The advantages of White Hat Gamification are obvious and most companies who learn my framework immediately think, “Okay, we need to do White Hat!” They would mostly be right, except there is a critical weakness of White Hat Motivation: it does not create a sense of urgency.

For example: if I approached you with great enthusiasm and exclaimed, “Go out and change the world today!” You may become very excited by this Core Drive 1 trigger and may echo, “Yes! I’m going to go out and change the world! But I’m going to first have a nice breakfast, brush my teeth, and get prepared for the day!” As you can see, there is no urgency with this level of White Hat excitement.

However, if I took out a gun and pointed it at your head, while quietly whispering, “Go out and change the world, or I’m going to kill you,” you are still likely to “change the world,” but you are probably not going to enjoy your nice breakfast or brush your teeth while being pushed by my threatening Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance motivation.

Of course, at that point you also no longer feel good about changing the world. Once you can leave my grasp, you will likely stop caring and drop the noble cause altogether. That is, unless the Epic Meaning & Calling regenerates from within.

Black Hat Gamification creates the urgency that system designers often need to accomplish their goals and change behavior. Often this cannot be accomplished through White Hat Gamification alone.

If a company simply implements White Hat Gamification while the user is constantly exposed to Black Hat stimuli from other sources such as email, appointments, or distractions from Facebook, they will most likely not have the opportunity to test out the experience. Of course, this user will feel terrible also, because they will continue to procrastinate instead of doing the things that are more meaningful and make them feel good. Unfortunately, because of the nature of Black Hat motivation, they will continue behaving that way nevertheless.