Gamification

Yeah gamification is the process of making a mundane task interactively interesting.

Which is cool! but the thread here I think is about manipulation instead, gamification to manipulate an audience unaware, so I guess it's about the ethics of gamification.

 

And we have some pretty frightening examples of what happens when the masses are manipulated. We survive, but the cost is immeasurable.

 

When I was in my early teens I started to get paid a few dollars for homework and such, it took about a week for me to figure out a way to bs about it and instead of going to class I went to the skate park. Funny thing is that before that I didn't really skip class very much.

I don't like taking rewards from anyone, it makes me feel as if I'm not in control of my own 'compass' - but when I give myself one after pulling through a tough period though, I get a real boost - I know I'm in the saddle and that I'm taking care of myself.

The only reward I want from society is mutual company while I steer my ship and do my thing.

 

*laugh* I have this Bugs Bunny style mental picture of you drawing a fake control panel with your markers showing 10% more production and putting it in front of the real one.

 

Tbh it wasn't a serious idea, but having worked in the corporate world where they were trying to be hip & trendy for the millenials this is close to what they would do if they could get away with it because it saves them money overall. They would also say you aren't being penalised for staying home with kids or being sick because you still get paid (sick leave), you just don't get an entry into the lottery draw. Being proactive & or innovative could gain you bonus entries, though a better incentive would be to trial the suggestions & cost it & then give the employee a one time bonus of 50% of the estimated annual saving (based on the trial, or even cost it after 12mths & then pay the bonus).

But none of this will ever happen because gamefication doesn't work in large corporations, they're all about procedure that can be shown to be strict & controlled in case of litigation. It would look bad if they were ever taken to court for something bad & the examination of their processes showed that it was all a game.

 

Whew!

Yeah, I would think most people would not stay in a job like that, especially if you were any good.

But..you did give my daughter an idea for her next novel.

 

Really? That's bread and butter culture for my industry. It's when a company doesn't have everything proceduralised and standardised down to the last letter that I get nervous.

Of course I work with toxic and explosive chemicals. You want rigid standards there. It seems like a recipie for failure for an endeavour like games.

And now going completely off topic, maybe that's why I enjoy games so much. Compared to the regimented world of chemical engineering, game dev is a lawless jungle. There are essentially no limitations on what a person can do.

 

I meant the gamification of Tedthebug's previous post.

Having worked in the corporate world, yes, it is all procedural. I worked in toxic environment as an environmental geologist so lots of very rigid standards as well.

 

This is one of the main reasons my circle of friends is entirely unrelated to my circle of co-workers. I've known people who fretted over changing jobs because that was where their friends were. I did once make the mistake of hiring a friend. I'll never again hire friends or family.

YES. Nothing annoys me more than seeing that stupid Xbox achievement thing for completing a mandatory tutorial. Uh, thanks? But... there are folks out there who obsess over their Xbox Live gamerscore. I once ran across a very long, very serious forum discussion about the best combination of games to buy to maximize your gamerscore. I completely don't understand that. I gather Microsoft pretty tightly controls how many points games can dole out, too (if I remember rightly, somebody in the old XNA forums had worked on an Xbox Arcade title and was loosely describing the negotiation process).

 

It can only be said to work if weight loss has a measured increase with the amount of time spent with Pokemon Go. However, you assume that exercise alone is sufficient to deal with obesity.

Diet has a larger impact on weight than exercise. That leads to a paradox that can be abused. It's more effective to barely exercise and have a low calorie intake, than to exercise heavily and eat a lot too. But that last one is the romantic ideal you're shown on TV and magazines all day.

Most people I see struggle far more with their kitchens than with their gyms. They'll readily find 30 minutes or more a day to hit the gym, go for walks, or simply up their daily activity by parking further away and taking the stairs more often, than they will for packing a lunch, prepping ingredients, cooking dinner, or keeping a food diary.

I think in part it's because that's what the world believes — fuelled no doubt by shows like The Biggest Loser, and by the huge amount of money the food industry is throwing at the message of 'balancing' energy-in with energy-out, but also because we don't get endorphin rushes from chopping vegetables or washing tupperware.

Congratulations with your 10 minute walk, here's a snack and soda.

 

Should have posted this earlier in this discussion, but somehow I only now remembered, that this is something really important to look at, when talking about gamification in general. I think we have some people from china here, right? Can any of you confirm/deny what is said in the video? It's about half a year old and I can't find any more recent videos on the topic.

 

Wow...

 

Extra Credits really showed their biases on that one. Not all countries consider their governments to be inherently corrupt and evil, waiting for the slightest oppurtunity to drive the people into slavery.

In the hands of a good government, gamification can be a really powerful and useful tool.

 

Anyone who isn't biased against what China is supposedly trying to do here, scares the ever living crap out of me.

