Gamification in Troubled Times (Don’t Laugh)

I’ve been thinking about what I would be thinking about, if I were thinking about gamification right now.

For context, I teach a massive open online course on gamification, which is the application of digital game design techniques to business and social challenges. I co-wrote a book on the topic. I’ve been an advocate for the value of game thinking in business and beyond. But I haven’t done much gamification work lately.

Partly, I’ve been concentrating on my other research areas (blockchain, big data, and telecom policy at the moment). And partly, I’ve been focused on how the country is going to hell. It’s hard to get excited about making things fun and solving ordinary business problems when our fundamental freedoms and the Rule of Law are under siege. Yet I can’t help seeing a glimmer of a connection. Gamification surely isn’t the answer to Trump. In some ways it contributes to the problem. But I think it has something useful to teach.

I view gamification as an architecture of motivation. Done right, it’s a hybrid of art and science in the service of humanity. Architecture is about buildings that are beautiful, functional, and safe. Buildings fail when any of those is ignored. Gamification fails when it’s just about fun, or habits, or rewards, or competition, or behavior change. Or it succeeds too well.

Motivation is so important to understanding why America is where it is today. It is even more important to how we get out. The people who wanted to “take their country back,” to “destroy the system,” what made them so motivated? Several things, I know. But in challenging the content of their beliefs, we should not ignore the structure of their worldview.

The right (alt- and otherwise) has created a Magic Circle. In game design, that’s a concept from the philosopher Johan Huizinga about how players respect the boundaries and objectives of the game. So many rules of conduct, when pushed, turn out to be just shared norms. Create a sufficiently self-contained bubble, and they disappear. So lies and fake news are only false under the rules of reality. Sadly, it’s not just those who want to make the world better who believe, pace Jane McGonigal, that reality is broken.

All of us pushing approaches that make life feel more like a game need to acknowledge how such techniques can be perverted. The florid gamification criticisms may only apply to bad gamification, but there’s a lot of bad gamification out there. If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.

Fixing America must also be about motivation. Not just the points and badges of early activism, but sustained engagement. What if political participation became a habit for more people? Not just campaigning, but real ongoing involvement?

I don’t know if those of us who love the power of games will have a role to play in this struggle. I’d like to think so. Not because games are a distraction, but because they’re about learning. To crawl out of this hole, America must learn from experience.

I think I’m drawn to gamification because my instincts are to focus on ideas. Make no mistake, the ideas are crucial. But great ideas don’t win without motivation. People need to care, and engage, and accept things they may not be used to. The goal is not just to be right, but to win the fight.

Imagine a Magic Circle where solidarity and sensitivity to evidence are part of the rules, while hate isn’t. I can. Can you?