Experiencing Gamification

In the blog post “Gamification is Bullshit,” Ian Bogost lays out an argument that the perniciousness of gamification is rooted in its coercive or concealing nature. He draws on Harry Frankfurt’s writing on bullshit to distinguish it from outright lies or deceit, making the point that it is just another example of spin dreamed up by corporate marketing departments to “affirm existing corporate practices”. This seems to me a convincing description of the intention behind gamification – to coerce employees or end users to achieve greater productivity and engagement – but I wonder how the targets of gamification interpret it and feel its effects. 

Before entering UChicago in the fall, I worked at a multi-national tech company. About one year into my time there, a new internal social network (incorporating blog posts, comments, likes, etc.) was implemented, and as part of this, a system was introduced which tracked how many posts employees made, how often they commented on others’ posts, how often they “liked” co-workers’ posts and were “liked” back, and so on. Depending on the metrics that were produced from this data, people would get badges next to their internal email avatars to mark their engagement. Furthermore, the HR department announced they would factor these participation metrics into their regular performance evaluations. Thus, participation in this gamified social network would have some sort of direct impact on whether employees would get a raise, promoted, etc. This system, however, led to abuse – there was nothing preventing people from going on a like spree and artificially inflating their metrics – and HR ultimately made another announcement that they would no longer be factoring it into their performance evaluations. 

Although the above is an anecdotal story – and perhaps an example of poorly-implemented gamification rather than indicative of gamification in general – it raises some interesting issues. It demonstrates that people know when they are playing a game. Indeed, gamification, by its very nature, attempts to use the systems and symbols of games to facilitate its incentive structure. To return to the concept of “bullshit,” it’s not about tricking people into doing work, or into thinking work is fun, but rather to coerce them into working both more productively and more within the boundaries, and to the specifications, that their bosses lay out. I think Xiaogao’s introduction of Jagoda and McDonald’s (2018) “affective affordances” is important here. The gamification of internal social networks may induce feelings of “eeriness” or paranoia in users, both because they know they are being monitored and because of an “unnatural” feeling that they are engaged in a cynical activity that is meant to stimulate (or simulate) engagement. At the same time, however, there is also the thrill that people feel with the discovery of loopholes of flaws in the gamified system. In the above example, this thrill would come with the realization that because the system records volume of engagement, indiscriminate liking and commenting – the opposite of the engaged attention the system seemed design to engender – would result in a judgement of “good performance”. 

Therefore, if it is true that people can play games outside of or against the parameters that designers set out – such as by ignoring mission objectives and role-playing as a bus driver in Grand Theft Auto – then it could be possible for people to undermine or subvert gamified systems in a similar way.