The Anti-Authoritarian Toolkit is a guide of practical tools with usage examples for politicians, civil society organizations, activists, journalists, content creators, and citizens committed to defending democracy. The toolkit is organized into a series of specific playbooks, designed to fight authoritarianism that reaches power through elections.
The toolkit doesn't speak of games, but of mobilization, belonging, culture, infrastructure. Reading its chapters, something emerges that resembles a journey architecture: there is a moment of calling, one of entry, followed by active contribution, one of deliberation, and finally, of feedback (devolutiva). This reading is useful as a starting point for our article.
We intend to connect the aspects raised by the toolkit with the Octalysis Framework, which guides us as the foundation for the use of game mechanics applicable to civic practices. The framework organizes human motivators into eight groups, called Core Drives, each with specific techniques.
Our hypothesis is simple: the toolkit describes conditions, and Octalysis offers motivators. How can we make the conditions actually engage people, motivating them to participate in the processes? Perhaps it is possible to move from abstract principles to an operational design of civic experiences grounded in games.
What does Octalysis provide us?
Before attempting to draw a parallel, it's worth quickly presenting the eight Core Drives. There's no need to memorize them — just understand that each relates to a different type of human motivation:
- Meaning — epic meaning and calling. Why does this matter beyond myself?
- Accomplishment — development and achievement. How do I perceive my progress?
- Empowerment — empowerment and feedback. Do I have autonomy and control over my actions?
- Ownership — ownership and possession. Do I feel this is mine?
- Social Influence — social influence and belonging. Am I connected to others who recognize me?
- Scarcity — scarcity and impatience. Do I need something that is limited?
- Unpredictability — unpredictability and curiosity. What could happen next?
- Avoidance — loss and avoidance. What might I lose if I don't act?
Each Core Drive comes with techniques, but what the framework ultimately offers is a named vocabulary for things that already exist in civic movements — which, without names, are difficult to deliberately reproduce. "Making it attractive" is a principle. "Using future narrative, shared symbols, and rituals of belonging" is design. The difference between the two is what we will explore here.
Calling: why would anyone care?
The toolkit starts with vision and belonging. Building an image of the future. Making participation attractive through culture, humor, and rituals. The intuition is correct: people engage with something that includes them, that says what their role is and why this matters.
The Core Drive that most directly addresses this axis is Meaning. In this book, published by the Design Department of the University of Brasília, Fragelli presents the game Billie Bilionário, which uses narrative and the figure of the "hero of humanity" to connect entrepreneurship learning to a purpose that transcends the individual. The technique is narrative, and narrative is transferable: a civic campaign can build one. The question then becomes which narrative — which is more political than technical.
It's interesting to note that the toolkit already does, without knowing it, what Octalysis formalizes. The difference is that the framework gives it a name and structure. This may seem irrelevant, but it's precisely what allows us to think in terms of mechanics rather than intentions.
Entering: the first step should not be an obstacle
The toolkit speaks of a call to action: something clear, simple, connected to impact. A case that appears in playbook vol. 04 is Toma el Control, a Venezuelan platform that structured the engagement of young voters in four levels: registering, promoting among peers, voting, and defending the vote. Each level came with missions, challenges, and rewards. It wasn't a game, but its structure resembles a gamified journey: progressive actions, clear objectives, achievements, and feedback.
Three Core Drives operate here:
- Accomplishment offers progress bars, achievement symbols, levels. The game Desafio Alfa Beta, in the book, uses this to structure literacy in visible steps. In a civic journey, this means making each step recognizable — so participants perceive that they are advancing, not merely filling out forms.
- Empowerment offers level unlocking, perception of choice, instant feedback. The game Jornada (Des)Bloqueada shows how progressive unlocking can give the feeling of gaining real capabilities. In a civic context, this is interesting: the participant isn't just "moving along a treadmill" — they unlock forms of agency. Moving along a treadmill is completing steps; unlocking agency is gaining the ability to do something you previously couldn't. The distinction is subtle, but it matters.
- Scarcity is what complicates things. The book describes this Core Drive as demanding caution. The game Parô, Catô? uses countdowns and appointment dynamics to teach about waste treatment. In an educational context, it works. In a civic context, the picture changes. A real electoral deadline is legitimate — deadlines exist and have consequences — but manufacturing urgency to generate FOMO can be a problem.