 

You mean you guys don't realise that civilised slavery is a thing? That's what taxes are. You're not free at all lol.

 

Guess I fit then...I have a bias against authoritative governments as well.

 

Thank goodness...without taxes, I would not be able to drive down my roads without falling into a sinkhole. Who wants to be free to do that?

 

A bias is not necessarily wrong though.
I mean, look at what China is trying to do, they are trying to use gamification to get their citizens to follow their authoritarian rules, and get their citizens to enforce these rules via social pressure.
EC is just pointing this out, and hopes that they are wrong.

 

With gamification who needs democracy anyway?

 

And interesting.

I love Extra Credit videos, most of the time. But their push for gamification in everything, including education, kind of bothers me.

So rather surprised by this episode. It is rather creepy, to me at least, but why would they think that something that works would not someday extend to something they didn't like? My guess is it could get worse rather than better.

Back 50+ years ago, advertisers put subliminal images into movies..such as a flash of Eat Popcorn, to get people to go buy popcorn. There are many examples of such things in TV and magazine ads. They worked....so they were made.

Using psychological methods to manipulate people is common and happens all the time. As our technology changes, so do the methods used.

Extra Credits is just drawing attention to the subject, which is a good thing...however, they don't seem to mind if it is used a game or in schools.

 

Run in terror! It really doesn't seem like that big a deal, once you strip away the fear mongering.

You are also American, are you not? Freedom is so deeply ingrained in the American psyche that its hard to see the advantages of any other way.

If the rules make society safer and more prosperous, is that really that big a deal?

I visited both China and the US a few years ago, for business. I'm not convinced that the US model is the better one. In China my host bragged about the new highway we were driving on, that had not been there a year ago. In the US the government had just shut down a wide variety of offices and services because it refused to pay its workers. In China I was met with orderly queues, and respectful staff. In the US those same queues were watched over by heavily armed men, carrying guns I hadn't seen outside of COD before.

It was eye opening trip for me. I'm not advocating the world switches to the Chinese model, but I'm also not convinced the US one is superior.

 

I agree that freedom is overrated - though not as much as happiness. However I find it hard to understand what benefit there is to playing some silly facebook-style game to keep my social standing. It's the worst of social networking, modern teaching practices, and useless Skinner-esque game theory combined into the perfect insult onto everything I value about human character. It's the kind of tragic joke I would have expected to spring up in North Korea or something, like "Let's play a game with Kim Jong-Un on how to be an upstanding citizen! Don't worry, if you lose, you'll never know it!"

 

Well....Americans are not always like the ones you see in the news. I am a pretty liberal, don't mind taxes, kind of American. I am not an anti-socialist or a right wing "hate everyone that doesn't look like us" either.

My husband worked for a company that did business in China. The Chinese engineers married Americans to come here. They felt as if they could not use their abilities in China and for some of the young ones, most of the money they made was sent home to family members who were very poor in the country. I am sure there are as may different stories in China as anywhere.

I do want to make choices on who or what I support, and not be coerced and manipulated into turning in my neighbors. I do want the ability choose what I read, what games I play, and not worry that it will affect my future and my children's future or my friends' future.

Sorry if you don't get that. I will get over my disappointment.

So..to take this back to the subject of the thread....gamification may be used to manipulate people and it will be interesting to see what happens in 2020 and beyond. If it works, will it become a trend among governments and corporations to control what people do? Is it okay if they enjoy being manipulated?

 

I've been arguing from the start of this thread that corporations and governments already are telling you what to do. Gamification is another tool to use for manipulation, but its not fundamentally different from what is already happening.

The media we consume, the food we eat, the places we go, the ideals we support. That's already a result of a significant amount of manipulation from other people. Escaping from manipulation as a human being is pretty much impossible.

 

Of course it is and we all know that we are all being told what to do. But that does not mean we should not discuss it and understand it. Should we just "not worry and be happy"? Live a blissful life in ignorance?

Or should we discuss these things, how they are used, who benefits and make ourselves aware.

Every read Fahrenheit 451? I remember the wife so engrossed in her interactive TV that the world went on without her. I would rather read books and discuss and talk, and learn.

 

They've already gamified politics, at least some people have learnt to game the system. Unfortunately they based it on a South Park game........

I found this amusing, & scarily plausible
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/so...al&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

 

Fear mongering? Over the years I've had four recently-naturalized Chinese employees (almost all at the same time, by random chance). Two were "just folks." The other two had been political prisoners. I only knew one well enough to get his story. Spent ten years literally breaking rocks for expressing an unfavorable opinion about a guy who was roughly the equivalent of a city mayor. His neighbor turned him in for a few bucks.

As for the "just folks" couple, they brought their parents to the US to visit. The parents concluded they were engaged in organized crime and refused to ever visit again because they had a nice house and drove a Benz. Their family grew up in dirt-floor huts.

