The Game of Stand-Up Comedy
The Doctrine of Metaphor Frameworks
Who are the most influential people on the planet?
Donald Trump? Joe Rogan? Zelenskyy? Reagan was an Actor. Trudeau studied Theatre. Trump trained for the limelight for 10 years on The Apprentice. Andrew Yang joked his way into the New York Democratic Primary.
All comedians. Why are comedians so popular?
Because it’s hard to disagree with someone when you’re already laughing. When people laugh their mouth opens; that’s when you can toss in the pill.
Is this article for you?
This article describes the Game of Stand-Up Comedy and the Players within the system. It then describes how a Knowledge of Gamification can help you design an engaging system by leveraging the most powerful gamification metaphor frameworks.
By understanding the Game of Stand-Up Comedy, you will understand how Gamification is sweeping the world as a framework to design engaging systems. There’s a lot of confusion of what Gamification is, and the purpose of this article is to wipe that confusion away.
Stand-Up Comedy is a game.
The game of stand-up comedy features a system with players.
Every player in the stand-up comedy system wants different things from the system. By understanding The Players and The System of The Game of Stand-Up Comedy, you’ll gain a strong insight in how to understand all other types of human systems and perhaps even design a system or a platform or a game of your own.
The Players in Stand-Up Comedy
Some players in the stand-up comedy system want camaraderie and friendship. They don’t really want to become professional stand-up comedians; they just want a friend group to dull the pain of the grind. The beer served at open mics also serve the cause.
Other players want to police jokes to make sure no one gets offended. Other comedians would rather hear a gasp than a laugh and try to write offensive and sexually explicit jokes. Others want to be the funniest person in the club. Still others want to push the envelope and explore new forms of comedy involving music and VR.
The System of Stand-Up Comedy
The Game is the Game; Same As It Ever Was - The Wire
The system of stand-up comedy is simple. The system of stand-up comedy can be seen in the process comedians go through to become famous.
In The Beginning
Everyone in stand up comedy starts out at an open mic. Their first job is to craft a five-minute set of jokes that kill in front of diverse sets of crowds. After crafting a killer five minutes of material, they move onto the open mic night at a legitimate comedy club.
Graduating
Then, they start doing paid shows at the club during the week. Then they start doing paid shows at the club during the weekend. Then they start going from opening act to middle act to headliner.
Becoming Google-able
Then they start acting in commercials, TV, films, and video games. The acting is where the real money is. People forget that Joe Rogan went from stand-up comedy to being on a TV show a decade before he started his podcast.
Seinfeld described this process in his four steps to becoming a comedian:
Make friends laugh.
Make strangers laugh.
Make strangers laugh for money.
Be so funny people love to imitate you.
Circumventing The System
Now, there are many comedians who’ve completely bypassed this system like Lilly Singh who made a name for herself on YouTube and SuperWoman. She was able to bypass the traditional stand-up comedy route by doing stand-up comedy on YouTube. We can’t forget that she tapped into the same market that Russell Peters did; Indians. Bollywood makes more than Hollywood. People criticize Lilly for being dumb but they’ve never spoken to her in person. She was a genius a decade ago trust me.
Classifying The Players in The Game of Stand-Up Comedy
We began by discussing the different types of Players in The Game of Stand-Up Comedy:
Some people begin doing stand-up comedy because they want camaraderie and friendship (Core Drive 4: Socialization & Relatedness).
Other people do stand-up because they want to express an idea that moves people to action (Core Drive 1: Epic Meaning & Purpose).
Other people do because they think stand-up comedy can make them money (Core Drive 4: Ownership & Rewards).
Each of the players in the game of stand-up comedy can be understood and engaged by identifying:
The Type of Player They Are
The Type of Gameplay or Gamified Design Elements they enjoy.
The User Type Hexad helps us easily classify The Players and their Desired Gameplay in the System of Stand-Up Comedy.
Here’s how to understand the power of The User Type Hexad in Classifying Player Types in a Game System.
A game consists of an Environment with Gamified Design Elements and Players.
Players can choose to interact with either:
The System
The Players in the System
On the left side of the diagram contain Players who enjoy Gameplay that involves other players. They play the game to interact with other Players.
