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Gamification backlash
CarlosB
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I admire Jane McGonigal's efforts to improve our world through social games, but I have to agree with Heather Chaplin's recent article in Slate criticizing the gamification trend. When I saw her on The Colbert Report talking about Chore Wars I thought it was silly but inoffensive, but hadn't thought about some of the deeper ramifications of what she was advocating.
From the article:
There's another more humorous (and British) column from Edge's Steven Poole that talks about the same thing, focusing on how gamification is basically every advertiser's dream.
As much as I love video games, applying a reward system inspired by them to otherwise meaningless or onerous tasks doesn't seem like a net positive for society.
From the article:
Perhaps without knowing it, they're selling a pernicious worldview that doesn't give weight to literal truth. Instead, they are trafficking in fantasies that ignore the realities of day-to-day life. This isn't fun and games—it's a tactic most commonly employed by repressive, authoritarian regimes.
There's another more humorous (and British) column from Edge's Steven Poole that talks about the same thing, focusing on how gamification is basically every advertiser's dream.
Unfortunately, it seems the people who are still most uncritically excited about gamification are, as one breathless report puts it, businesses who want to “inspire customer loyalty”. Of course, the whole idea of being loyal to a business, such as a supermarket with a ‘reward card’ (which was already an embryonic kind of gamification, or at least pointsification), is deeply suspect: loyalty between people is symmetrical, but a supermarket doesn’t care about you except as an aggregation of purchase-preference data and a soft target for spamming its new ‘offers’ (which is supermarket argot for requests that you give it more money).
As much as I love video games, applying a reward system inspired by them to otherwise meaningless or onerous tasks doesn't seem like a net positive for society.
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The Slate article brings up some good criticisms, but I think a single quote summarizes the issue.
That's because it's both. This is a Promethean challenge - we are starting to understand the science behind human motivation. We understand, for instance, that intrinsic rewards (finding an activity enjoyable and meaningful) is a far larger motivation for knowledge work (basically, anything requiring creativity or critical thinking) than extrinsic rewards (like cash bonuses).
You have to get people engaged to get them to be creative. McGonigal is right on the money. This is an excellent video that describes the idea:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Now, what do we do with that knowledge?
What Jane McGonigal calls "gamification" is taking our knowledge of human motivation and turning it into a method - essentially, turning it into technology.
If you're a corporation selling doodads, then you find a way to make building doodads intrinsically enjoyable for your employees and buying them intrinsically enjoyable for your customers. You engage them to build brand loyalty. That's what the Slate article is afraid of, and it's good to have awareness of this possibility.
At the same time, building doodads for some generic corporation is never going to be as intrinsically rewarding as healing the sick or saving the environment or building homes for the homeless. This understanding allows for a convergence of capitalistic ideals (the idea that collective success is built off of individual motivation) with humanitarian ideals in a way that would make Ayn Rand cream her panties.
This understanding is not inherently evil, any more than the understanding that fuel+oxygen+flame = fire. Building able to harness this understanding - turning it into a technology - isn't any more intrinsically evil than a lighter or a fireplace. It gives us the opportunity to do great harm, or great good.
That's why I call it a Promethean challenge.
Criticism such as the Slate article is necessary to guide this technology forward, but it shouldn't scare us back into the caves.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
It's like saying that my dad telling me he's proud of me isn't a "real" reward, unless he also pays me.
For example, the reason someone uses FourSquare isn't to do good or solve a societal problem. When they're checking in at their local coffee shop to get their extrinsic rewards (points), it's not something that benefits anyone but themselves (if even that). If that person happens to be at a subway station and sees a FourSquare ad that says if they check in, a corporation will donate $10 to the nonprofit EarthJustice (a real campaign in San Francisco's BART), and they participate, does that change their motivations?
Will that person necessarily know what he or she is supporting or that there are other equally legitimate causes out there? Will he or she be more likely to get involved in future charitable issues if he or she doesn't directly benefit through these extrinsic rewards, and if the donation isn't essentially already made, waiting for a FourSquare check-in to seal the deal?
If you think the ends justify the means ("whatever works"), which I don't necessarily disagree with, I suppose it doesn't matter -- EarthJustice now has an extra $10 for their cause. But the video ends with the fact that people want to be treated like people and not like profit-driven horses. I'd argue that extrinsic rewards are no different from actual dollars in gamification terms -- that is, you're still being led to participate in something that will benefit you, whether it's with points, dollars, enhanced social status. In the example above, it's more of a side effect that a nonprofit is benefiting from this inherently selfish use. That probably sounds more cynical than I mean it to be.
