Octalysis certification in Gamification : Currently at Pinnacle of Gamification courses.

I earned “Octalysis Certificate of Completion” this past week, in this post I will not be talking about what is it, incase you are unaware of it, you can read it here. I will talk about how it is different from other free/almost free gamification courses and what you really need to do to achieve it in first attempt, a bit more in depth of what is needed than what is mentioned on the original certificate page of Yu-Kai’s website.

Among the many available courses teaching gamification (some free ones linked here), those I have completed which give a certificate at the end are Gamification of Coursera in 2012, two courses from Udemy (not free) and the last one is Octalysis. The Udemy courses are just like you pay and receive a certificate of completion almost nil actual evaluation, other than a small power point presentation at max, and you become dearer by roughly 50 USD. The coursera course from Wharton Business School is still a decent as firstly it is free, and also it covers most of the content of the Udemy courses, which make spending 50USD or more on Udemy and other sites not worth it, unless you desperately need a completion certificate. The coursera gamification course provides a strong foundation of what gamification is, how is it being used currently, what basic behavior concepts it banks upon, precautions while designing and ending with a 6 step gamification framework which is very broad. An added advantage of the coursera course is it give you a chance to make three assignments which are peer reviewed, not by an gamification expert.

The plus point of other than Octalysis courses is that they are systematic, series of lectures arranged in a sequential manner. You progress from one end to the other, and you get a certificate. With octalysis you are on your own, all the resources you need are present on the site of Yu-Kai, but you need to figure out yourself which one is helpful for the current assignment. It has no weekly lectures or peer evaluation like that of Coursera, but what it offers is an evaluation directly from the maker of the model.

This certification will help you in taking your Coursera knowledge to the next step, as in the coursera course there will be repetitive use of game elements and other buzz words, but there is no actual drilling down to what mechanics are and what makes them so irresistible to be used, and which mechanics are good in the long run, and which mechanics will bring you initial gain, but they are not good for the long run.

Coming to the things you need to do to get this certificate smoothly:

1. Log on to Yu-Kai website, with any of the your social media accounts, and be among the top player for that month, else you just need to pay 50$ US to Yu-Kai for assessment, read details here.
2. Watch the 17 videos that Yu-Kai has himself made, present on his site, linked here.
3. When you reach an video of core drive, after watching it reinforce your knowledge, by reading the related texts, linked here.
4. You will be needing to click through each drive to enter more detailed page for each, for e.g. for the first core drive Epic Meaning and Calling you will be reading this page., similarly for the other 7 drives.
5. Use the Octalysis tool.
6. The subject for your analysis, be such that you are comfortable with it, in and out, you should have devoted some good amount of time previously playing with it, so that you understand the business and the rules behind the subject.
7. Keep in mind mechanics of  your subject  may have overlapping drives, so instead of making them exclusively linked to one core drive, you must think if it is overlapping with another, if yes, then mention that in your submission.
8. If possible attached visual clues which made you think that a drive is used here, Yu-Kai may not be familiar with your subject, these clues will speed Yu-Kais’ evaluation and also help you in better communicating your analysis (hint: use any tool for screen shots)
9. Remember that basic of Gamification is to drive behavior of your players, so unless you specifically mention why this mechanic under a particular drive is influencing which behavior your analysis will not be complete, and you will be falling under high probability of rejection.
10. Provide all the possible URL’s so that the content looks genuine and is easily reachable, giving just a homepage link and leaving rest toYu-Kai will only delay your evaluation, and may give him a chance to discover something that you might have missed and make a basis of your rejection.. 😉
11. Be patient, sometime your evaluation can come in 1 week sometime in 1 month. For details about different type of evaluation and feedback possible read Yu-Kais’ instructions linked here.

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