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Using Games to Get Better at Life
Screenshot of Find The Future, created by gamification proponent Jane McGonigal to increase involvement with the New York Public Library.
It’s often said that life is not a game. With this, people mean to indicate that there are few second chances and that the actions we take, as well as their consequences, are not trivial. In short, we have to be serious. Whether this view short-changes both games and life is worthy of debate, but there’s no question that games—and, specifically, play—are very much part of our lives.
Millions of people are watching the Stanley Cup finals, many following every move and tracking every statistic. Millions more are spending evenings launching birds and snorting green bovines, solving crosswords, or building communities in virtual lands. What is it about games that draw us in, and can we transfer some of their allure to other aspects of our lives? What if people were as involved in transit politics as they were their favourite hockey team?
Bringing game mechanics into non-games situations to help get people more involved is the basis of gamification, a concept that’s been around for a while now, but has taken off in the last few years. Games themselves have been used as training tools for a long time now—Fast ForWord, for example, is a series of exercises that have helped children with autism improve speech and language skills—but gamification isn’t about turning life into a game. Instead, the goal of gamification, through the use of sensitive feedback systems, is to provide people a sense of achievement in a wide variety of contexts.
Nike+ uses results metrics to encourage more running.
An example is Nike+, a training tool that monitors people’s runs to provide metrics on their progress. Participants can compare their data to their friends’ on a leaderboard—it’s harder to slack off when you know other people are watching your results. The program even includes a small avatar that, at turns, will encourage or mock you into performing better.
Toronto-native Gabe Zichermann, a leading proponent for gamification and a keynote speaker at this year’s mesh conference, sees endless opportunity for engaging people. “When I’m asked if gamification could be used to help recovering alcoholics or curb gambling addictions, the answer is ‘yes,’” he says. “This is an awesome thing to introduce playfulness, reward, and incentive into places today that are just drudgery—that to me is exciting.” In fact, Zichermann lists healthcare as one of the many big sectors building interest in benefiting from gamification: others include education, government, and finance.
In his talk at mesh, Zichermann raised the example of the successful social game FarmVille, where players starting the game are slowly introduced to the mechanics and supported throughout the process. He noted upon starting the game, players are given simple tasks and praised upon completion, encouraging them to continue in the game. “You can’t lose in the game,” he said, and added that more websites should adopt this tactic of guiding users.
Gabe Zichermann at the mesh11 conference. Photo by Kaz Ehara/CNW.
One way of interpreting what Zichermann is saying: fear of failure can be an intimidating reason for people to not try something in the first place. At the same time, for marketers frothing at the mouth at the idea of people flocking to their product because of the inclusion of game mechanics, Zichermann is clear that gamification isn’t a panacea for engagement: “You can’t make crap fun,” he told the audience at mesh.
Critics of gamification often lament the artificial inclusion of rewards like badges and other “achievements.” Zichermann agrees with the criticism to an extent, and cites the Huffington Post as a poster child for aimless rewards. The news site hands out three kinds of badges to commenters: Networker, for those with a large number of fans and followers; Superuser, for those who comment often; and, Moderator, for those who flag inappropriate comments. Based on a commenter’s number of actions, HuffPo will level up the badges. Zichermann doesn’t think these badges deepen reader engagement in a particularly meaningful way. (He jokes that as a HuffPo contributor, he is biting the hand that doesn’t feed him.) At the same time, Zichermann can’t see why the use badges more broadly is given such a bad rep when they can be used properly, noting that they have a long history of use in organizations like the Boy Scouts.
Another criticism thrown at gamification is that there are ethical concerns with the addictiveness of game mechanics. There’s a reason why casinos are regulated, after all, and when, as Zichermann mentioned in his talk, people are spending upwards of $10,000 a month to play social games, there’s a need to discuss any potential harm. He acknowledges that addiction could be an issue with gamification and believes in a voluntary code of conduct. Such a code would contain two tenets: “To disclose to users what we’re going to do when we do it so they can make informed decisions, and to never to do anything that will be harmful to them.” He draws a comparison between the addictive quality of games to the belief that video games make people violent: “Study after study tells us a violent video game does not make us more violent. It doesn’t. However, an already violent person will be trained to be more violent, because video games train.”
Love it or hate it, gamification is shaping up to become the next big thing in public engagement. It wouldn’t be surprising if, for example, the savvy team behind Obama’s re-election campaign includes elements of game mechanics in 2012. A book by game designer and author Jane McGonigal’s called Reality is Broken has already captured the imagination of many on the possibilities of games to inspire change. In the end, Zichermann sees gamification creating more benefit than harm. “It is inspiring to think that the world could be more fun.”