I'll keep my dim view of totalitarianism, thanks.

 

Fair enough. My experience has been different.

 

I'm curious where you saw this. Administrative dissolution of a business is pretty rare here, and it would never be handled by heavily armed people, it's pretty much a long, drawn-out process that involves lawyers and office people. Cops carry handguns, but hell, so do I.

 

I would like to know where this comes from too. There is a lot of bad news out there and a lot of stuff on the internet that is not true.

I am confused. Yes, there are laws in the US about paying a minimum wage to your employees. So if a business was running illegally and not paying it's workers, it should be shut down. We have a lot of regulations that protect workers as do many other countries.

As for the queues, I can only guess you mean at the airport. Could this have been during a terrorist scare or after 911? I have traveled a lot here and never saw open weapons, just the police with their normal guns. I do remember a trip to Europe once where I saw men with rifles in the airport...in a European town. My guess is they were responding to a situation. Times have changed and that has become more common.

Lots of different views on guns in the US...so don't want to get into that here. Very touchy subject. But again...reading the news will give you an very inflated idea. We are a country of many varied people as are most.

I am not sure how this thread got onto the differences between different countries. Someone posted about gamification being used by the government to influence the people...and suddenly I find myself defending my own crazy country. LOL

Could we not do this? I know I was part of it too. However, one should be able to criticize something a government does without it being extrapolated to other countries.

Reminds of the time we complained about a child at my son's school...and the teacher said "your son has problems too". Rather than discussion the situation, they had to blame us.

I NEVER said or implied that the US is superior in any way. I am rather insulted that you should think that.

 

I would be interested in the source of that also.

 

On the (very interesting) topic of gamification, and since we've kind of swerved towards politics, my wife builds websites and sometimes mobile apps for our city government. They were recently working on one for kids that discouraged littering, encouraged recycling, and other clearly positive (related) behaviors. I'm heavily libertarian (damned near anarcho-capitalist) but even I can't deny that's a form of government gamification that I could probably get behind. Kids are going to be glued to their phones anyway, so...

 

Sounds cool! I like it.

So..does that mean it is okay to "manipulate" behaviors through gamification if it is for the greater good of the community? Who gets to decide if it is the greater good for the community?

I don't know the answer. It seems okay if it is a local government/community trying to teach kids how to take care of their environment. It seems not so good if it is a company trying to get kids to spend more money on useless products, like those silly little plastic things that cost $5 and are the size of a pencil eraser...but give the kids "status" if they own them.

I hate those things.

 

OK I would like people to go out and about to places of interest or to venues that pay me more for footfall within their establishment.

Boring right!

Spoiler: If we use Gamificaiton we get

Pokemon GO.



Did you guess it?

 

But..this is a game.

So when using a game to attract people to venues, one would expect it to be like a game. Using a game to gamify something is obvious. It is not doing it quietly, or "saying" it is something else. It is openly saying...PLAY!

Again, we are discussing the ethics. I don't see anything here that is negative other than the article I read on Googlenews day about a guy playing the game while driving and side-swiping a police car, or the girl who was hit by a car when playing the game, or a few other similar stories. And I don't consider that necessarily the game faults, but the fault of the foolish players.

We used to go to the beach sometimes with my kids when they were young at Halloween. The stores on the boardwalk gave out treats along with collectible items to the kids. It drew us parents into the store. We sometimes bought stuff.

Pokemon Go uses venues as locations where people can get "treats" and "collectible" items. It draws people into their shops and restaurants, where they often buy stuff.

I am imaging a game in the future that teaches us about the history of a town or district through augmented reality. Maybe it teaches geology by leading "players" on a trip through an interesting geological area and augmenting with information and pictures.

This sort of thing does not change behavior subliminally but openly. It does not encourage us to shun our friends or neighbors. It does not force us to engage in the "game" in order to participate in a forum or in school or do our job.

It is a game and therefore, we play it because it is fun. If we don't want to play it, we don't lose anything.

 

You can do that now. Go to a museum and rent those little headphones with the pre-recorded tour. AR with 70s tech! (Hey, audio is reality too, right?)

 

Not all the voices I hear are reality.

 

Apologies. I shouldn't have derailed the conversation. However there were a lot of posts along the lines of 'the Chinese government is evil', which I don't really buy. And by far the easiest target for comparison is the US government.

Spoiler: For completeness

For completeness in reference to guns watching queues I was referring to the airports. Never seen so many armed people in my life. As to the offices shutting down, I was in the states in October 2013. At that point the US government stopped paying its workers and shut down, due to what essentially amounted to political posturing. Its hard to respect a government that does not meet its commitments to the people it employs.

So gamification is okay if it supports causes and ideals that you support. But not okay if its used for something you don't support or understand.

