Bobby Miller
Writer Website
The Gamepocalypse: Everything You Do is a Game
1,900 words
You’re brushing your teeth with an electric toothbrush. But not just any old electric toothbrush: this one has a Wi-Fi sensor built into it. It can tell how long you brush every day, and then it uploads the data online for the whole world to see. You want to remain the Toothbrush Titan of your neighborhood, so you keep brushing to earn more points. The toothbrush company will reward you with discounts on toothbrushes and toothpaste because they want you using up those resources as often as possible.
Although this might sound like a crazy amount of attention to give to such a mundane task, game designer Jesse Schell believes that programs like this might be in place by 2015. According to him, advertisers and governments will want to turn everything into a game in order to motivate people to perform certain tasks. This comes from his own experience as a game designer and as a thinker in game technology. He has taken an analytical approach to making games, which he explains in his award-winning book The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses. He is even a Professor of Entertainment Technology at Carnegie Mellon.
Jesse Schell with giant chess pieces. (Credit: Wired.com)
What is Gamification?
Schell is among people who believe that society is undergoing “gamification,” which Gamification.org defines as “applying game design thinking to non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging.” Although the term was coined in March 2004, it only gained widespread usage in later 2010, as the website explains.
Basically, you take something that isn’t a game, such as brushing your teeth, and make it more fun by turning it into a game. To do this, you have to add certain elements to the experience. Gamification.org lists several different additions that could turn a task into a game. Perhaps there are achievements or badges for doing something special, like brushing your teeth twice a day every day for an entire month. You get to show these off to your friends and watch as your collection of achievements grows. Maybe a progress bar on the toothbrush shows how much longer you need to brush. Filling that bar becomes a task like completing a level. And earning gifts for your accomplishments is another common means of making something into a game.
Other elements include levels, leaderboards, activity feeds, avatars, real-time feedback and virtual currency. These are all motivations to use a certain product more often.
Like many other websites today, auctioning site QuiBids.com uses badges to reward regular users.
Most forms of gambling could be perceived as early examples of gamification. For instance, the act of pulling the lever on a slot machine is not fun at all in and of itself. However, if you add flashy visuals, dazzling sounds and the chance of winning money, then lots of people will want to throw their money at the one-armed bandit.
Why would turning something into a game motivate us to do it more? According to Jesse Schell, it’s because games are “awesome.” He has told Wired.com that they offer “clear feedback, a sense of progress, the possibility of success, mental and physical exercise, a chance to satisfy curiosity, a chance to solve problems and a great feeling of freedom.”
The video game Wii Fit exemplifies this well. Targeted at people who usually wouldn’t exercise otherwise, it turns your movements into games with points, rankings and the possibility of winning. It tracks your weight day by day so you can see how you’ve progressed, and you’re free to use any exercise in the game that you want.
How Everything Becomes a Game
Schell and other theorists who are thinking about gamification imagine companies, especially advertisers, sliding games into our lives wherever possible. For example, maybe you win experience points the longer you use a certain brand’s products, which allows you to level up and gain access to special offers. If there is some sort of way to track your usage of something, companies will want to do so. As screens and Wi-Fi sensors become cheaper, to the point that they’re disposable, this stat tracking will be easier to perform.
In a presentation recorded by FORA.tv, Schell imagines all sorts of different possibilities. Maybe you win points with your health insurance provider by walking, and if you rank within a certain percentile of walkers, you receive lower rates. Or maybe your children practice instruments that reward points for playing well, and these points can later be used to help gain entrance to creative academies. Or perhaps your television has a sensor on it, one akin to Microsoft’s Kinect, that tracks your eyes while you watch TV. You win points by actually watching the advertisements rather than skipping them. Basically, anything can be turned into a game.
This whole idea of gamification might sound crazy, but it’s already happening. Gamification.org cites loyalty programs as common examples of the process in action, so credit cards earning frequent flyer miles have had game elements for a long time.
But companies can use game elements much more heavily than this to make them more fun and thus more motivating. Yahoo Answers is an interesting example since it gives you points for answering questions and keeps track of how often your answer is picked as the best one.
Yahoo Answers uses points and leaderboards to motivate its members.
Aside from just making you use a certain product more often, gamification can motivate you to perform important tasks you might otherwise not want to do. Schell told the magazine Game Informer that there’s a program called uBoost that lets teachers give students points based on their behavior and grades. Students then trade these in to decorate an avatar, to feed a virtual pet, to receive gift cards, and more. Just imagine if children were as persistent about their performance at school as they are in winning sports or video games.
