Gamification Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Calling

What is it?

What causes a teacher to go that extra step to help student, even if they aren’t getting paid extra for it? What causes fans to become so passionate about a sports team that they become so emotionally engaged in their team’s success? What makes a musician persevere through the “starving artist” life? What drives someone to give their time, their money, their effort to a cause without thought of what they may get in return? It’s this first Core Drive of the Octalysis framework: Epic Meaning & Calling.

This Drive empowers players by connecting them to a higher calling. The idea is that what they are doing contributes to some higher purpose. It also involves making players feel like they have specifically been chosen to complete certain tasks. Many times, this can come in the form of some type of narrative, whether real or made up.

Core 1 is the prime White Hat Drive and can be one of the most powerful Drives. As Yu-kai Chou states, “when your system or product demonstrates deep and sincere passion towards a higher vision, others will want to believe in it and get on the journey with you.”¹ However, the weakness of the Drive is that it can be difficult to implement with authentic believability and urgency. That’s why pairing it with other Core Drives can be helpful.

Game Design Techniques

Here are some of the epic Meaning & Calling Game Techniques mentioned in the Octalysis framework.

Technique	Description
Narrative	Adding narrative to the context
Group Quests	Collaborative effort that requires group participation before any individual can achieve the Win-State. Often utilizes various skills or abilities of individual members to complete.
Beginner’s Luck	Focused on the Calling part, people feel like they are one of the few chosen to take action, increasing the chance that they will take it. Randomly earning some major prize can keep someone going.
Free Lunch	Giving away freebies that are not normally free to selectec people in such a way that it binds them to a larger theme. Can make users feel special and encourage them to take further action.
Humanity Hero	Incorporate a world mission into the context
Visual Storytelling	Using visuals to tell a story, making information more engaging and easier to understand. This technique leverages the power of imagery to capture attention and convey messages effectively.
Obvious Wonder	Presenting intriguing and visually striking elements that naturally draw users’ curiosity and encourage exploration.

What does it look like in the classroom?

At the heart of it, isn’t this what we all want from our classrooms? Students taking our lessons beyond a mere grade? Students seeing a higher purpose for what they’re learning in class? Real-world connections are essential in this Core Drive, so we always want to work those into class as much as possible. Additionally, here are other ideas I’ve had for adding in Epic Meaning & Calling into the classroom:

Narrative

• Integrate storytelling into lessons to create a narrative around the curriculum. You can set up a unit or week in a themed out way (Yikes! Thanos is attacking the city. We need the Avengers!).

• Use stories to make lessons more engaging and meaningful. Stories can work well as metaphors for lesson or real-world applications.

Group Quests

• Assign group projects where students must collaborate to complete tasks. Reward groups based on collective performance. This can get tough when group members aren’t pulling their weight or when they pull too much weight. This is where conversations become essential. Collaborating is hard, and they aren’t going to be good at it, which is why we teach them how to work together.
• Create team competitions that require all team members to participate. Lumio has a great activity called Monster Quiz that will do this.

Beginner’s Luck

• Give students a small initial advantage to boost confidence and engagement. throwing out some problems or questions that access prior knowledge, or something relatively easy to figure out, can create confidence in a topic. Take that confidence into more complex or difficult problems.

Free Lunch

• Occasionally give small rewards or privileges for free to motivate continued effort and engagement.
• Offer a bonus for submitting work early.
• Reward groups when they effectively collaborate, regardless of the work itself.

Humanity Hero

• Project-based Learning assignments can easily incorporate current issues and causes. When students choose a cause that means a lot of them, they are more likely to work through the difficulties of the content or standards you tie to the project.
• Allow students to peer tutor each other. Students who excel in certain areas can help their classmates who may be struggling.

Visual Storytelling

• Sketchnotes are a great way to incorporate visual storytelling into class.
• Have students storyboard concepts they’re working on in class.
• Using mnemonics and visual cues or icons can help aid memory retention.

Obvious Wonder

• Throw out some kind of thought-provoking question to pique student interest in the lesson.
• Create some scavenger hunt for students to find information for a lesson.
• My Links activity helps create a thought-provoking situation to engage student minds.

These are some ideas I’ve been able to come up with. What about you? What ideas sparked to life? Please share in the comments section.

1. _{Chou, Yu-Kai. Actionable Gamification – Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards. Yu-Kai Chou, 2017.} ↩︎