Gamification

gam·i·fi·ca·tion
ˌɡāmifəˈkāSHən/
noun
noun: gamification

1. the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g., point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service.
   "gamification is exciting because it promises to make the hard stuff in life fun"

I am creating this thread based on a thread http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/unity-thank-you-for-listening-to-us.415298/page-6#post-2712516

After creating a long response, I realized it would be better in a new thread.

Not sure that is incentivizing. It seems it would create less feedback and less interaction. Sometimes a post that does not add to the discussion is simply made by someone who doesn't understand the subject matter. Such a post can be elaborated on by others and help the poster understand.

The badges and shiny rewards are the future. It is what the young people like today (as in some teens and young people...). Problem is when you have a forum that is supposed to appeal to all ages, and in this case, probably skewed older.

It also, as someone mentioned, can turn off some users who fall behind because of various reasons (lack of confidence, less time, etc.) and then give up.

But...the marketing of these gamification folks is huge. They are even pushing it in schools. I do see some positives in it for getting kids to like math, etc.

The problem comes when it isn't extended to the work force. Example..my son loves games. He is a very logical, not very social person. We were once discussing why games motivated him and why he felt this overwhelming desire to play games more than anything..and I am not talking just video games, but pen and paper, card games, board games, etc.

He said because his actions give him rewards. He likes that. I suggested we find a way to do that outside of gaming, chores, schoolwork, etc. He told me that those awards don't give him extra levels where he can do more things. They just give him a little money or a desert treat, a toy, etc, but once they are used up they are gone. But the game keeps going, new levels, new incentives.

As a career person who worked in the corporate world, my incentive to work was money and promotions, which brought money. I also had some incentives when working with clients, fixing their problems, etc. I was an environmental geologist who worked for a consulting firm. But..no matter my job, even back when I was making ice cream sundaes at a frozen custard shop, it was still the money, pretty much just the money, that kept me slogging away. Yes, a bit of professional pride too...making that great sundae, or fixing a complex issue for the client...but I certainly wasn't motivated with badges and shiny rewards. I would have scoffed at such things!

Of course, there are always those Emmy's and Business awards some people get, but that is only for the very few, not really a motivator for that average person. Most of us are rewarded by money, and often not a lot of money. So now my son is emerging on the real world. He says money is not reward for him. Of course, buying the stuff he can buy with money is really the reward. But even the apartment rent, the gas and insurance for the car, the food on the table pales next to the constant, everyday awards of levels, new creatures, badges and shiny virtual things.

So....if we want to gamify everything, how do we not create a world where everyone expects everything to be like a game? Maybe someday no one will post on forums just for the thrill of helping someone or the need to solve problems, or the ability to make new friends.

Maybe he will only post for the virtual rewards. Not for money, not for the stuff money will buy...and he will expect those constant rewards or he will lose interest. And how will that engage young people in the work force? We all know the money only comes as long as you work..and even then, climbing levels is really hard and impossible in some jobs.

Do we really want to reward everyone all the time as if they are in a game? Do we really believe this is the only way to incentify someone to learn, to post in a forum, or to do their job? Do we want that to be the "only" way or even the most common way?

 

Nice post! I agree there's way too much gamification. Gamification = money apparently. User engagement. User retention. User retardation. If the user is not bored, perhaps the user will stick around long enough to squeeze money out of.

It's basically time = money. Except the time lost by the user = money for whoever is gamifying them. The gamer is gamed! Eyes widen with this grand revelation!

 

Absolutely!!!


But oddly enough, the rewards are not "real" for the person who engaged. The Money goes to the company that created the tool that engaged the person. And yet, the users feel rewarded??

So...in this case, it is the private virtual school, the forum company, the company that owns the forums, etc., that get the money.

So really...the people become monkeys churning out posts/test scores/etc., that actually give money to someone else!

It feels very manipulative and very dishonest, does it not? I guess not any more so than advertising and while I can live with it in some places, I do not like it the schools.

Of course, it will be a fad that will last for 15 years or so, ruin a generation of kids, and then be blasted as a bad idea, just like "new math". Bet some of you remember that fiasco. lol

 

Well when I make a game and sell it, people play that game and give me money! It's weird. You can't not justify it as a game developer, I guess?

 

Yeah, that would pretty much be the goal. I get such ideas when I experience a higher concentration of moments where I think "I shouldn't have posted that" or "That person shouldn't have posted that and I shouldn't have read it". Let's be realistic, not every post around here is great. Most are, but some are just pointless. And since I'm easily baited into participating in useless arguments, my own quota isn't as good as it could be. I've caught myself using the "unwatch thread" button more and more lately.

So, to put it differently: sometimes I think a little incentive/reminder to keep my thoughts to myself would do me good. I sometimes write a post and then delete it, but the number of posts where I wish I had done that still outnumbers those.

Fair point. I want to note though, that every kind of question or statement, that has the potential to lead others to elaborate on it in a constructive way, does "pass the test" for having "the potential to contribute to anyone making better games".
Also since you ignore a few users, and might be browsing different sub forums and threads than I do, your view on the forum may be ever so slightly different than mine. It was just a random thought thrown out there, not a "We need this or the forum is dead in a few weeks!" like the Rollback to recover from the Lithium Incident.


The rest about gamification wasn't directly a reply to me, right? Because I pretty much agree on all that.

I've once realized I had spent ~5-8 hours hardcore powergaming Skyrim to be able to craft good daedric armor and weapons. Then I thought "If only I could bring myself to work so focused on anything that matters in life". I never 100% understood where the reason lies, but I have a hunch that things that can be expressed in numbers are orders of magnitude more rewarding to me than less tangible results. E.g. I really enjoy performance optimizations where I can say in the end "something that took xx ms now takes x ms less than before".

 

But a game is supposed to give you money for playing it. That is how it works. Players get the satisfaction of playing the game and that is what they pay for.