The on right side of the diagram contains the Players who enjoy Gameplay that involves the GAME SYSTEM ITSELF. That is to say, the bosses, the battles, the obstacles, the discovery of hidden treasures, etc.
So, to review, in a game system, there’s the game system itself and the players within it. Players either seek to engage with the other Players or the System itself.
Classifying Player Types by their Core Drives
The reason that people play games is to experience feelings of:
Purpose
Mastery
Autonomy
Relatedness
Change
Rewards
By analyzing how a user plays a game and spends their time and effort and button-clicks, you can derive why they are playing the game. Some people want to help other people in the game, some people want their name on the leaderboard, other people want to gather all of the items, and yet others want to go on social quests. Some people try and ruin the game for people. Others try to collect all of the gold.
The reasons that a user plays a game seems complicated, but the User Type Hexad is one of the two metaphor frameworks that will make everything make sense.
This gamification framework shows us that:
Purpose-Driven people seek Philanthropy.
Mastery-Driven people seek Achievement.
Autonomy-Driven people seek Freedom and Creation.
Relatedness-Driven people seek Social Interaction.
Change-Driven people seek to Enhance/Disrupt User Experiences and/or Enhance/Disrupt the System itself.
Rewards-Driven people seek, well, Rewards. Rewards can come in the form of meeting new people or simply making cold hard cash.
When you play the game alone, you’re interacting with system. When you play the game with others, you’re interacting with the other players.
But that’s not all. After you know what type of player you’re dealing with, you then need to determine how to engage that player type.
How Might We Engage Players?
Let’s review.
Players have Core Drives that drive them. You can learn how to engage a Player by understanding the Core Drives that drive them.
Core Drives are split into White Hat (Positive) Core Drives and Black Hat (Negative) Core Drives.
White Hat (Positive) Core Drives
A Philanthropist seeks the Core Drive of Purpose
An Achiever seeks the Core Drive of Mastery
A Free Spirit seeks the Core Drive of Autonomy
A Socializer seeks the Core Drive of Relatedness
A Disruptor seeks the Core Drive of Change
A Player seeks the Core Drive of Rewards
By Classifying a Game Player aka User by their preferred Core Drive
However, there are three other Core Drives. Without these Core Drives, you won’t be able to have an engaging game.
The Black Hat Core Drives
Fear Uncertainty & Doubt
Scarcity & Impatience
Loss & Avoidance
What are the Gamified Design Elements that The User Type Hexad suggests? Glad you asked.
To fully understand gamification, we’re going to need to add another framework with coincides with The User Type Hexad but adds the important elements of Black Hat Drives. Nothing everything is fun and games, even in gamification.
The Octalysis Framework by Yu-kai Chou
The Octalysis Framework asserts that players have the following Core Drives:
Epic Meaning (Purpose)
Accomplishment (Mastery)
Empowerment (Autonomy)
Social Influence (Relatedness)
Ownership (Rewards)
Scarcity (I want it because I can’t have it)
Unpredictability (I want to know what happens next)
Avoidance (I want to avoid losing and negative experiences)
Yu-kai Chou differentiates between White Hat (positive) and Black Hat (negative) Core Drives.
White Hat Core Drives
Epic Meaning (Purpose)
Accomplishment (Mastery)
Empowerment (Autonomy)
Social Influence (Relatedness)
Ownership (Rewards)
Black Hat Core Drives
Scarcity & Impatience
Uncertainty & Curiosity
Loss & Avoidance
The genius move is when you begin combining and sequencing and composing the White Hat and the Black Hat Drives. The secret is that Black Hat Core Drives are even more engaging that White Hat Core Drives, and that’s why there is so much debate over game and social media design. People get upset when companies use only Black Hat Core Drives.
Let’s Consider some examples of Gamification in the wild.
BloodBorne & Dark Souls
How might we engage The Achiever who is driven by the Core Drive of Mastery? The answer is simple to figure out. Warning: simple doesn’t mean easy.
Target: Achiever
White Hat Core Drive: Accomplishment aka Mastery
Black Hat Core Drive: Loss & Avoidance
Gamified Design Element: Difficult Boss Battles