There is also a practical matter of friction. People tend to avoid creating accounts; if registration is required before any interaction, the opportunity is lost before the journey even begins. The complementary article on the Pencil blog discusses this in more depth, based on the EJ platform, which allows controlled interactions without prior registration. The "act first, register later" pattern seems more aligned with what the Core Drives suggest.
Contributing: when the person stops being an audience
The toolkit becomes even more interesting when it talks about distributed organization: a core provides resources, local groups adapt and act. It speaks of fandoms: communities that produce content, create narratives, maintain bonds. The transition from spectator to co-creator requires roles, resources, autonomy, and recognition.
Ownership is the most obvious Core Drive here. Building from scratch, collections, monitoring attachment. The game Aventura Sensorial, an escape room for the visually impaired described in the book, uses these techniques to create belonging. The civic translation: groups that build and adapt their own materials, that collect evidence of impact, that monitor indicators that concern them. The point is that the participant feels something is theirs — not merely that they are contributing to others.
Social Influence complements it. Social mentoring, group missions, gratitude economy. The game Convés uses these techniques for the humanized onboarding of new teachers. In a civic context: public recognition of contributions, peer mentoring, celebration of collective victories. All of this can be included in the design of civic games.
Deliberating: where gamification and serious games diverge
Here the distinction between gamification and serious games becomes practical.
Gamifying the participation journey (making the steps clearer, with feedback and recognition) seems reasonable. Gamifying the choice itself, however, is another matter. A vote should not become a scoring game. Redesigning the process to make it accessible is different from redesigning the act of power to make it more "engaging."
Serious games, on the other hand, seem useful before the decision. Budget simulations, priority-negotiation games, coalition-building rehearsals are separate spaces where experimentation can happen.
The Core Drive of Unpredictability is relevant here, but with an interesting shift. In the game Filantópicos, from the book, mystery boxes and anticipation progressively reveal challenges. The technique can be adapted to reveal public policy trade-offs in a deliberative simulation, as progressive exposure of dilemmas: first you see the problem from one angle, then another, and the choice becomes more informed.
Empowerment is also central. Meaningful choices, perception of choice, and instant feedback are what distinguish a deliberative simulation from a superficial quiz. If the participant perceives that their choices within the game have consequences within the game (and that these consequences tell them something about the real world), there is learning. If not, there is entertainment.
The boundary between making a process intelligible and trivializing a democratic decision is discussed in the complementary article. Here, it suffices to note that game design offers tools for navigating this boundary.
Sustaining: the power of feedback
Accomplishment and Empowerment operate here by building visible levels of commitment, providing continuous feedback on executed operations, and enabling progressive capacity building. However, the feedback we argue is necessary is the one that happens in the real world: "your agenda was approved," "your pressure changed the vote," "your contribution became law."
The article by Hassan and Hamari reinforces that initiatives with the greatest continuous engagement created feedback cycles with citizens, not just loops of badges and challenges. Feedback then connects the end of the process back to the first motivator — Meaning — strengthening the individual's bond with their transformative capacity and sense of purpose. Feedback has the power to restart the process, making it even stronger.
What remains from the articulation
Returning to our initial hypothesis: the toolkit describes conditions; Octalysis offers motivators. Does articulating the two allow us to move from abstract principles to operational design?
The answer, after this exercise, is: yes.
What works: the Core Drives offer a named vocabulary for practices the toolkit describes in the language of mobilization. "Making it attractive" becomes "using narrative, rituals, and Social Influence." "Call to action" becomes "onboarding with Accomplishment and Empowerment." This translation allows someone designing a civic experience to think in terms of concrete mechanics, not just principles.
What demands caution: some Core Drives (especially Scarcity and Avoidance) are designed to create engagement through mechanisms that, in a civic context, can undermine precisely what they should strengthen: the participant's autonomy. The literature itself already warns about Scarcity and dark patterns (see here). The warning should be even stronger when what's at stake is democratic participation.
The review by Hassan and Hamari of 66 studies on gamified e-participation found positive associations with motivation and civic learning, but also highlights the need to critically examine inclusion, ethics, and the effects of design choices.
There is no shortcut: building these processes requires great care so that civic games can truly enhance citizen participation. Otherwise, the experience could produce a concentration of power in a small group of highly engaged participants and demobilize the majority of the population.