And you are honest about that when you publish your game and as for money...or include ads that obviously create money for the developer while one plays the game

Would you use a forum that told you that they were going to make money off of every post you made? "Post a lot and we will make money!"

No, but you would play a game that said..."click on the ads and we will make money" or "play the game and we will make money" or even "buy the added on products and we will make money".

Maybe "donating" your time and participating for money makes sense if it were strictly a community forum, using the money to pay the bandwidth, but a company that is using the forum to already promote and support their product?

I always thought of support forums as already valuable to a company promoting a product. They get money because people get the help and motivation to continue using their product.

The real value of the forums is the people who help out, answer questions, and make the forums interesting so that people stop and visit for a while, learn about Unity, and decide to try it.

Forums full of posts just to get those badges are going to be full of posts that do not retain users....and the real posts will be lost among the carnage.

Eh, I didn't want this to be about forums...but you can apply that to anything that is gamefied, even schools. What gets lost when kids are given badges for reading a book? Maybe the love of reading, or the love of learning...unless it is coupled with some sort of tangible reward? Will our kids lose the ability to find rewards from an interesting discussion, a good book, an enthusiastic teacher?

Does the value become the reward or the learning?

 

Technically, that's the business model of Facebook and Twitter...

 

True..but Twitter and Facebook ARE the product. So like a game, you are clicking and posting to give them money for using their service.

 

Fantastic post.

I used to work with someone who was "aggressive" on marketing and had questionable practices. He wasn't a bad person, but I always had doubts about his sense of ethics, what's something I constantly think about.

The fun fact is that I'm on almost the opposite situation of Teila. My mother is somewhat addicted to the usual Facebook/Tablet games, and as a developer, I see in practice how the industry as a whole is going to a very unethical direction.

The first time I've read about using psychology to retain and 'milk' users was maybe 5 years ago, but I had my doubts about most things I've read, I mean, expansions (pretty much harmless) and DLCs were already a thing, but there were no massive IAP usage and blatant Skinner boxes. The worst part is that in the case of my mother, I can clearly see that it's not about enjoyment any longer, it's simply a commitment because you've invested too much time and some money already, so you don't want to lose all of that.

That feeling that you're going to 'lose' something if you don't 'reap your crops' is actually very powerful, so powerful that it's one of the most effective advice you can give to nicotine addicts trying to stop smoking, who are about to have a relapse (to think about the time you didn't smoke, and that if you smoke now you're going to 'lose' all of that). Nicotine addiction is much harder to quit than most illegal drugs. So, only that "retention strategy" already puts the game in a 'chemical addiction' (albeit light) level imho, but that's not the only technique they use, basically the whole behavioral psychology library is employed in mobile/Facebook games these days. They even conduct psychological experiments in order to produce games that trigger more effectively our basic instincts.

As a freelancer, I've been contacted many times to work on games or gamification projects focused on unethical practices. Unfortunately it's the massive majority of proposals I receive and also the better paying ones. I refuse all of them. I don't want to be part of that, but certainly there's no lack of people doing stuff solely for the money.

That also brings us to another point: Teila mentioned how money, besides still being a 'universal' reward, is less important to her son, money is still the most important factor for most people, but I think it's importance is decreasing in the newer generations, I guess that's especially because in most developed countries, money isn't as important as it used to be because the societies are doing a more decent job at providing the basic human rights like health and education, so paying for that isn't as important any longer. You can pursue your dreams with less restrictions because, in the worse case, the government via social services got your back. That's observable in northwestern Europe.

I for instance don't prioritize money at all, and I do have mouths to feed and bills to pay, but somethings just aren't worth it in my opinion. I value much more working on something that's significant and innovative rather than something "futile" that pays well; especially when it's something carefully engineered only for profit purposes.

I used to like MMOGs in the past. These days however, most of these games are 'shaped' based on how much real money you invest on it. These virtual worlds were interesting for me exactly because the lack of that, rich and poor used to be the same, have the same opportunities, and you won't be judged based on what you could buy with real money.
I don't want to play in a virtual world where money is an important factor, the 'real world' is enough for me. That's why I'm pretty much boycotting MMOGs since they started with those 'pay2win' or pay2badass' of 'pay2lookcool' practices. Basically they're bringing the worst thing from the real world into the virtual ones, that is, judging people mostly superficial features -> "look, he has a pricey car" became -> "look, he has a pricey armor". People want to join the Guild of the "cool guys with pricey armors", just like in real world they want to join the golf club of the "cool guys with pricey cars".

Unfortunately greedy people always ruin everything. It's in every history book. I thought the world was about to change, but not so fast. Unfortunately a lot of people don't have not even the most basic critical thinking skills to have a constructive discussion, I'm far from being a leftist, but I still read cover-to-cover a recommend to everyone the book "Capital in the XXI Century", I don't agree with some opinions there, but facts are facts, like it or not, and not agreeing with someone (for me) is different than hating or despising someone. However, I got in real trouble for even mentioning that book in some circles, what made me realize that another fact is that some people are irreparably narrow-minded, and just believe in whatever they want... and don't wanna be confused with actual facts.

 

I've always believed that there is absolutely no difference between those who go after, say, rewards in World of Warcraft compared to those who go after rewards in their careers or in society. There is nothing fundamentally wrong or disfunctional about the mechanism that propels them to either stay at home and play video games or go and study for a career, or socialize, or whatever, because those mechanisms are the same. The difference is that one of those mechanisms operates in a narrow field of simple rewards whereas the other operates in a wider field of much more complex, subtle and varied rewards.

I think possibly one of the main reasons why people choose simpler virtual fields of rewards is that the game is designed to give them constant positive feedback, and never makes them feel bad for pursuing the rewards that the game has to offer. Whereas in greater society, one must succeed relatively quietly or risk a lot of negative feedback despite objectively being successful. Even in a school (or a forum!) receiving a badge/reward can change other people's attitude toward you negatively, especially if they can see that the badge/reward actually means something to you. Not only that but society also tells people they are all equally capable and deserving, which means that badges and rewards function in a strange way where they are usually devalued at the time that they are given in order for everyone to feel happy, and therefore don't mean very much.

