The Politics of Gamification

A Discussion with Students at Leiden University

Games are powerful. They create a sense of flow, motivate us, and reward us. In short, they engage us like few other activities can. Rarely do our work tasks, household chores, education assignments, or physical exercises stimulate similar levels of engagement. It is then hardly surprising that the power of games has inspired educators, researchers, entrepreneurs, tech designers, politicians, and many other ‘serious’ folks to deploy gamic elements to motivate behaviour. Such ‘gamification’ practices take their cues from video games, table-top games, and gambling. They frequently use point systems, levels, and badges as rewards, and they dip into fantastic worlds and creative character development to try and change behaviour. Gamification, so the hope, will make employees more efficient. It will help retain customers longer, prompt students to learns more effectively, and inspire citizens to fulfill their civic duties.

The idea of gamification has inspired no small amount of optimism. Echoing the kind of solutionism that Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are famous for (see Morozov 2013 for a critique), advocates frequently celebrate gamification as a fix to modern social problems. Jane McGonigal (2011: loc351), for instance, makes a spirited case for how gamification can help us change the world:

‘…if we take everything game developers have learned about optimizing human experience and organizing collaborative communities and apply it to real life, I foresee games that make us wake up in the morning and feel thrilled to start our day. I foresee games that reduce our stress at work and dramatically increase our career satisfaction. I foresee games that fix our educational systems. I foresee games that treat depression, obesity, anxiety, and attention deficit disorder. I foresee games that help the elderly feel engaged and socially connected. I foresee games that raise rates of democratic participation. I foresee games that tackle global-scale problems like climate change and poverty. In short, I foresee games that augment our most essential human capabilities—to be happy, resilient, creative—and empower us to change the world in meaningful ways.’

Changing the world in fun ways – that is a lofty promise indeed. And yet not all students of gamification are as positive about its social effects. Ian Bogost famously claimed that ‘gamification is bullshit’ – that it is ‘a grifter’s game’ aimed at manipulation and exploitation. Others relate gamification to the near ubiquitous algorithmic surveillance practices that characterize our societies; these critics argue that powerful actors use gamified techniques as methods of social engineering. As Casey O’Donnel (2014: 355) puts it: ‘Why simply surveil when you can shape or influence those being surveilled to behave“properly”?’

This week’s debate with graduate students at Leiden University will unpack the complex topic of gamification and look at it from two angles. First, we will move the discussion to the East Asian context: what can East Asian gamification practices tell us about the phenomenon? For instance, much of South Korea’s mobile communication integrates gamified elements, raising questions about how such elements crowd out the subversive potential of play, and how they might reproduce existing power structures.

Meanwhile, Japan has long been at the forefront of intelligent game design. Over the past decades various enterprises in Japan have built innovative gamic mechanisms into their digital offers. The Japanese tourism industry is a good example of this, but so are the activities of, for instance, Coca Cola’s Japan division or of Japanese retailer Muji (game designer Kenji Ono has compiled a range of examples). How do innovations in Japan’s gaming industry connect to such practices?

Finally, gamification is also on the rise in China, where companies like Tencent, Baidu, or Alibaba have baked game-like features into their platforms. An open question remains how such examples might inspire the Chinese state to gamify parts of the social credit system it is working on – a topic that has caused much hysteria in foreign reporting, even as China scholars are trying to intervene into the debates with more nuanced arguments. What can we learn about gamification from these complex East Asian examples and from the controversies they have inspired?

Secondly, the participants of this debate experienced gamification first-hand, throughout the past semester. In my course ‘The Politics of Digital East Asia’, I have used gamified elements to change the learning environment. This exposed participants to the kind of mechanisms that we now increasingly find in social media, e-commerce, and e-government. What was it like, to be awarded ‘experience points’ rather than traditional grades? Did anything meaningful change when assignments became ‘quests’, and when participants could decide for themselves which quests to pursue and which to ignore? Can gamic elements inspire learning and reduce the fear of failure that so frequently characterizes higher education, or are these elements simply window dressing? Can the experience of gamified learning heighten our awareness of algorithmic surveillance and the incentives that govern information societies, or is gamification in education merely a subtle and potentially sinister way to socialize learners into neoliberal value systems that emphasise personal responsibility, efficiency, and competition?

Join us in the comment section to explore these exciting issues surrounding play, games, and gamification.

References

McGonigal, Jane (2011), Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. New York: Penguin Books.

Morosov, Evgeny (2013), To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism. New York: Public Affairs.

O’Donnell, Casey (2014), ‘Getting Played: Gamification, Bullshit, Rise of Algorithmic Surveillance’. Surveillance & Society, 12(3), 349-359.