Gamification is broken
Gamification is broken
Gamification is broken
By Colin Campbell
April 17, 2023
Summary
Gamification makes the same promise - it's essentially a system for turning real world activities into games, by adding challenges, prizes, leaderboards and all that.
As game designer Adrian Hon argues in his entertaining book "You've Been Played", the key difference between Mary Poppins and many gamification applications, is that Poppins was interested in improving the lives of her charges, while most of the companies behind gamification apps are emphatically not interested in the wellbeing of their users.
The app's gamification is not powerful enough to make Duolingo an entertaining game in its own right.
"Anecdotes abound of corporate overreach, when it comes to gaming. In 2019, Amazon warehouse worker Postyn Smith, described the company's workplace games: "Most of the games involve some aspect of competition.
Hon points towards game company obsessions with "Slot machine" mechanics like loot boxes which have been used to generate extra revenues while adding little to the core experience of the games themselves.
It's no accident that these gamification tricks are generally despised by game critics.
Hon writes: "Just as companies and workplaces have used generic gamification to coerce people to do things they haven't chosen and aren't in their best interests, the video games industry has repurposed those systems for the same goal: to make as much money as possible."
Reference
Campbell, C. (2023, April 17). Gamification is broken. GamesIndustry.biz. https://www.gamesindustry.biz/gamification-is-broken