My love for games comes from my knowledge that, up to a point, what they give me is a way to train my ego to not be afraid of pursuing single-mindedly the things that I want. Quite a while back when I was in high school and at a certain time felt pretty depressed and unsure of myself, the first time I got into games, they really changed my life. Of course, I went overboard and started playing 8-10 hours a day whenever I could. After a while of wasting too much time and reflecting on what else I could be doing, I realised what games are to me, and what they can do for me: they are launch vehicles of egoistic pleasure. But like all launch vehicles, they quickly run out of fuel and go crashing back to earth, so you have to know when to bail.

After that, knowing that games themselves were somewhat superficial, but that they could do something specific for me, I started to actively use them when I needed to focus myself. For a few years I played one or two games a year, at times when I felt that I really needed that boost - I'd usually play the whole game in one or two sittings and then not touch games for months. For me, this worked a treat - some of the most difficult but ultimately worthwhile things I've done in my life came off a couple of days of pretty much straight gaming - it was like a sort of active meditation. But the crucial thing is that I knew when to bail - when I could feel that rather than raising me up it started to drag me down, I quit. I still do it from time to time, and overall I'm hardly a 'gamer' despite being here.

So anyway, I don't really know what I meant to write, I guess I just wanted to give a possibly unusual perspective on games and gamification. I know regular gamers will look at this and probably think it's wierd or shallow, but for me it's a reason why games can be great - and why I hate games that never let go of the player. All those silly IAP skinner boxes for me are an abomination, while works of art that have a constructive story and come to a dramatic finale, and most importantly, release you to use that positive energy on more important things in your life, are extremely useful. That's what art means to me.

Socializing gamification? I don't think it will help much, except make people waste their time chasing pokemons or something instead of using it as a platform for something greater. Ultimately, you have to know that what you want in life resides far beyond a simple reward, that the reward can be useful in a primitive way but ultimately will clean you out of your motivation and narrow down your vision if you invest in it too much. So all in all I think gamification is going to be one more of these silly failed projects of modern society. Nothing changes under the sun, you still have to decide what you want, aim for it and get it through hard work.

 

That's pretty much the definition of a Skinner box though.

I agree with what you said.

 

That's the point, that's why people hide in video games a lot when life is much more difficult. But egoistic pleasure can be constructive too - most decent movies are constructive egoistic pleasure because they deliver a message and end - you can hardly put a movie enthusiast in the same boat as those people playing WoW for weeks on end.

The point is that you stop playing when rather than stimulating your energy, it depletes it. I always found it hard to stop playing a game while it was still going - so I just went for story-based games that had a finale, and these tended to have a lot more depth than the ones that go on forever on dull quests and whatnot - and played it to the end, usually in one go and overnight. It was a huge pleasure and it left me feeling mentally refreshed when it stopped, and if I was lucky gave me something to think about from the story.

 

Great post!

Actually, I wrote a post some time ago about my 76 year old mother who is also addicted to tablet games. She lives on a very limited income as well so a bit scary.

I very much agree with what you said. I can't quote it all, but I learned a great deal from reading it.

Absolutely.

I am like you in that I will pick up games for a bit and then just stop, cold turkey, when I realize it is time to do other things for a while. I haven't played any games at all for a couple of years now although I might pick up a few Unity made games just for research. I love MMO's, but tired of all the ways one must part with their money to play. I prefer a monthly subscription to a fake Free to Play game that isn't really free.

 

Really interesting point!! My son gets grouchy after long stretches of game playing. Life must feel dull after chasing monsters for hours on end.

Story driven games is a much better choice.

 

Unfortunately, this is not true in the U.S. Our basic needs are not covered until we are old enough for Medicare. So many young people who can't afford health insurance and college is VERY expensive, often leaving the kids in debt from student loans.

So..money is still important for them. I worry because I meet so many who blow of college or tech school to play games.

 

I agree, it can surely be constructive, but that's not the main point I'm making here. Movies are a good example of how to do business imho, they can be constructive or just a waste of time, in any case, they're made to entertain the user, and the user pay exactly for that. It's not perfect by any means, but roughly it's a decent business model in my opinion.

Games used to be exactly like that, and most serious developers still work on those lines, but for some companies, especially the newer companies making money from mobile games, that's not a concern at all, they 're only concerned if the user is enjoying the game until the point the user is 'hooked', from that point the 'strategy' is user retention at ALL costs, and profit maximization.

Exactly. Unfortunately, especially for the smaller studios, a free-to-play with purchases is more profitable and have higher chances of success. We need to raise awareness for that issue in my opinion. If every player knew about how some of these studios operate, maybe that wouldn't be the case. Maybe they would rather pay a fixed subscription.

I've seen many people do that too, but most are hardcore gamers (consoles/PC), I've never seen people quitting the school/college to play Hay Day all day long, so that's yet another thing to consider, in some demographics, more traditional games have a larger impact on the society I believe.

 

Yeah, my theory is that when you get too much pleasure from something for a while, you need to expend it in motivation and effort toward something or otherwise your brain learns that it is worthless, and you go on a downer without any pick-me-up available. It's only by alternating pleasure and difficulty that someone can really lead a fulfilling life. The important thing is, at least for me, that when you get a lot of pleasure from something like a game, you actually want to do other things and you feel very positive about doing them, but it requires something to break you out of the cycle before you can actually act on it. For me, this was simply the realization that there were things I wanted to accomplish and that I was only hurting my chances by continuing - but it might not be so straightforward for others.

