Shouldn’t games be FUN?!? Why “gamification” fails
Aaron Kalb
April 2, 2024
Wittgenstein famously demonstrated how difficult it can be to properly define the word “game.” But I think he, you, and I can all generally recognize a game “when [we] see it” (to paraphrase an infamous Supreme Court decision), and can even more decisively recognize the many things that are absolutely not games. For instance, it’s self-evident that a funeral is not a game, a depressed penguin is not a game, and a vat of purple mud is not a game*. Well call me crazy, but I’d argue that it’s nearly as obvious that a buy-nine-get-one-free promotion at a sandwich shop is not a “game” either. And yet implementing such a mirthless customer loyalty gimmick (dressed up with some scoring and sparkles and a so-called “story” about “working your way up to become ‘Mayor of Sandwichtopia’”) constitutes a canonical example of what many blithely label “gamification.”
*although potentially all of those could be elements of a wonderful game for someone with a quirky and morbid sense of humor
1. “Gamification” is a misnomer
A perfect definition for “game” would exactly delineate the set of things which are games — i.e. it would [a] include every single game and [b] exclude all non-games. The definition implicit in “gamification” fails spectacularly on both counts. On the one hand, it fails to exclude the kind of joyless incentive schemes outlined above. On the other hand, many of the best games — the most fun, most famous, most time-tested, most clearly “game-ular” (if you will) — possess few to none of the elements of so-called “gamification”:
The features of “games” which are injected into an activity in order to “gamify” it, include
points & badges,
leaderboards & performance graphs (where you can compare your score to other players’ scores or to your previous personal bests)
teammates,
stories,
and avatars
Hold that thought.
Among the most obvious subtypes of “games” (and classic examples thereof) are
tabletop games (like chess/xiangqi, Jenga, dominoes, Bananagrams, or Connect Four),
card games (like solitaire or blackjack),
parlor games (like charades),
“bar games” (like billiards),
field/lawn games* (like tag, 3-legged races, or bocce),
computer games (like Myst, Minesweeper, or Warcraft),
and arcade/video games (like Tetris, PacMan, Portal, Mortal Kombat, or Mario)
*as distinct from sports, which typically do have teammates, points, and scoreboard.
Remarkably, these canonical games are mostly if not entirely “ungamified.” Chess/xiangqi and Minesweeper have a light implicit story (of a battlefield with warring kings/generals or unexploded ordnance) but no avatars, teammates, points, badges, or leaderboards. (The Elo ratings of chess players are part of a “meta-game”, not chess itself, and they are deadly serious). Charades certainly involves teamwork (whether it’s played with explicit teams or with everyone guessing simultaneously) but has none of the other “game features” above. Tetris technically has a score in the corner, but a focused player may not even see it until they get a game over. Myst has a story but that’s it: no avatar, no points, etc. Many of the other digital games above have avatars and either stories or points but not both. And Solitaire, Jenga, Connect Four, and tag — despite being quintessential games — each have 0% of a game’s allegedly-essential elements.
One thing all the games above share (and most “gamified” activities lack, even post-”gamification”), is that they are actually fun to play.
Shoe-horning a scoreboard into corporate expense-report policy enforcement might be better than nothing, but the resulting activity is still not much fun and — I’d argue — still not a game.
So [a] “gamification” is a misleading term for the process we call “gamification” today, and [b] it seems we need a new word for “taking something boring/bad and actually making it more game-like and fun.”
2. Re(defining), deconstructing, and disambiguating “gamification”
What’s been called “gamification” historically is more accurately “compulsification”
So-called “gamification” — with the various features enumerated above — can be broken down into a three distinct processes:
“Narratification”: inserting avatars/characters and/or a story;
“Socialification”: introducing teammates and/or rivals, to activate a sense of tribalism and the associated hardwired incentives/behaviors; and
“Competification”: adding [a] scoring systems, [b] tools for tracking scores/points across time/space/players, and [c] elements which foster a desire to beat a benchmark. That benchmark could be [i] one’s previous best score, [ii] an arbitrary bar (to receive a badge or “unlock an achievement”), or [iii] the score of a rival — whether a known & named nemesis or simply the user who happens to be just ahead in the rankings
Note: counting & displaying data alone (as in, say, a sleep- or calorie-tracking app) — without Element C above — would constitute quantification but not proper “competitication”
Notes on “Narratification”: Humans find good stories inherently engaging. We identify with and/or become interested in characters, and we want to know what will happen next in a plot. “Narratification” does not entail making something more like a game per se; it more accurately implies making something increasingly similar to a book or a movie. In fact, you could say that Wheel of Fortune is essentially a no-narrative game (where the object is to guess the word/phrase I’m thinking of letter-by-letter) which can be lightly “narratified” to become Hangman. The story doesn’t change the fundamental game mechanics or make it any more “game-ular”; but it does raise the stakes and make things a bit more interesting.