I totally agree there is potential for gamification to be a fantastic tool, it just seems like the majority of what we've seen so far is less than exciting, which doesn't bode well for its future. And in general I feel like people should be involved in causes because they choose to do so, not because it's convenient or because they're being (perhaps gently) manipulated into doing so.
Sparked is actually a great example of collaboration through technology that actually has significant impact. It's a "microvolunteering" site, recognizing most people are really busy and don't have a lot of time to do charitable work, that allows organizations to set up missions or challenges and allows volunteers to complete them online. It was originally called The Extraordinaries, and during the Haiti earthquake they set up a system allowing volunteers to identify photos of missing persons. There are no gamification aspects to it that I'm aware (which means participants know exactly what they're doing when they commit to help out). I think this type of venture has the potential to create far more positive social change than any indirect contributions by the types of gamified social applications we've seen thus far.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7-utwTAsPM&feature=player_embedded
That video of sparked's founder starts with some statistics on the number of hours people spend playing PC solitaire, on Facebook, and browsing YouTube, which reminds me of one last gripe I have with McGonigal. She's both written and spoken about the health and social benefits of gaming, suggesting that people play games for 1-3 hours per day, which is fine, but I cringed when she brought that up on The Colbert Report in the same context as gaming for social change. I love video games, but even if someone built some kind of charitable donation system into a game like FarmVille (which isn't what she was talking about), it doesn't make sense to delude people into thinking that, for the average adult (not someone critically ill, etc.), playing a game is actually the most helpful thing they could be doing at any given moment. I'm not disputing the research she mentions about beneficial social effects, but I play games to have fun, and I think most people do the same. As an adult, the amount of time I play is determined by my desire to play any given game, not the thinking that my self-improvement will in turn benefit society.
in relation to my own failings as someone who plays games fairly regularly. I have a pipe that needs fixing under my sink. If I could treat it like a game I might be more apt to fix it but I spend my time playing games instead of fixing the pipe. Unless Valve gives away hats for home improvement I'm not apt to do anything.
Really? That's what you get from it?
Cause I read: and I think "Oh look, Company Scrip mk2".
When you speak of "taking our knowledge of human motivation and turning it into a method - essentially, turning it into technology" what you are missing imo is that they use this understanding of human thinking and motivation to manipulate people for profit. This is the science of advertising.
That's exactly right, and just because a certain group is more susceptible to manipulation doesn't necessarily mean it's fine to do so to produce something good. What's even worse is what gamification for social good implies -- it's intended audience must be affluent (to own a smartphone or PC), which should indicate a certain level of education and awareness of social inequalities, yet they won't participate in socially positive work in a meaningful fashion without coercion through incentivizing their actions.
I don't think that's actually true, it's just implicit in the current model of gamification.
And you completely miss the point.
As he says, it's not just about motivation. In fact, I'd say it's the least about motivation. It's about manipulating people by understanding motivation in order to (further) divorce the reason for your actions (like purchasing or working) from the reality. Same stuff, with a less tangible reward. It's not about what you are actually getting, it's about how it makes you feel.
Company Scrip is about paying people with fake money for real work. What they seem to be talking about here is giving people fake rewards and feelings of accomplishment rather then actual remuniration.
I may have misinterpreted but I thought mrt144 was making a statement about social classes. I agree with you though.
I wouldn't want points, peer recognition, and leaderboards to replace cash salaries and health benefits. Nor would I want them to. Simply put, though, cash salaries do not reliably motivate work beyond a basic level. Likewise, high salaries don't make people happy. People need to, and deserve to, make a good salary, enough to handle their housing and health care and the education of their kids and their retirement.
The problem with company scrip wasn't that it was a non-cash benefit. A lot of companies use similar non-cash benefits today - discounts on merchandise, gifts from the company store, etc. The problem was that people weren't being paid what they deserve. That's a problem regardless with or without novel compensation.
I don't find anything here intrinsically disconcerting. I don't think that manipulation is inherently bad - all of civilization is about shaping behavior. If you think that it's intrinsically evil for one person to try to affect another person's behavior... well, throw out education, law, most of art and language, bartering and currency, and employment.
