from scratch. After reading this book, you’ll have the knowledge and skills to enable the widespread adoption of good gamification and human-focused design in all types of industries.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Introduction
19
Chapter 18: The Journey Goes On
21
Notes

A Trojan Horse without Greek Soldiers

Generic game mechanics and poorly constructed game elements such as levels, boss fights, or quests often fall into the same hole as PBLs. Simply put, applying traditional “game elements” ubiquitous in popular gameplay without diving deeper into user motivation contributes to shallow user experience: it’s all flash and no bang. An almost humorous example of this is when people I meet call something a “quest” instead of a “task” thinking that this automatically makes the same original actions fun and engaging. Sure, having a playful attitude can make a big difference, but it only goes so far, especially when your customers and employees may already distrust your motives.

The truth is, simply incorporating game mechanics and game elements does not make a game fun.

Games aren’t necessarily fun because of high quality graphics or flashy animations either. There are many unpopular, poor-selling...