People: why we need to put the fun back into gamification

The word “gamification” hasn’t been in our lexicon long, but the basic principle it’s based on — that people enjoy competing against each other and themselves – is old as the hills, of course. Anyone who has ever challenged a childhood friend to a race, or bet his brother that he couldn’t eat that sixth hot dog, can tell you that competition is not exclusively a tool to foster productivity. It’s also fun.

As a society, we are increasingly using technology to capitalize on this human itch to compete: deploying software that incorporates gamification to make us more efficient workers, more plugged-in consumers, healthier animals. Companies are instituting programs that allow workers to gauge their output against that of their colleagues in an attempt to encourage them to work better and faster. Doctors are outfitting patients with devices that track calories consumed and calories burned in an effort to compel patients to exercise more or eat better, getting them engaged in their own care.

And marketers are calling upon gamification in a number of creative ways, such as incorporating it into customer loyalty programs.

This is all well and good. But I can’t help but wonder whether the way we’re currently utilizing gamification has taken some of the fun out of the whole thing. When I read about a company that uses gamification to get workers to load boxes faster than their fellows, or about a doctor who encourages a patient to try to best a previous personal record on her bike, I think back to the mother who, after watching her kids race each other across a field, hatches a plan to give them both buckets and challenge them to see who can return more quickly with water for dinner. The race may still be enjoyable for a while. But would it stay that way in the long run, given its new utilitarian (and prescribed) purpose?

Certainly the more practical applications of gamification can be transformative on both a personal and a societal level; I don’t mean to discount those applications. New York City’s Department of Education has employed it to accelerate kids’ progress in school, to pick one of many examples of the use of gamification to achieve a social end. And there’s evidence that gamification can indeed help encourage people to exercise more or eat healthier.

But I would like to think that there’s also room for a variety of gamification apps that have more of a kinship with the original end goal of competition: fun and fellowship. Gamification could enable friends to compete for their own amusement, rather than solely for the benefit of a corporation. It could help make us more adventurous, as well as more efficient.

As our world becomes increasingly saturated with electric technology, I expect to see a new wave of apps that puts gamification in users’ hands – allowing us to set the rules ourselves, and play for our own purposes.

It’s easy to dream up other possibilities. What about an app that uses gamification to encourage people to plan outings with their loved ones, for example, or one that enables friends who live in different cities to take a game they used to play when they were young and carry it over into the virtual realm? If we’re given more agency over the games we play, maybe we’ll begin to remember why we liked playing in the first place.

Image: ruslatunna (via Flickr).