 

It's very interesting that you mentioned that, because it's very clear that the 'goal' of the unethical games these days is exactly to provide a large variety of experiences in order to fulfill all those 'needs' and emulate all those sensations in the games themselves, so you don't ever leave the game. Social interactions for example are becoming so deeply integrated into games so many ways that you can do in-game a lot of things that in the past you needed to fire up another application to do. Not to mention 'in person' interaction with other people. If that's going to succeed or not, only time will tell, but it's sad to see questionable game design research material mentioning big names of the psychology. Basically gaming is just a very profitable industry in the vision of some people. We do have our 'movie stars' (in the analogy) but they're becoming less important as money-greedy entrepreneurs take over the whole thing. It's not like in movies anymore in which you have directors and even actors (in other words, 'artists') who enjoy making movies actively taking decisions and participating in the actual business.

I'm not an extremist, I don't see any problem in a game that you have to pay to unlock more levels, or even pay to remove ads or something, because although annoying everybody got bills to pay. Prices are fine too: you're free to charge whatever you want, as long as people aren't forced to buy it, that's just how the market works. The problems begin when (to call a spade a spaded) you start with extortion (pay or you won't play today) and even blackmailing (putting you in a bad situation towards your virtual friends). There are practices you only expect from criminals/gangsters that game developers really like to employ. At least real criminals don't try to convince you they're friends .

 

I think this is wrong. I mean the whole idea with badges and achievements. Not just wrong, but VERY wrong.

Someone (I forgot who) said "I fear to live in a world where kids received a medal for participation". By giving a "reward" for every action, you turn people into pavlov's dog that can only chase badges. Humans are supposed to be a bit more than that.

One of the important lessons in life is that sometimes you just gain nothing, no matter how hard you tried. So when that happens it is your job to figure out if you gained anything at all or learned anything at all, and the badges would reduce incentive to think for yourself.

It would be a more interesting experiment, if badges existed but were limited in number. Like that there's only one badge of every kind, and once someone takes it, there are no more of those badges and the badges cannot be transferred.

 

The Skinner Box is a more directly applicable concept in gaming these days, you want direct conditioned response, you're not associating something with a reward but just rewarding the user directly. The unconditional part is on a subconscious level and is fully subjective but generally universal (as I mentioned, "why *that* is important to you?" Generally, in the case of 'those' games, the answer is because you've invested time and money on it).

Humans *are* much more than that, but still we have primitive animal instincts. Just look at any successful marketing campaign... they're all about the most basic animal instincts, and I'm not saying 'human' instincts, because the society is based on the most primitive animal instincts, you need a big and majestic house just like the most insignificant lizard needs the bigger and warmer 'stone' in the desert. You need a fancy and ostentatious car to attract the females, just like a peacock needs the fanciest tail. Or in a more direct and modern comparison, you need a 6 pack and tattoos, or maybe some Armani suit, depends on who you want to impress or which 'tribe' you want to fit in.

 

@AlanGameDev totally agree, I think we're on the same page here. I also have no problem with smartly designed games that give the player a controlled experience, the problem is that I find it very hard to stomach a game that theoretically never ends - to some extent even a game like No Mans Sky, though I'll give it the benefit of the doubt for being a fantastic creation. But I like to think it's pretty obvious that nothing you can do in a game is more important than what you do in the world, and that games should be designed around that. Like any expression of art, games should be there to provoke the imagination and inspire people with the willpower to do things they would otherwise have difficulty with, and to help them reflect on what it is to be human. Unfortunately, few games do that (or ever did).

That's an extremely important point about integrating social aspects such as networking, it's one of the reasons I feel pretty strongly against pokemon go, which I might have otherwise found novel and maybe even a bit fun. I walked around the other day and literally every conversation I heard was about it, and people were going back and forth staring at their phones. It made me feel embarrassed, as if something that we all do privately, but which is not exactly publicly respectable, had suddenly become a public social activity. I really can't help but feel that this kind of thing is not increasing the value of society.

 

I have played some fun episodic games where I have to pay for each episode. I don't mind that. If the "level" comes at a distinct part of the game, so you can continue if you wish or not, then I am fine with it. Even cliffhangers are okay.

The games my mom plays though, will completely lock her out of the game and she can't play unless she pays. Sometimes she has to wait 24 hours to play. Once she called me in a panic because she had locked herself out of all of her games (I think she had 3) and could not play any of them. She didn't know how to download more.

I realize that these people need a paycheck. I never play free mobile games. I always pay for them, sometimes even before I try them. I don't personally like the ads and I don't mind giving the developer my money if I play their games.

 

@AlanGameDev and there's nothing wrong with primitive instincts, they're the meathead footsoldiers of the mind and they get stuff done. What people don't realize is that you need to control them and direct them so that you accomplish significant goals.

I think really the biggest failure of society these days is not rewarding achievement through hard work. Everyone's so busy ironing out any trace of 'inequality' that they run over the ambitions and characters of kids that would otherwise strive for something really far beyond the norm. No matter how hard you try, if you live closely within a society with people who are not interested in those things, so too will you lose interest.

 

Reminds me of a story I read somewhere

"When I was young I thought girls would be impressed by a cool car. So I saved up and bought myself a car. It had no effect. Then I thought, that perhaps girls like money? So I got myself a better job. It didn't work. Perhaps it is power? I strived, worked hard and attained powerful position of a politician. Nothing. And then I turned 50 and realized that I didn't all this stuff, and only had to be the usual normal friendly guy they could talk to...."

Instincts are important, but humans can suppress them work around them and recognize attempts to utilize reflexive behavior. That's why I don't like reflex-oriented behavior. It is like an attempt to convince people that they're still cavemen by posting stuff on the internet which totally existed in stone age.

People need to move forward, towards further improvement. Not regress into equivalent of a pavlov's dog.

 

At least in my country, the problem is more the politics in education. Politicians use the schools and therefore, require a way to measure schools. Standardized testing has caused learning to become rote, shallow, and uninspired. Good teachers leave and the ones that remain hate their jobs.