As depicted on uBoost.com, this program can even turn school into a game.
There are many other examples of gamification we could cite here. In his FORA.tv talk, Schell mentioned that there is an app called EpicWin. It’s a role-playing game where you earn experience points and level up for completing your “quests,” which are really just things on your personal to-do list. Facebook itself could even be considered a game, one where the number of friends you have on your list determines how much of a winner or a loser you are.
Gaining a friend on Facebook bears an eerie resemblance to receiving a 1-up in a video game.
The Implications of Gamification
Schell has said that the “Gamepocalypse” is coming whether we want it to or not. After all, advertisers are having trouble right now. People TiVo shows to avoid the commercials, use ad blockers to avoid Internet pop-ups and do not read things in print very often. He told CNN that “the 21st century is going to be this war for the attention of humanity,” where advertisers and governments will have the most motivation to use games.
Schell acknowledges that the morality behind gamification is blurry. On one hand, it could be used to encourage positive behaviors such as brushing your teeth, buying products good for the environment or performing well at work and school. As he said in an e-mail, we might as well apply game logic to “every aspect of our lives that requires discipline, feedback and social pressure to help us become who we’d like to be.” According to him, “This is what school is, this is what church is, this is what personal trainers do, this is what money managers and rehab clinics do.”
He told Game Informer that our scores in various parts of our lives might be preserved for our descendents to see. Maybe we’ll be motivated to form a strong identity for ourselves by trying to show our grandchildren good scores in what matters to us most. Trying to achieve as much as possible in a game profile for life could provide some individuals with a clear sense of meaning.
But he has acknowledged that advertisers are the ones who will pursue gamification most aggressively “because they have the most reason to do it,” as he told FORA.tv. Some will give points for good things, like drinking apple juice instead of soda. But others will give points for things such as purchasing cigarettes, driving gas-guzzling SUVs and massive amounts of junk food. Ultimately, companies and governments are only going to make games if it somehow benefits them.
Limitations of Gamification
After reflecting on this trend myself, I have other concerns that Schell has not mentioned. To begin with, as a gamer, I know I’ve put myself through frustratingly difficult challenges just to win a reward, such as a new playable character. What if gamification turns everything into an obsession where people will go out of their way to earn points even if it’s irritating? Perhaps someone feeling ill will feel compelled to go to work and to exercise anyway because they desperately want points. Or perhaps someone will brush their teeth thirty minutes a day because they’re so desperate to remain a Toothbrush Titan.
Plus, companies could manipulate us further by deducting points for behavior they don’t like. Schell mentioned the possibility of eye-tracking technology on televisions making sure we’re watching ads. Well, what if you lose points every time you decide to leave the TV during commercial breaks? The pressure to stay there no matter what would be particularly strong for perfectionists or for people who really need the rewards given by points.
This could be especially problematic when certain games contradict one another. What are you supposed to do when one company’s game rewards you for eating ice cream and another rewards you for eating healthy foods?
There could also come a time when you need to “play” these games just to keep up with the world. Perhaps companies will overprice their products to the point that you need to be participating in their loyalty programs to get anything at a reasonable value. And we all know that when you’re forced to “play” something, it’s no fun anymore.
Finally, I’m concerned that gamification could take away from intrinsic motivation, which is the desire to do something simply because you want to, not for outside rewards. If someone grows up in a world where everything they do is earning points toward something, what happens if a certain behavior is no longer rewarded? For instance, if a school simply could not afford to dish out immediate rewards for good grades any longer, wouldn’t the students’ scores plummet?
And there are things in life you simply cannot turn into a game. You can’t win points for forming deep relationships with others, for performing acts of kindness when no one’s watching or for simply being happy. Anything that doesn’t win you something concrete might seem like a waste of time.
The application EpicWin attempts to turn your life into a game by rewarding points for completing your to-do list, but not everything can be considered a game.
Other theorists have criticized the term “gamification” as demonstrating a shallow understanding of what video games are. Game designer Jon Radoff has pointed out that video games provide experiences that are often fun in and of themselves, regardless of rewards. For instance, you might still have fun with a game even if you lose, or you might replay a single-player game even though you already received the “reward” of seeing the ending. In light of this, “gamification” might not refer to actual games, but rather to intricate reward and punishment systems.
Whether or not you call it gamification, it seems inevitable that companies will further exploit the psychological concepts of reinforcement and punishment in order to manipulate our behavior. It’s not just a game: it’s capitalism at work.
Bobby Miller originally wrote this article for the digital magazine Nvate in July of 2013. Due to its age, some of the information or links in the article may be outdated.