No motivation to do laundry, why?
Copyright: Shutterstock.com, Zastolskiy Victor
On one of my first staycations with my fiance, an avid gamer, we painted a closed basement five inches higher than my head and played Bloodborne the rest of the time. At the end of my staycation, I realized I did not accomplish 80% of my chores and stared down at an angry pile of laundry. As I packed my laundry bags for pick-up (don't judge- city life), I started to wonder just what motivates me to commit 4+ hours to a video game voluntarily? A game that can be more frustrating and confusing than fun; a game whose storyline and clues are so downright challenging to understand that I question Mulder and Scully's ability to decipher them. Yet, we obsessively play it, stopping only to eat, use the bathroom, or when too nauseous to continue. Why would I instead play hours of a frustrating game on the verge of inducing vertigo versus doing my laundry even for one hour?
Enter Yu-kai Chou's 8 Core Drivers of Human Motivation and Gamification. Below is a video of Chou discussing what makes games fun and what motivates humans to take action (aka. do/or not do their laundry).
Below are Chou's 8 Core Drives of Human Motivation in greater detail:
Core Driver 1: Epic Meaning & Calling
"Epic Meaning & Calling is the Core Drive where a user believes that they are doing something greater than themselves or that they were “chosen” to do something important. Great examples of CD1 in action are when a user devotes time to maintaining a forum (Wikipedia) or when a user contributes to an entire community (Open Source projects) without expecting any form of payment."
Core Driver 2: Development & Accomplishment
"Development & Accomplishment is the internal drive of making progress, developing skills, and eventually overcoming challenges. The word “challenge” here is very important, as a badge or trophy without a challenge is not meaningful at all. This is also the core drive that is the easiest to design for and coincidently is where most of the PBLs: points, badges, leaderboards focus on."
Core Driver 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback
"Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback is when users are engaged in a creative process where they have to repeatedly figure things out and try different combinations. People not only need ways to express their creativity, but they need to be able to see the results of their creativity, receive feedback, and respond in turn. This is why playing with Legos and painting are fun in-and-of themselves and often become Evergreen Mechanics, where a game-designer no longer needs to continuously add more content to keep the activity fresh and engaging."
Core Driver 4: Ownership & Possession
"This is the drive where users are motivated because they feel like they own something. When a player feels ownership, they innately wants to make what they own better. Besides being the major core drive for wanting to accumulate wealth, this deals with many virtual goods or virtual currencies within systems. Also, if a person spends a lot of time to customize their profile or avatar, they automatically feel more ownership towards it too. Finally, this is also the core drive that makes collecting stamps or puzzle pieces fun."
Core Driver 5: Social Influence & Relatedness
"This drive incorporates all the social elements that drive people, including: mentorship, acceptance, social responses, companionship, as well as competition and envy. When you see a friend that is amazing at some skill or owns something extraordinary, you become driven to reach the same level. Also, it includes the drive we have to draw closer to people, places, or events that we can relate to. If you see a product that reminds you of your childhood, the sense of nostalgia would likely increase the odds of you buying the product. This Core Drive is relatively well-studied too, as many companies these are days are putting a lot of priority on optimizing their online social strategies."
Core Driver 6: Scarcity & Impatience
"This is the drive of wanting something because you can’t have it. Many games have Appointment Dynamics within them (come back 2 hours later to get your reward) – the fact that people can’t get something right now motivates them to think about it all day long. This is the Core Drive utilized by Facebook when it first started: at first it was just for Harvard. Then it opened up to a few other prestigious schools, and eventually all colleges. When it finally opened up to everyone, many people wanted to join because they previously couldn’t get in."
Core Driver 7: Unpredictability & Curiosity
"Generally, this is a harmless drive of wanting to find out what will happen next. If you don’t know what’s going to happen, your brain is engaged and you think about it often. Many people watch movies or read novels because of this drive. However, this drive is also the primary factor behind gambling addiction. Also, this core drive is utilized whenever a company runs a sweepstake or lottery program to engage users. The very controversial Skinner Box experiments, where an animal irrationally presses a lever frequently because of unpredictable results, are exclusively referring to the core drive of Unpredictability & Curiosity, although many have misunderstood it as the driver behind points, badges, and leaderboard mechanics in general."
Core Driver 8: Loss & Avoidance
"This core drive is based upon the avoidance of something negative happening. On a small scale, it could be to avoid losing previous work. On a larger scale, it could be to avoid admitting that everything you did up to this point was useless because you are now quitting. Also, opportunities that are fading away have a strong utilization of this Core Drive, because people feel like if they didn’t act immediately, they would lose the opportunity to act forever."
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