Getting back to gamification, I think that is why these virtual homeschools that use games to teach are popping up all over..dissatisfaction with the boring schools, among students and parents. A friend of mine was so excited to find such a program for her son, who she can't keep off the computer because he plays games all night long. Once I reminded her that her son would be on the computer all day long as well, she decided on another program.

I do homeschool my kids and we do use computers. But we also use books and pencil and paper, and hikes and trips to interesting places...the computer is the place to take the exam to be sent to the teacher. The computer is the place to research. It might also be the place to take a class.

But it is not the place to earn badges and rewards for getting 90% of the problems correct on a multiple choice "game" about whatever. My daughter's biology class, which is created by some major textbook publisher, has little games in it that they can play to earn stuff. She hates the games. lol She says they are stupid and teach her nothing. Good girl!

We decided to homeschool because the public schools are teaching to the standardized tests. I see no difference from that and using artificial rewards, ones that do not mimic the outside world and the adult life.

This, however, might be why things like badges and rewards on a forum are becoming popular among companies. Train the kids to respond to stimuli such as instant rewards, and then make money off of them by monetizing and gamifying the places they visit online.

I kind of wonder if there will anything left other than Wikipedia for us old folks.

 

I remember that thread now that you mentioned that .

EXACTLY.

EXACTLY. 2

I hope this don't go through in a bad/rude way, please don't get me wrong, but if you look at the society as a whole (pretend you're an alien species looking at the current situation of the humanity), you see a bunch of pathetic sentient beings that are slaves of their most primitive instincts. Some instincts we have are observable even in beings that reproduce asexually. Once competition for nutrients (read: food) started, the ability to kill became important, as in fungi that release 'poison' for other species: can you imagine how many species were instinct when 'killing the competition' became important? We are among the most complex species that *had* to kill both our prey and food competitors to survive, and also compete (sometimes with fatal outcome) for a reproduction partner. Beauty is part of that, just as 'showing' power like the deer with the larger antlers or the man with the pricier car.

We have all of that in our very genes, but those instincts aren't very useful in a modern society, however, it's not because we don't use those instincts for practical purposes that they aren't there, we developed a need to 'abstract' those instincts in other stuff to scratch that primitive itch. That's basically the reason why consumerism is still the rule. Almost everything the industry convinces us we 'need' is based on our most basic instincts.

We should teach our children not to be slaves of their instincts, but it's hard to do that when you have literally the entire industry profiting from their lack of control over their instincts.

Look for example at people who reward themselves with food. Why food tastes good (except veggies ) and is universally seen (instinctively) as a 'reward' for us? For anyone well-educated, a Big Mac shouldn't be seen as a 'reward' just as an increased probability of heart attack. But they taste good and the ad says cool stuff about it with a catchy jingle, and that subconscious double-affirmation is hard to ignore.

For our ancestors it was of vital importance to be able to instinctively distinguish between food with a high amount of energy from food with low energy, and on even more primitive levels, distinguish between poisonous and edible substances. All of that can be considered detrimental to a modern human being. They were important in the past, but these days science tells us that the stuff we hate to eat is what's actually good for our health, and we can take an informed decision on what to eat. Few people do that on a regular basis. I never do that, I love sodas and hamburgers, can't stop eating them easily, but I'm harming mostly myself in this case .

Conditioning was also important for our ancestors. If you eat a fruit and it makes you feel good (and what makes you feel good keeps you/your species alive), you want to eat more of that fruit. As long as it makes you feel good you'll keep eating it. It's a very light 'addition'. That conditioning 'trait' wasn't specially detrimental until now besides drugs and obesity, but these days the entertainment industry is exploiting that massively.

 

@Teila it's the same everywhere it seems, the whole point is that since everyone is equal you can't test anyone differently or you're suggesting a something-ism.

I was homeschooled most of my early life, and while I think there were some things that were done ridiculously wrong, it probably saved my character.

I can't judge these virtual homeschools, since I don't really know them, but I would suggest that possibly gamification is not such a positive thing, in that they really need to find ways to engage a student totally outside the usual controlled setting and may depend too heavily on reward stimulus to do so. Like @neginfinity said I think in the long term reward stimulus is negative, and in my own case I 'use' games only to put the paddles on my ego, so to speak. In the end, people have to learn that there's no sidelong trip to achievement, you have to simply attack it and fail and deal with it and keep going. In the end, being able to live with that realization is your greatest strength, and those who depend on rewards too much won't reach that point.

Also, I think there's a somewhat clear definition between gamification and art. I would call most Hideo Kojima games art for example. Games like that for me hold value beyond merely 'training my ego', since they have an effect beyond the instinctive level and provoke the imagination. But really I could probably count the number of games I consider to be art on one or two hands.

And that's also why I'm not really a fan of open world or multiplayer games as such, because there's nothing really to take from them besides the fun factor. I'd much prefer an interactive movie with enough control to give me the feeling that I'm doing something myself while I soak in a great story.

 

@AlanGameDev I'll take a slightly different view, I think people suppress their instincts too much. Instincts should not be suppressed, they should be aimed. But society spends so much time and effort loudly and directly contradicting the instincts that people start to believe they're simply bad. And the only ways that society allows you to enjoy your instincts are in self-destructive ways such as drinking or eating too much.

Instincts should not be given free reign, but it's easier than it seems to put the lid on them, and harder than it seems to spot the subsequent damage you do to yourself.

 

I was homeschooled too, although my grandpa was a teacher (Electrical Engineering at a famous University) for many years, so at least in terms of hard sciences I've had decent education.

I had plenty of contact with other children though so I wasn't spared from some bullying hehe .

I can't say the impact homeschooling had in my character though. I don't think it matters much because I believe that what happens in school stays at the school, you only keep the knowledge, but I could be very wrong.

Sure, suppressing your instincts only makes things worse. You inevitable end up having to express them someway, sometimes in much more harmful ways, not only for you but for others too.