The problem comes when we're manipulating people to do bad things, or to do things contrary to their own best interests. But evil is still evil whether it's done through a profit motive or through a religious motive or through misguided humanitarian altruism.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Its hard to miss a point when your post left a lot of room for thought, one of which is "what situations do things like that prosper".
Hats for Home Improvement, 2012.
And people say Rand Paul don't have a chance.
.
Island. Being on fire.
This sort of thing could be used to harmlessly encourage people to perform social goods by making the pursuit of those goods more fun. That would be cool.
It could also be used to fool people into thinking that their objectively shitty life is more enjoyable than it really is, thus keeping them from pursuing legitimate means of bettering their situation. It could, for example, be used to make some minimum wage poverty case with no health care and two barely-cared-for children think that his shitty life is fine because he gets to pretend he's slaying dragons when he rides the bus in the morning. Or, if it catches on enough, it could be used by employers in lieu of actual pay to the point where every employer is doing it and you're stuck earning Happy Points when you'd rather be earning cash monies. (See also: the rise of health care as a paid benefit in place of actual pay.)
So... I guess it's a cool idea, but I see as many terrible uses for it as I see good.
Why would such a life be shitty? Slaying dragons on the bus seems pretty awesome.
I have some generalized distrust for TED ideas that are going to change everything, however, the notion that we're all going to turn into
seem alarmist.
It might be more visible, formalized, and topical right now, but marketing someone's job to them in order to get them to up their output is a business fundamental older than any of us. 10 to 1 that it boosted productivity while building pyramids.
Why don't those people get a more meaningful job that they enjoy, with a purpose they care about? It goes without saying that many people in lower socioeconomic standing don't have the luxury of pursuing any career they want, and in those cases I suppose you could argue gamification could make those less desirable professions more palatable (I think there are better solutions that would benefit the workers more than intangible rewards). But I don't think that's really the application most people are talking about -- I don't think the intention is to gamify auto workers' jobs in Detroit; more likely we're talking about jobs held by middle and upper middle class folks in IT, software development, or other jobs held by college grads. That said, I don't think this application of gamification, despite all the hubbub, is really being widely used.
Instead of applying meaningless rewards in colleges so students don't have to suffer through a course of studies, of their own choosing, or to a graphic design project so the designers aren't bored with the profession they chose, colleges or businesses could apply incentives that actually benefit the student/employee -- plenty of professors already do this type of thing in schools (bonus points for attending a visiting lecture, etc); at a job you could earn vacation days, or a trip to a conference to better your skillset, instead of becoming mayor of the conference room.
I want to address this, because it's not true.
Games simply normal activities down to the parts of them that are fun.
Plumbing can be fun. Putting stuff together to make stuff happen is awesome.
You know what's not awesome? Trying to find where to buy the right pipe fittings. Trying to determine what the fuck thread standard you have, which is similar but wholly incompatible with what's sold locally. Going out and buying that, probably going through a store full of tradies where no matter what you do you feel out of place.
My perfect world has 1 store which sells everything, at the lowest price of anywhere, always.
Oh god, yes. Home improvements are always fun, too, in theory. Except that wall you want to run wires through has an unexpected fire break in it for no goddamn reason. Oh, and the drywall is ancient and a big chunk of it fell out that now you get to patch up.
Games are fun largely because they're completely deterministic and predictable. You have a problem, and you know the solution, and then you do it and everything does what it's supposed to. Real life doesn't do that. In real life, the solution will always take twice as many steps and twice as much money and twice as much time as it seemed it should.
Fuck real life, gimme some more Tetris.
I find it interesting that you refer to games as deterministic and predictable. A certain amount of unpredictability is what reinforces the addictive aspect of MMOs (and is why gambling addiction is a problem). Addiction and fun aren't necessarily related - an activity can be one or the other or both or neither - I just thought it was an interesting statement. (It has to be the right amount of unpredictability, though, and it helps if there are other people visibly or audibly "winning" - the sound of coins clinking out of your neighbor's slot machine reinforces your own slot machine habit.)
But yeah it's a real fucking downer when you realize that you have the wrong size of gasket by 1/8" or whatever. That's why I hate working on my own car; not only do you have to deal with all of that kind of bullshit (man, I gotta go back to the store again? oh well, looks like this is going to take yet another hour!) but now you have to bum a ride to do it. Bleh.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
For most people anyway.
I have my front room wired with neon and a disco ball, so I might be the exception.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.