It’s not often that I read a post, then watch the linked video, and then sit back in my chair and think to myself that all well-intentioned people should just be shot out of hand. Like the person who wrote that video. Gamification is the idea of bringing gaming ideas to solve massive social problems in the world. For example, instead of getting our kids to learn basic math because it might be useful for them, we need to load in lots of achivements so as to make it fun, just like gaming is.
There are two very big problems here. The first is that there is a good deal of evidence that achivements don’t work at all, and in fact they encourage people to play less. To simplify it for those of you who don’t feel like listening to that 60 minute broadcast just linked, (even if it is fascinating), studies have shown that the awarding of some form of encouragement point, (gold stars, points on a scale to get an end reward, etc), remove the subjects intrinsic desire to partake in an activity: in other words, from that moment on they only do the activity if there is an attached reward. Subjects who are not rewarded in this way continue to do the activity for the sake of doing the activity itself. So achivements remove the creative enjoyment element associated with play. Imagine what it could do for stuff like school!
The second problem is far scarier. It is a complete social streamlining of the way we function as a society, reducing our lives to the mere attainment of dubious and worthless rewards in order to encourage us to continue doing basic tasks. It invokes images of a lab rat crawling through a maze for a biscuit reward. The people who want to introduce this probably have good intentions, as most do-gooders have; but attempting to gloss over major problems in society today by giving out achivement points to do them is not only facile, but it will turn off the creative elements of society, who will in turn never go to achieve greatness in science, art, or anything else simply because they were paid to play as children.
The problem with society today is not that we have so many more distractions than people did 100 years ago. If it was as simple as making work as fun as WoW then I suppose the worlds ills could be fixed by Ronald McDonald. The fact that people prefer to spend all their time on Facebook or WoW instead of looking for ways to make themselves more employable to find an exciting job is simply because we are taught to think for the short term reward as opposed to the long term consequence. Our schooling, our government, everything follows that same line. Adding facile achievement points to the equation merely adds another nail into the existing coffin.
My thanks to Nils from whose blog all these links were plundered.
April 2, 2011 at 12:01 am
Excellent post. I will spend some time tomorrow watching the video.
I entirely agree with you. We already have meaningless achievement points in our society – money. In and of itself it has no value, particularly when computers run all of our banking systems. But it is used as a scoreboard for life’s achievements.
Note that most great achievements were not born out of desire for money (points, stars etc) how much was anyone paid for inventing penicillin for example ? Conversely, how many of us would do what we do for a living if money weren’t the point measure that it is ?
April 2, 2011 at 10:01 am
lol. When you say things like “The problem with society today…”, it’s almost like you were there, 100 years ago.
Nonetheless, well put. All those basics learned at school are their own reward. That especially becomes apparent when doing basic probability and statistics, correspondence or even just being good to yourselves and the person next to you.
April 2, 2011 at 11:15 am
Aye, life has more distractions, and they can often obscure our view of reality.
Lots more, distractions, to the extent that, theres one (or several) for everyone, ond if one isn’t available, or currently socially acceptable, theres a ready substitute that fits the bill.
I think WoW is one such example.
Some ppl like a wee toke, some ppl do this regularly and after a while it can be a problem, they don’t realise why they go for it regularly but to maybe from a more objective point of view, the term “escapisim” whould readily spring to mind.
Now, WoW can replace a toke very nicely i.e. a few hours sitting still, disengaged form the real world but mentally stimulated in a fun kind of way.
So I guess my point is, forget all the mamby-pamby theories, life is life, do the hard work and stay real because there are many many ways to skip school and take the soft option.Life is work, work brings reward, work harder AND smarter and the rewards are better, epix aren’t real, and the meaning of life you thought you’d sussed last night is bullshite.
April 4, 2011 at 4:04 pm
“The fact that people prefer to spend all their time on Facebook or WoW instead of looking for ways to make themselves more employable to find an exciting job is simply because we are taught to think for the short term reward as opposed to the long term consequence.”
Brain development in humans is not complete until the age of 25. The last part that develops is our ability to see how our actions now will effect our future. Anyone over the age of 25 can probably think back to about that time and remember that is when you stopped being able to go out drinking all night, when you got more serious about your job/career, you got more serious in your relationship with your partner.
I would say a big part of “maturity” and “maturing” is gaining this very ability.
The achievements and short term rewards are most definitely appealing to the younger generation of gamers. Their brains are wired for it.
I began seriously gaming and playing WoW at the age of 27. I had already graduated from College. I had already purchase my first home and had my career in full swing. I have the maturity to balance my real life with my facebook/WoW life.
…..
Thank you for the link, I will make sure and watch it when I get some time at home this evening.