However, I disagree that some instincts aren't detrimental... at least if 'left to be' some instincts inevitably end up being detrimental in my opinion. Our 'animal' selves just aren't made to live in this kind of society we have these days. We want conflict, we want to wage war, we want to compare to others, sports for example are a very good way to express our competitive instincts. It's just that we shouldn't let them rule them world.

 

Yeah my homeschooling was mainly based on my parents belief that schools didn't do enough maths, physics and chemistry!

I don't really believe that there are any instincts that are detrimental as such, but there are many ways to express them that are detrimental. Don't get me wrong, I'm not an anarchist at all, I think society, law and discipline is largely good for people. I guess my point is basically that controlling an instinct correctly involves muzzling it rather than pulling its teeth out - it involves making a conscious decision that now is not the time for experiencing it and acting accordingly. I'm a bit of a freudian and I believe that experiencing instincts as morally wrong, and suppressing them directly is self-destructive, and creates subconscious turmoil that destroys your character and merely hides its expression from your conscious mind.

 

Yeah, maybe I've expressed myself badly, what I meant is that some instincts if not understood by the individual and properly addressed may end up being expressed in a detrimental way. Abilities driven by them that were important in the past like eating as much food as you could and effectively killing/neutralizing even the smallest threat aren't important or accepted in the modern society, and they end up being detrimental in it.

 

I am a geologist and my husband is a mechanical engineer. My kids were not missing on the science and technology part.

We pulled them out because the schools here are very bad. The state even cheated on the standardized testing to look better than they really are..and that was not very good.

 

This is an interesting read, & I'm going to go back through it again in case I missed stuff.

We are making an app version of our boardgame & trying to work out how to monetise it because as unknown devs people are unlikely to pay upfront, & the game doesn't really lend itself to iap's except for pointless skins which I'm adverse to. Personally I'm leaning towards using ads & having a button that says "please watch an ad so we can earn 1/4 of 1/4 of a cent" & then just letting the user decide. It probably won't earn us anything but I could live with my decision this way.

We can't think of anyway to have achievements so that will be out.

Edit: back on topic

For gamification of general life/work the 'like' on forum posts was supposed to encourage people by 'rewarding' the good posters but since it was the other posters that decided what was liked it often turned into who said the funniest thing. Businesses have been trying to gamify a lot so they can 'engage' with the yoof of today, problem is that business move so slowly that by the time they do something it is out of date. Or worse, once they've done something they think it will last for 12mths whereas kids are bored after a week.

In the actual workplace it just seems lame & insincere, & sometimes pretentious, because everyone can automatically see that as a business whatever they are doing is just so they can make money off you. That's wher Facebook & Google succeed, they make money on what you freely give them without thinking - your information.

For kids, rewarding everyone that plays a sport etc (what I call getting a "thanks for coming" award) teaches them that they should get something for everything they do. Instead they should be taught that they have to do stuff & that if they do it well enough then they MIGHT get an award/reward. It uses that skinned box of unpredictable rewards. At least that's what I'm trying to teach my kids. Life's tough, suck it up & keep trying.

 

Wow. So much hate against gamification. I personally think its a great idea. Let me present two arguments.

Argument One

Gamification is much more pleasant and ethical then other ways to manipulate a population. Lets be honest with ourselves. Humans are all about manipulation. We are manipulated by governments, corporations, family, friends, marketers, complete strangers ... The list goes on. Human interaction is all about getting the other person to do something that benefits you.

So lets look at some of the ways humans get manipulated. There is fear, there is violence, there is greed, there is sex, there is our appetite for sugar and fat. And then there is shinny badges. I for one support the idea of shinny badges over the threat of being shot.

TL;DR: Gamification is better then many other ways of manipulating people

Argument Two

Lets look at a case study. For over a decade we have been warned about increasing obesity. Some of the top countries on this list are the US, Australia and NZ. Governments and charities have marshaled huge resources to try and get people to exercise more. Publicity campaigns, school programs, pleas from doctors, massive sports complexes, subsidized gym memberships, playgrounds, parks, cycling tracks. And it has all had almost no effect, obesity has still been on the rise, and virtually no one is exercising.

Then Nintendo releases Pokemon Go. Within a week the streets are full of people walking. The parks and playgrounds are full. People are out walking, running and cycling. What the governments and doctors couldn't achieve, Nintendo could.

TL;DR: Gamification works, so lets use it to do good things.

 

Awesome!

(Sorry, didn't read the rest of thread, but noticed and liked that part)

 

@BoredMormon it's a valid point, but ultimately just a case of treating the symptoms and not the cause. You can train a rat to not be obese, but it's not because it achieved any level of self-sufficiency of its own.

Like the charities that come in the wake of exploitation, so does gamification come in the wake of lack of strong social ethics (as opposed to morals). Ultimately all it does is suspend the inevitable correction and allow the problem to get even deeper in my opinion.

We've all got a different view, but I personally reject social constructs based solely on "at least it's better than ... !" - basic law and order is generally enough to bring about a reasonably stable society - and importantly, the other main ingredient of a stable society is industry and drive toward industry, the lack of which I think gamification is a poor attempt at correcting.

 

I'm not against it, it's just that large organisations/governments that try to gamify work tend to not do it well. There are a few examples where it has worked e.g. Sweden trialled using a speed camera to photograph every car that drove along a road. If the driver was speeding they were issued a fine, if they weren't they got a lottery ticket for a chance to win a share of the fines collected. I couldn't find figures on $-values but the results showed drivers slowed down.
The British government under Blair started a department that was using psych to try & change people's behaviour, e.g. A large number of fines were unpaid but they found that if they put a statement on the fine notice saying something like 85% of people pay their fines on time then the number of fines paid late or not paid at all actually decreased. I believe the NSW government here in Australia now has a similar branch within the department of premier & cabinet.