 

It's more about it being upfront about its intentions. Being clear and upfront gives you the chance to disagree and dismiss/reject. But there's gamification that is intended to obfuscate something else, that makes its intentions unclear on purpose and that's dishonest and bad and tries to prevent you from deciding properly how you feel about it.

 

Did you read the second paragraph? I asked the same question you just asked.

You seem to really be misunderstanding me lately.

Just because I think something is nice or okay personally, does not at mean I think it is okay to use those methods. My opinions are only mine, hence the issue..who does get to decide?

 

I think if everybody clicks "show ignored content" the discussion will get much more interesting. ^_^

 

I saw nothing like this. I saw antecdotal stories by some of us explaining our reasons for concern. I did not see ANYONE call anyone evil.

I am not used to you being so black and white. Sorry if someone pushed a sore spot. It happens to me sometimes too. I do enjoy your posts.

 

Well..it was only half the government. Most were even more disgusted then you were. You should have pity on us for our currently broken system.

That is it on that subject. If you want to talk about it in PM's, I would gladly do so.

 

One of the major premises behind my project is to use gamification to get people to do what they really don't want to do but they know they should. This thread has been good to remind myself that I have not paid enough attention to the Gamification parts of my project.

I think that part of my problem is that I never really understood achievements or trophies. I remember during the PS3/Xbox360 fanboy battles how people were claiming how great the XBox achievements were and how horrible Sony was for not having them or later how great Sony's Trophy system. I just want games that are fun to play. For that matter, I don't really get Pokemon Go. It's kind of neat that it promotes you going out for walks, but I like to think when I go for walks and searching for Pokemon kind of gets in the way of that thinking.

 

Hmm, so how does one do this? If one doesn't want to do something but you believe they should do it, then how will you make them do it?

Should do is sort of a personal thing, right? You think they should do it but you have to get them to think THEY should do it or they won't do it.

I prefer someone help me enjoy something I already sort of want to do but can't get motivated to do it...like exercise. I know it is good for me and I want to do it, but just can't motivate myself to do it because it isn't fun.

Pokemon Go would not motivate me to "exercise" mostly because I don't care about Pokemon. I still have nightmares of taking my 5 year old to a Pokemon movie and listening to some yellow thing say "Pikachoo" constantly. Ugh. Plus, it is too hot out here to be walking around.

So the trick is..what will make me exercise? I have so thoughts on that...but since I am not your market area, my thoughts won't help. Besides, I don't want to do something someone else believes I should do. I want to do things I believe I should do.

 

To Gamify this (if that's a proper word), we need a system where a game you really want to play gives you extra resources or content based on how many steps you take ... probably using one of this watch-things that measures your footsteps (or your leg movement if you prefer cycling). You go out and take a walk (or get on the treadmill) and afterwards you have extra stuff you can use to enjoy the game more.

I think it would be a fantastic motivator for a lot of gamers. The problem being how do you get it across multiple games? If Blizzard did it with World of Warcraft, what about Rift fans or people who prefer Call of Duty?

Yeah, I know it's a silly example in a lot of ways. Still, I think it would be a positive use of gamification.

Which brings us back around to the whole ethics debate though. What if I'm running Blizzard or EA or Ubisoft and I decide to add this into all of my games? Who am I to tell people they have to get in better shape? Yes, I know it's doctor approved to get in better shape, but it's a slippery slope because I can also gamify something else I think is for your own good and feel good looking myself in the mirror.

For me, the ethics of gamification when used outside of a game should boil down to that the gamification needs to be both obvious to an outside observer who looks at it from a rational standpoint, and where the gamification itself does not punish people who behave the way we want to encourage if they don't do the gamification parts.

To make that last part clear, I'll give two examples.

1) If my employer was creating a system to encourage people to always be on time, and was giving little trophies or stickers or whatnot, then I would not want the employer to look poorly on me for promotion or raise if I was always on time but ignored the little stickers game because I felt it was ridiculous.

2) McDonalds gamifies buying sodas and food for periods by offering Monopoly game pieces on the containers. Any rational person can look at this and see clearly that they're trying to get you to buy more in order to get more game pieces. Nothing hidden there. Additionally, other than the fact that you can't win any prizes, you don't lose out by throwing the pieces away. It's not like McDonalds charges you more if you don't bring in your paper Monopoly board showing that you're playing.


Sorry, that got longer than intended.

 

Apparently I'm off my game this week. I blame it on sick kids. Please don't take anything I've said too seriously.

I'll try to tone things down until I'm back out of being sleep deprived.

 

I'm starting to think that somewhere in the world there's a supervillain reading this thread ... and taking notes.

 

I am not on my game this week either...having to drive kids to art camp very early every morning and pick them up later....2 hours a day on the road. Very exhausting.

Hope your kids feel better soon!

 

To clarify is Gamification the application of Skinner box style psychological manipulation to get people to do something you want, or just juicing up feedback mechanisms e.g. Gold Star's?