Many social games effectively employ Core Drive 8: Loss and Avoidance to motivate players towards taking the Desired Actions. As a result, you become a bit more likely to go to the store for a discount that you may not truly care about. Rationally it shouldn’t matter, but you are compelled to think about the offer a little more.

But you might get an annoying feeling that you are somehow losing something if you don’t use the coupon before the expiration date. Your brain may be absolutely certain that, if you let the coupon expire, the very next month you will receive the exact same coupon that expires on March 12th. Let’s say you receive a coupon that gives you a 10% discount to a popular chain store that you have no interest in visiting, and the coupon is labeled to expire on February 12th. If people do not act immediately on this temporary opportunity, they feel like they are losing the chance to act forever.Ī common example can be seen in the coupons that arrive regularly in the mail. To preserve our ego and sense of self, Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance sometimes manifests itself through our refusal to give up and admit that everything we have done up to this point has been rendered useless.Įven new opportunities that are perceived as fading away can exhibit a form of Loss & Avoidance. There are many situations in the real world where we act based on fear of losing something that represents our investment of time, effort, money, or other resources. This aversion towards loss is obviously not limited to games. Depending on the game’s design, dying or injuring your character means that you’re now forced to start over or lose something significant – be it coins, money, the number of lives you have, or other setbacks that make it more difficult to reach the Win-State.

It motivates through the fear of losing something or having undesirable events transpire.Ī concept within many popular games is to stay alive in order to advance to the next round. Loss and Avoidance is the eighth and final core drive in my Octalysis Framework. (Below is a snippet of Gamification Book: Actionable Gamification – Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards. If you like this blog post, you will LOVE the book.) The 8th Core Drive of Octalysis Gamificationįor a video walk-through, check out: Episode 17, Loss & Avoidance

Ego is the enemy #8