The Ludologist

Strangely compelling, this video of classic game deaths:

 

[Scroll to the comments to see the articles that I missed.]

Following the release of Reality is Broken and the appearance of dedicated gamification conferences and books, it is fair to say that the gamification backlash is in full swing. (Such is the natural order of the world.)

Chronologically,

Long before anyone thought of the word gamification, Edward Deci published the paper “Effects of externally mediated rewards on intrinsic motivation.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 18, no. 1 (1971), arguing that external monetary rewards decreases our intrinsic motivation for a task. (Note that this is slightly different from what Kohn argues later.)

“Results indicate that (a) when money was used as an external reward, intrinsic motivation tended to decrease; whereas (b) when verbal reinforcement and positive feedback were used, intrinsic motivation tended to increase.”

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In a way, the most direct pre-gamification & anti-gamification argument comes from Alfie Kohn’s 1993 book Punished by Rewards: The Trouble with Gold Stars, Incentive Plans, A’s, Praise, and Other Bribes, which argues against the use of points, stars, and so on in companies.

“Kohn demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives. Programs that use rewards to change people’s behavior are similarly ineffective over the long run.”

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Then came Jesse Schell’s 2010 DICE Talk.

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A few people picked up on the question of motivation and external rewards:

I wrote about Kohn and a 1973 study, arguing that there is a problem with external rewards: Demotivated by External Rewards.

“Schell a.o. overlook that external rewards are also known to be strong demotivators. A famous 1973 experiment (“Undermining children’s intrinsic interest with extrinsic reward“) showed that when nursery school children consistently received external rewards for drawing, they lost interest in drawing and began drawing less.”

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Chris Hecker gave a very thorough talk, Achievements Considered Harmful?, at the 2010 Game Developers Conference.

“For interesting tasks,

1. Tangible, expected, contingent rewards reduce free-choice intrinsic motivation, and
2. Verbal, unexpected, informational feedback, increases free-choice and self-reported intrinsic motivation.”

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I think the first multi-pronged, post-gamification & anti-gamification criticism I saw was Sebastian Deterding’s Pawned. Gamification and Its Discontents:

“Games are not fun because they are games, but when they are well-designed.”

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My own comment was about The Dangers of Games in the Workplace:

“Much of the financial crisis was due to the application of game-like design principles to work, where employees were forced to work toward short-term goals that were detrimental to the health of their company and the economy at large.”

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Steven Poole remains unconvinced of the motivations behind gamification:

“Does something in your life suck? Then turn it into a game! This is postmodernism’s infantile version of the consolatory techniques of stoic philosophy.”

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Heather Chaplin doesn’t want to be a superhero:

“I believe whole-heartedly that wonderful things can happen when people play. But gamification advocates do not preach the beauty and power of play. Perhaps without knowing it, they’re selling a pernicious worldview that doesn’t give weight to literal truth. Instead, they are trafficking in fantasies that ignore the realities of day-to-day life. This isn’t fun and games—it’s a tactic most commonly employed by repressive, authoritarian regimes.”

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There are three main threads to this criticism:

1. Deci, Kohn and Hecker warn about the problems of extrinsic rewards as demotivators.
2. Poole and Chaplin argue that gamification is a wrapping that either adds nothing or is a lie pure and simple.
3. My own later take is that the player optimization and performance measurements that work great inside games have often proven to be disastrous outside games (when wrongly applied at least).

Deterding combines all three threads (as well as the argument that play has to be voluntary).

There surely is more to be written on the subject … (Am I missing any references? Let me know.)

On March 23rd, I am giving a short talk in Copenhagen – in Danish. Title: “Are Social Games the Work of the Devil”?

 

Hvor: Filmhuset, Gothersgade – Bio Asta (i kælderen)
Hvornår: Onsdag d. 23. marts kl. 16:30-18:30
Hvorfor: Fordi Facebook-spil alligevel vil erobre verden, så kend din næste gud.

16.30-16.50: Jesper Juul: Er sociale spil djævelens Værk?
16.50-17.10: Brian Meidell: Hvad jeg lærte af at spille FarmVille (så du slipper)
17.10-17.40: Mingling
17.40-18.30: Debat
18.30- : Mere mingling – og Tactile Entertainment giver øl!

More about the event here.

It’s something of a regular occurrence, the proclamation that consoles are going away.

Here’s Peter Vesterbacka of Rovio, makers of Angry Birds:

… as mobile gaming (including games on tablet devices like the iPad) continues to grow, console games are “dying”. Vesterbacka scoffed at the traditional model where companies charge $40 to $50 for a game that’s difficult to upgrade.
(From Venturebeat.)

Certainly, we are at an uncertain time – the current console generation has a longer lifetime than previous consoles, and Sony and Microsoft are releasing incremental upgrades with the Move and Kinect. All of the buzz concentrates on mobile and social games, yet a handful of big-budget titles in the Red Dead Redemption and Modern Warfare 2-class continue to generate huge sales. But the old threat to consoles (PCs and Macs) hasn’t disappeared either.

Will consoles go away? Only when some other device that people already have (computers, cell phones, tablets, built-in TV functionality, set top boxes) easily provides a living room experience on the big TV with good controllers. Nothing is quite there yet, but could it happen?

Continued from last week, here is the complete Twitter cloud for Game Developers Conference 2011:

I have removed the words GDC, “game” and “games” here to give a better overview of themes.

• Platform winner: Nintendo with the 3DS.
• Genre winners: Social games, indie games.
• Game character winner: Mario.
• Topic winners: Art, gamification, postmortems.
• Non-game winner: Netflix.
• Most notable absences: Sony, Microsoft, consoles.

I think Apple had hoped the iPad 2 would be on this list, and Google had hoped that Android was here too. The iPhone and Android did make appearances on single days though.

For an actual writeup on the conference vibe, I can recommend Nick Fortugno’s blog post.