Gamification is just taking this kind of human manipulation & trying to make it seem fun, but that is where the difficulty lies & where there is a high risk of alienating people. If it is done poorly, or patronises the people, then it risks driving them towards not doing the desired behaviour whereas without the gamification attempt they may have been willing to do whatever was wanted/needed.

Here's my attempt at gamifying work.

1. Every employee is paid the minimum for their job position.
2. Supervisors etc are paid a bit more to account for the authority but overall the amounts are not really cost competitive with the competition.
3. The differences in all the salaries between what is paid to each person at each staff level is pooled for each level.
4. Each payday a lottery is drawn for each job level & the winner gets the pool for that level.
5. Employees get an entry for each day they are at work, they get no entry if they work a part day (go home sick etc).
6. They still get an entry if they are on annual leave (annual leave is important for the employees mental health so it is best not to discourage them from taking it).
7. Employees get a bonus entry if work is completed on time & budget.
8. They get 2 bonus entries if their job is completed early &/or under budget.
9. Once an employee wins the pool they have the option of putting all or some of into superannuation as a pretax contribution.

My thoughts are this encourages people to work, hopefully to be efficient in order to gain extra entries. From a business perspective they save money as their payroll tax is less due to the lower base salaries & any compulsory superannuation etc is also lower, leave liabilities are lower as they are calculated at the lower base salaries.........

Just a thought. If anyone running a business a actually tries this let me know if it works or not.

 

"The road to hell is paved with good intentions"

What will be the long term effects? Will people factor the locations of game-relevant hotspots into their decisions where they go (I don't play the game, I don't know the intricacies of its mechanics)? Will they get less likely to visit friends who live in areas with sh*tty ingame rewards along the route? What happens when the hype dries off and the "poké-carrot on a stick" dangled in front of their nose isn't enough anymore to get them to leave the house? Will they then be less inclined to engage in physical activity without stimulating rewards? Will the bottom line in 5 years see less people in gyms or jogging/cycling?

I agree with you that in the observable short time periods gamification works really well. I'd also be willing to get a little flexible on the ethics aspect if the long-term benefit warrants it. But our brains are ill-equipped to handle so many aspects of our daily lives already, that I think piling on more and more toxic and addictive stuff that exploits our weaknesses might not be the smartest way to handle it.

 

Ethics are relative and Gamefication is not releasing a game. It is introducing game-like elements (usually scores and achievements) into environment that doesn't need them.

I.e. Gamefication is not Pokemon GO. It is Stackoverflow, and it is likes on Facebook.

And speaking of Pokemon GO - even though there are people walking NOW, it is unclear how long it will last, and whether it will have any effect on obesity problem at all. Game popularity follows specific pattern, and after initial boom, titles slowly fade into obscurity (usually 2..3 months after release). For example, nobody talks about witcher anymore.

 

Pokemon Go can be seen as a game with exercise elements. Or it can be seen as gamification of exercise. It is a valid way to examine the power of gamification.

It might be a flash in the pan. It might be over in a month. But trust me, it's going to catch the interests of various groups interested in using game mechanics to manipulate popular behaviour.

So you reject democracy? Almost all of our social constructs are based on this principle.

But on a serious note, perhaps I should rephrase my argument. You are going to be manipulated. By governments, by corporations, by various interest groups. Gamification seems to be a relatively pleasant way to be manipulated.

Who knows? Humans have proven almost universally terrible at predicting the future. But so far we seem to be pretty good at surviving it (as a species, not as individuals).

 

^_^

 

It's already spreading to work, at least in some companies. My company has a internal social media site which employees are practically forced to use which is similar to facebook etc. with likes, awards, badges, etc.

I'm sure some psychologist told us this is a way to attract millenials, but my impression from most of the people I work with is they resent having this kind of stuff forced on us at work.

 

In a way, some groups are already using the popularity of Pokemon Go and its gamification of going places to their benefit. One positive example is two different groups I read about who are setting up voter registration tables at hot spots for Pokemon Go and trying to register the players to vote.


Overall, I expect gamification in a game... and, yes, that's a bit of a redundancy since "gamification" is supposed to be about putting game elements outside the game. I don't mind a small amount of gamification in the real world either. (I worked for a company that kept the parking space closest to the front door as a rotating prize.)

As others have essentially said, it is when gamification goes beyond simply adding a little extra to things and starts replacing the intrinsic nature of what is going on that I really start to cringe. My friend's daughter is in grade school. They have a color chart where every student in the class is rated each day based on how well they behaved in class. Now, it is in many ways great for things like letting parents know how their child is acting in class, but unfortunately it also creates the desire to get the "good color" not because you understand behaving is the right way to be but because it's the "good color". I'm also pretty sure this smart kid is able to figure out how many "bad color" days she can get away with so that she can manipulate the system.

Just not the lessons I think she should be learning.

 

@BoredMormon there's nothing wrong with choosing the best of all possibilities, the question is whether gamification is really the best. It doesn't really seem that way to me.

And what is it really that gamification is designed to obscure or circumvent? Why is it even needed? Isn't it worth something to be able to decide to do something and then do it come hell or high water? I can't see widespread, long-term gamification doing anything but making people's characters weak. It's an attempt to bypass millions of years of human evolution with a cheap lab trick, and reduce higher-order thinking to irrelevant background noise.

 

I would resent this. Just reading this and tedthebug's ideas for changing the work force makes me glad I am working for myself now and not for a company.

Yes, there are worse ways to manipulate people. But...it is still manipulation. Some of us see through that and it makes us uncomfortable.

Now..it may be that the companies want a bunch of people who find following the crowd and going with the flow and even if they see the pattern, they find it fun. Not everyone finds that fun. Some of us find that no different than the manipulations used on people for many centuries.

So this means it does not matter if you are better at your job than your coworkers. You all get put into the pool and randomly, one person gets a bonus. Getting sick is a penalty and staying home to take care of a child is also punished, as is any other valid reason to be away for part of a day. People who just come in, do their job, do it on time, and never take sick days or vacation days are rewarded. If they finish early or under budget, they have a slightly larger chance of getting a bonus.

