Category: art of failure

Amazon: Terrors of the Gamified Workplace

You probably heard about the New York Times exposé on work practices at Amazon, where a constant chatter of metrics monitor employees. Yes, this is gamification in practice.

Many horror stories about a complete disrespect for the life part of the work/life equation.

But there also is a simple design problem inside: The Anytime Feedback Tool apparently allows employees to comment on the performance of colleagues without their own identities being revealed to the target of the comment. Combine this with stack ranking, where every group has to rate somone in the group as lowest performing, with potential for being let go.

As I discuss in The Art of Failure, we have to ask ourselves what the ideal strategy of an employee is in this situation? The simple answer is that it is likely much easier to back stab a colleague with the Anytime Feedback Tool, thus dropping them in the ranking, than it is to genuinely improve your own performance. It is plain game design: is there a degenerate strategy? Yes, there is. It will be used. Water will find a crack.

*

On top of that, Jeff Bezos’ rebuttal is that this “doesn’t describe the Amazon I know or the caring Amazonians I work with every day.”

This more or less proves the article right: When managers or CEOs say that they don’t recognize the negative experience of the employees it means either that:

  • a) the company is organized such that the CEO will never hear about the negative experiences of the employees, or
  • b) the CEO is unwilling to hear about them.

Most likely both, with a) being the results of b)

The danger of metrics, and gamification, is that it insulates you from what is going on because you only receive the data you have chosen to receive. There is no substitute for listening to people.

Art of Failure talk at Comparative Media Studies, MIT, March 14

I am giving a talk on the Art of Failure this Thursday March 14 2013 at 5-7 PM, at Comparative Media Studies, MIT.

Location: 20 Ames St, Cambridge, MA Google Map. Room: E14-633

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Presented as part of MIT Comparative Media Studies’ Colloquium series for Spring 2013

We often talk of video games as being “fun,” but this is a mistake. When we play video games, our facial expressions are only occasionally those of of happiness, instead we frown and grimace when fail to achieve our goals. This is the paradox of failure: why do we play video games even though they make us unhappy?

In video games, as in tragic works of art, literature, theater, and cinema, it seems that we want to experience unpleasantness even if we also dislike it. Yet failure in a game is unique in that when we fail in a game, it means that we (not a character) are in some way inadequate, and games then motivate us to play more, in order to escape that inadequacy.

In this talk, based on his new book The Art of Failure, Jesper Juul will argue that the paradox of failure pervades games on many levels: in game design, in sports coaching, in strategy guides, in taunting, in the prejudices against sore losers. The issue of failure is also central to recurring controversies of what games can, or should be about: what does it mean to cause terrible events to happen in a fictional game world? Games, then are the Art of Failure: the singular art form that sets us up for failure and allows us to experience it and experiment with it.

Art of Failure book launch March 7 in New York City

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Art of Failure book launch w/ talks and game-playing:

Join us on Thursday, March 7th at 7PM for a conversation on the pain of playing video games!

We tend to talk of video games as being “fun,” but in his new book The Art of Failure, Jesper Juul claims that this is almost entirely mistaken. When we play video games, we frown, grimace, and shout in frustration. So why do we play video games even though they often make us unhappy?

At this book launch event, Jesper Juul will discuss game failure with Doug Wilson, PhD graduate from the IT University of Copenhagen and indie game designer at Die Guten Fabrik of Johann Sebastian Joust fame, and Frank Lantz, veteran game designer and Director of the NYU Game Center.

During the talk, the panelists will play painfully challenging games, and the audience will be invited to share the pain.

Jesper Juul is an assistant professor at the NYU Game Center. He has been working with video game theory since the early 1990′s. His previous book are Half-Real and A Casual Revolution, also on MIT Press. Jesper is a sore loser.

This event is free and open to the public.  Seats are limited, RSVP here: http://bit.ly/YsnWK1

Copies of The Art of Failure will be available for purchase following the lecture.

My new book: The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games

artoffailure_cover_180x264[1]My name is Jesper, and I am a sore loser.

And my new book The Art of Failure: An Essay on the Pain of Playing Video Games is fresh out on MIT Press!
(On Amazon.com. UK.)

To wit: I hate to fail in games. I think I enjoy playing video games, but why does this enjoyment contain at its core something that I most certainly do not enjoy?

We tend to talk of video games as being fun, but in The Art of Failure, I claim that this is almost entirely mistaken. When we play video games, we frown, grimace, and shout in frustration. So why do we play video games even though they often make us unhappy?

In the book I compare game failure to tragic literature, theater, and cinema. Where stories concern the inadequacies of others, game failure is special in that it concerns our personal inadequacies

The book covers the philosophy and psychology of failure, as well as the problem of interactive tragedy, and it shows how different types of game design makes failure personal.

Finally, I argue for our right to be just a little angry, and more than a little frustrated, when we fail.

Where to get it

Get The Art of Failure from your neighborhood bookstore, your favorite online retailer, or from the book’s companion website: http://www.jesperjuul.net/artoffailure/

The book is available in both paper and ebook formats.

Official MIT Press page: http://mitpress.mit.edu/books/art-failure

Thanks to everybody who made this book possible!

-Jesper

Endorsements

  • “Frankly, I hadn’t expected to enjoy a book about failure nearly as much as I did. Jesper Juul brings many different fields of study to the table and provides an engaging learning experience.”
    —Brenda Brathwaite Romero, game designer, COO and Co-Founder of Loot Drop
  • “I can think of no other medium that so constantly forces its participant to contemplate their own demise. The act of playing games is one dotted with near-endless failure. Yet we plow on. Jesper Juul’s new book is exactly the sharp examination of failure I need to keep myself from stabbing my eyes out when I get frustrated.”
    —Jamin Warren, Founder, Kill Screen
  • “In The Art of Failure, Jesper Juul explores an interesting idea and asks provocative questions. This book will be of interest to developers, players, scholars, journalists, and readers with related interests, such as chess players or athletes.”
    —Henry Lowood, Curator for History of Science & Technology Collections, Stanford University