Notes on “Socialification”: Humans are social animals. We want to support our friends/peers and defeat our rivals/enemies. Children will be more motivated to, say, pick up trash, if they do so in a group (vs. alone) and especially if they compare themselves to an out-group (“well the 5th graders found 20 pieces of trash in 3 minutes, but they’re big kids, so…”). But those social incentives don't make clean-up a game per se; just a more engaging activity. A computer game like Starcraft is fun to play with/against AIs, but can be made extra engaging when players team up with their friends against rival human strangers.
Notes on “Competification”: Humans are wired for competition. The arcade game Pong doubtlessly qualifies as a game and the simple act of trying to hit the virtual ball is fun (at least for a while). But things get really intensely engaging if you’re approaching the high score mark at the arcade, or if you’re playing physical ping-pong/table tennis in real life with a buddy who’s one point away from victory.
The examples above each demonstrate that none of the three subcomponents of so-called “gamification” actually make an activity into more of a game. But each one does make that activity more engaging, and make the participants more strongly motivated.
Since “incentivize” and “motivate” are already words, let’s coin “compulsify” as the umbrella term for “to narratify and/or to socialify and/or to competify in order to hijack people’s dopamine circuits and change their behavior through subconscious coercion.” What we’ve historically called “gamification” is really “compulsification.”
“Playification” can mean making something actually more game-like and fun
Now let’s consider what makes actual games “games” — if not narrative, scoring, social dynamics, or competition.
We like to play games even if there’s no plot to unfold, no points to earn, and no one else playing with us or even watching. Why?
Many games are intrinsically engaging by virtue of our innate desire to challenge ourselves and attain mastery:
Games like chess or Connect Four are intellectual challenges; figuring out the best move each turn is a logic puzzle to solve (a bit like a crossword). Games like Myst weave together a broad array of such puzzles. Charades and similar games like Taboo or Pictionary represent puzzles for the imagination: instead of analyzing a fixed set of possible moves, one player must creatively generate ideas for how to convey the secret concept to the others, within constraints.
Tetris, Pong, PacMan, Mario and so many other video games across genres ranging from combat to shooters to platformers are all about timing and eye-hand coordination. So is Jenga, albeit in a very different manner (instead of frantically hitting buttons at exactly the right time, it’s about meticulously performing slow, fine finger motions in exactly the right way). Field games like tag or three-legged races extend the same principles beyond the hands to other parts of the body, and also require balance, exertion, etc.
Even when “compulsified” (with, say, an inter-departmental competition including leaderboards and a Hogwarts house-points theme) expense reports are still an activity you (have to) do, not a game you (want to) play.
So to denote “make more like a game”, let’s use the term “playify”!
(Alternatively we can leave the “game” concept entirely to the side and say that “play” is the more relevant concept. When kids “play pretend” or “play house” they’re clearly playing and having fun even if those activities don’t qualify as “games.”)
Unlike “compulsification” — which is largely generic and superficial — true “playification” is really difficult and needs to be carefully designed and implemented for the particular activity to be “playified.” But when it works well, it transforms a dull activity that we need people to do, into a game that people actually want to play.
Luis von Ahn’s Games with a Purpose (GWAPs) are classic examples. His “ESP game” (reminiscent of Taboo and brought to market as Google Image Labeler) and “Peekaboom” (a bit like a cross between Pictionary and Lotto “Scratchers”) generated the troves of training data that enabled many advances in computer vision and object recognition. Players of FoldIt, meanwhile, have fun while making potentially life-saving contributions to biology!
3. Motivation and Manipulation
Classical economists contended that we’re rational, utility-maximizing creatures, and so if we do something a lot, it must be because we enjoy it. But if you’ve ever binged a Netflix show and regretted it, or felt “addicted” to social media, or watched a fun game night turn very un-fun because someone gets a bit too competitive*, you know that the three compulsification techniques (injecting narrative, social elements, and competition) can sometimes make us feel unhappy and out of control. Rather than building a fun car for us to joyride, these techniques seem to take the wheel, hijack our brains, and take us places we’d rather not go.
*I’m ashamed to say I’ve been that person much more than I care to admit
So the “gamification” misnomer matters. Not just because something “gamified” may still be no fun and therefore ineffective, but because if we confuse cheap psychological manipulation for making an activity so fun people will play it truly of their own volition, and enjoy doing it, we may praise as a win-win something which is actually dark and coercive.
Conclusion
If you’re feeling lazy and want an off-the-shelf bag-of-tricks to motivate people to do something they really don’t want to, then you can turn to tried-and-true “compulsification” techniques — inject narrative, make the activity social, encourage competition — to get some results. Just don’t delude yourself into thinking your users are having much fun and don’t insult actual games by claiming what you’ve done is “gamification.”
If you’re up for a creative challenge and want to help people instead of cynically manipulating them, then strive to “playify” the task at hand, actually turning it into something people want to play and will have genuine fun playing.
(Btw, I decided to write this because I’ve been thinking hard about how to playify something that many of us — myself included — know we should do, but often don’t. It’s an activity that’s been “gamified” compulsified to death, but is still no fun for many of us. I don’t pretend that playifyng it is going to be easy, but thinking about the challenge sure is fun, and if it works, the result will be fun, too. Stay tuned…)
Turning “Working Out” into “Playing Out”?
Coming soon!