Otherwise, for most of the time, they slog away at a minimum payment just hoping they will get that bonus.

Depending on the size of the company, odds are they won't get a bonus very often, although there is that chance they may get one twice in a row.

Sounds like a lottery ticket.

Great for the company though. They get a bunch of people slogging along, most of them at the minimum pay. Some of them work harder to get the job done earlier and under budget to get one more ticket to try to get that lottery.

Or is it good for the company? Where is the incentive to come up with good ideas? How does one reward an employee that shows potential other than via promotion? Another ticket that gives them a chance to "win" a bonus?

Winning becomes about the bonus, not about the job.

If I worked for a company that did this, I would find a new job. Sorry, but I hate gambling, as do a large portion of our society. I don't buy lottery tickets or gamble at the slot machines. I would not feel rewarded by winning a lottery at a job. I would feel patronized.

Edit: I shared this idea with my family and even the millennials said it was disturbing. lol

 

Pokemon Go is a game! Of course it is gamification.

As for the positive/negative effects of this type of game, we need more time to see what happens in the long term.

We all thought cell phones were the greatest thing in the world until we find ourselves dealing with people texting while driving on the roads and we lose that human mode of talking with our children and coworkers.

Everything has positives and negatives. Gamification is no different. It can be a positive...but it can also be negative.

The trick is being honest about using such methods. That way, we can make the choice and the degree of manipulation because much less if at all.

Of course, we also have a responsibility those who fall victim to such methods, the elderly who spend all their money on a tablet game, the young teens who forgo school work to play games or post on forums, and to the under-educated.

 

Gamifying the forums will put off a lot of people, but it will also appeal more to others.

Unity needs to decide what kind of community they want.

I personally hate it. I hated it as a child (rewards for homework or good grades pissed me off) and I even hate it in games where it is easily overdone these days (achievements for doing nothing etc etc).

 

Sticker charts are a very old teaching technique. And guess what, they work. We use them on our own kids from time to time when they are working towards specific goals.

You know the more we talk about this, the less I'm convinced that gamification is a new thing. Its fundamentally not all that different from the various KPIs and visual management techniques that have been around in manufacturing for almost a century now. My control room at work has numbers, charts with targets to meet, lines that go up and down, colors to fill out. We don't call it gamification, but it amounts to the same thing as a kindergarten sticker chart.

And you know what? It works. I can get an extra ten percent production out of a plant with little more then a whiteboard and red and green markers.

Yeah, last company had a bunch of this stuff. I'm guessing the survey came back with results like 'I want to use facebook at work' and that translated into 'lets make work look like facebook'. You don't need to be a genius to see the difference between those two statements. But you do need to be fairly familiar with young folk and social media. And many high level corporate decision makers aren't.

I'm going to contend that definition does not follow. Games are not in and of them selves gamification. Gamification refers to taking some non game activity and using game principles to make the activity more engaging/fun/successful. So Pokemon Go can be considered gamification of exercise and exploration and socialization. But Call of Duty can not be considered gamification at all.

This brings up an interesting point about gamification. Gamification seems to be the most successful when an explicit game is built, with the other elements added in as a tangent. Focusing on the other elements then adding gamification often ends with 'educational' products that fall flat. Noone wants to play a game that's built around memorizing and applying Newton's laws, or how the wing angle effects lift and drag on an aeroplane, or calculating the best fuel to engine ratio. But I've spent hours researching both of those things in order to play Kerball.

 

Try being the parent of a child with special needs.

We adopted two kids from foster care at ages 4 and 6. In foster care, kids learn to manipulate other people quite well....foster parents, social workers, guardians, etc.

So...kid enters school soon after being dumped into a home with two parents they don't even know. Behaviors are crazy and it takes years for them to learn to deal with those behaviors and lots of therapy.

The school, however, wants all kids to fit into the same block. So they use their techniques on the child that work for most other kids and they fail badly. I remember being called in to get my son who was under the teacher's desk growling like the Tasmanian devil from the cartoons.

I would bring him home. Eventually, the calls became more frequent. Once he was in my car, he was happy and babbling away.

Obviously, he manipulated them.

Stickers and such were horrible for my kids. They rarely got stickers and were always the kids in trouble. At times, they even had teachers who actually disliked them.

I remember those stupid bumper stickers..."My kid was the student of the month".

I used to feel this great sadness that my kids would never earn one of those. It is difficult to have kids who are different and have them measured against every other kid. It is painful and demeaning. It especially hurts because you see things in your kid that others do not....but because it doesn't fit the mold, it doesn't matter.

The story has a good ending, as I started to homeschool my son and he is doing very well in college, where he is rewarded with good grades for his hard work, words of encouragement from professors, admittance into his program, and into the honor society. He did, btw, get a shiny badge from the Governor of our state for his grades but...that was less important to him than simply doing well and advancing.

Must admit..it meant a lot to me though.

 

Of course it is not a new thing. However, it is being applied in new areas.

Well, I guess it depends on the intentions of the creators of the games, which we really do not know. I contend that the exercise is simply a byproduct of the way the game was created. In fact, much of the Pokemon chasing goes on in cars and on buses (according to my daughters who have ridden the city bus this week).

So while most people walk, not everyone does. So exercise and exploration are not required to play the game. One can do it while driving long hours in their car...or at least the kids in the back seat can. One might call driving down the highway exploration but I wonder what wonders the kids might miss while playing their game? A deer alongside the road, a giant gnarled tree that looks like it comes out of a fantasy movie, an old gas station from the 1920's....will they see these or are the rewards for catching the Pokemon greater than the rewards for exploration? What is being lost here? Searching the internet for Kerbal information?

Games are not always gamification but when they are, it is not unexpected. So when a Wii game, which was created for exercise encourages kids to keep walking or jumping or running in place by giving them awards, they are treating exercise as a game and doing it intentionally.