As yesterday’s Barcamp wound down, I had a conversation about the limited reach of conventional gamification and the difficulties in designing game systems more intrinsically linked to a desired pattern of real-world behaviour. I found myself less than articulate in speaking to my views and ideas and went home running them over and over again in my head. Here, then, is my second attempt.

The idea of gamification, as I’ve seen it most commonly applied, refers to systems of incremental reward and recognition for following particular patterns of behaviour. As World of Warcraft grants you better and flashier items the more time you invest into it, in a real world workplace you might find stickers added to a chart when passing progressive milestones. Perhaps there’s something at the end of all of it (e.g. “Collect all the stickers and take a 3-day weekend.”) or perhaps seeing your progress visually tracked is the only provided reward. Either way, the promise of some reward is often enough to keep us going when we might have otherwise abandoned the effort long ago. “Just a little bit further, just do one more sequence; you’re so close to the next level.” Though these patterns do tap into some of our more primal processes (and are often incredibly effective for such), I think games are generally done a disservice by being reduced to such a shallow system of reward.

When thinking about what it is that games can do for us, one of my favourite rubrics is that of Mechanics, Dynamics, Aesthetics (or here for Extra Credits’ more digestible video review of the topic). To highlight a few of my favourite axes from it, why do we limit our thinking on the compelling aspects of games to simple progression when we could harness people’s desires for fellowship? For creative expression?  For a sense of wonder? Could we change gamification from what it is in the present to an involved process by which people might derive satisfaction beyond a slow dopamine trickle? And, to extend the question slightly, can we harness these more meaningful exchanges to greater real-world ends?

Here’s where things start to branch out. There are those games that impose a system of interaction around real-world issues, having the player address problems in relatively direct ways. There are those that attempt to educate the player through simulation and immersion. There are those that exist to challenge your patterns of thought. This is certainly not an exhaustive list, but it does provide a starting point for thinking on the ways in which games can extend beyond themselves and beyond shallow patterns of reward. This is where I think attempts at gamification tend to come up short. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to class this as a question of intrinsic versus extrinsic reward, but I feel like interactions in which your actions have a critical and more consequential effect, when they’re linked to a real-world topic, will see a greater internalization of the intended messages. Contrast this with a “game” that simply gives you a jellybean for each paragraph of a news brief that you read. There’s a marked difference between rewarding process and rewarding completion, and I think the latter fails to meaningfully tap into what makes games unique as a medium and compelling in entirely their own way.

So how do I hope to carve my path in this world of games? Can I make something impactful/meaningful/thought-provoking that simply couldn’t be done if it weren’t a game? Ha. There’s the million dollar question. For now, I think I need to hone my craft and just make games mindfully. If they’re fun and nothing else, I’ll be glad to have made a start, but certainly I hope to grow from there. Can I educate? Can I encourage? Can I inspire? If I don’t design explicitly for these objectives, can I still accomplish them? Hm.