Gamification has a dark side
Gamification has a dark side
Gamification has a dark side
By Vincent Gabrielle
November 1, 2018
Summary
Gamification is the application of game elements into nongame spaces.
Gamification is the premise of fitness games such as Zombies, Run!, where users push themselves to exercise by outrunning digital zombies, and of language-learning apps such as Duolingo, where scoring prompts one to master more.
Gamification's trapping of total fun masks that we have very little control over the games we are made to play - and hides the fact that these games are not games at all.
The Egyptian board game senet represented the passage of the ka to the afterlife; its name is commonly translated as 'the game of passing'.
We don't see the emergence of anything analogous to modern gamification until the 18th century when Europe underwent a renaissance of games and game design.
The spread of ombre coincided with a boom in games and game culture in Europe.
Game development corporations seized on a booming market, cultivating gamers as a distinct category of consumer, and focusing on white, adolescent and teenage boys.
By 2008, the gamification of work felt absolutely natural to a generation of people raised on ubiquitous digital technology and computer games.
The US ice-cream parlour chain Cold Stone Creamery marshalled the power of games to teach workers how to be expert ice-cream mixers with the game Stone City, which uses motion controls to teach people how to 'feel' out the correct scoops.
Today, the interface designer and game scholar Sebastian Deterding says that this kind of gamification expresses a modernist view of a world with top-down managerial control.
Reference
Gabrielle, V. (2018, November 01). The dark side of gamifying work. Retrieved September 13, 2020, from https://www.fastcompany.com/90260703/the-dark-side-of-gamifying-work?mc_cid=9eb117b421