As a society, we have had a long and strange relationship with video games. Another way is to learn about new technologies such as computers and televisions. In other countries, they have been viewed as a source of addiction on par with our youth’s corruption and addiction to banned substances.

Somewhere between these two polarities, there is the view that many aspects of our daily lives can be improved through video games. gamification. ”

In practice, the impact of gamification on work has been mixed, with many parts of our work and daily lives largely inspired by games, whether via the theorized metaverse or not. As we move into virtual worlds, the impact (if any) of gamification on our work (more commonly less real) is more relevant than ever.

Fulfill a need that is not met in the real world?

Given society’s obsession with productivity, gamification as a solution to work sickness seems like an odd fit. From this perspective, frivolous things like games are perhaps the antithesis of this concept of work — time spent doing the opposite of something productive.

But perhaps that’s why games and gamification are seen as an ideal way to smooth out the more tedious, repetitive, and downright unpleasant parts of our jobs. Best-selling book of early tech optimists like Jane McGonigal reality is brokenargued that reality does not motivate or inspire us effectively, and that the sensibilities from games can change the nature of work (or the world). It is productive because it satisfies real human needs that cannot be met in the real world.

To the extreme of this view, games have been seen as an escape from the realities of the world of work, rather than a means of improving it.recent one study argued that in the early 2000s, young men’s working hours declined significantly more than older men and women.

while you have claimed This phenomenon was consistent between this study and recent studies, suggesting that this phenomenon is more a change in young men’s media consumption habits than an absolute trade-off of gaming versus working hours. Oxford There was a general increase in well-being and well-being with time spent gaming.

desire for independence

Games can make us happy by meeting our needs, but because they focus on the nature of work and the tasks rather than the influence of managers and others who set the work environment and structure, The working environment could not be decisively improved.

Anthropologist David Graeber has argued that an increasing number of employees are working in so-called “random jobs.” This often only contributes to organizational bureaucracy rather than having any meaningful impact on the world.

This view, too, has been criticized on the grounds that the underlying problem really lies not with the type of work, but with the degree to which workers feel alienated from the work decision-making process. itselfBasically, if a bad manager doesn’t respect or allow autonomy, the job feels like a bullshit.

Conflicting worker/manager expectations

All the while, new signs of eroding trust between workers and managers are beginning to emerge, and more recently, the ‘quiet no smoking’ dialogue continues. A growing number of employees worked only against the requirements of their jobs, with the reasonable expectation that more work and responsibilities should be accompanied by greater rewards.

Conversely, hostile management believes that the norm for employees to be promoted is to do more, and that those who are unwilling to do so are self-selecting to layoffs. . These different positions reflect different rifts between employees and managers. This includes generational changes in attitudes towards work.

Whether employees are facing so-called “bad jobs” or “quiet retirements,” means of applying gamification to improve their work have worked well in addressing this problem. However, many people have the opposite goal.

Reinforce Desired Behavior with Rewards

A new book from gamification expert Adrian Hong, you have been played, criticizes much of gamification in general as falling under behaviorist psychology. The idea is that by reinforcing the desired behavior with a reward, the incentive causes the desired behavior to occur more often.

These mechanisms rely on widely distrusted intellectual underpinnings, but they continue to be used because they are cheap to implement and novelty effects may indicate short-term increases in desired behavior. Setting up scoreboards and the like doesn’t fundamentally change the overwhelming repetitiveness of some work tasks, but a more troubling potential consequence is the inability to meet ever-increasing goals by these means. Failure to do so may result in the transfer of liability from managers to workers.

In this regard, gamification in general is, in fact, a measure of performance against work, as it enables both “Taylorism” and rigorous monitoring of performance akin to the outdated concept of “scientific management” synonymous with “Taylorism.” Fitting perfectly into our efficiency-obsessed orientation (after sociologist Fred W. Taylor), the 21st century workplace is increasingly dominated by ‘Taylorism 2.0’ or ‘Digital Taylorism’. Hon explains that it is.

Display gamification with care

The fact that gamification relies largely on discredited social sciences leads to the fact that gamification can only alleviate the more cumbersome parts of our job in sketchy ways.

Therefore, the deployment of these techniques should be considered with great caution. Nonetheless, as more and more jobs move to virtual spaces, the potential for gamification to become a negative force in the workplace has expanded dramatically.

Considered by many to be the ultimate setting for virtual work, the Metaverse is the extent to which human behavior can be altered or controlled by algorithms by manipulating persistent, interconnected and embodied virtual worlds. I have already issued a warning about

This possibility is nasty, but you likely don’t need sophisticated algorithms. Some of the most aggressive pushers towards the future metaverse are defaulting towards the same basic philosophy of human control bolstered by bad gamification.

General gamification concerns

Metaverse’s blockchain-based Web3 view has become the epitome of activist incentivization. Here, every action (from “play and earn” games to participating in a community) is typically a non-fungible token.

The intrinsic value we derive from satisfying behavior is that certain behaviors aligned with the interests of those who control the experience can and should be encouraged with intrinsic monetary rewards. It is overridden by the spirit of being.

Often you need to be interested in the application and consequences of common gamification mechanisms. In many cases, the future potential of the consumer internet is built to fit perfectly with the most vexing types of gamification, with direct examples becoming more common with Web3.These can be used by economically disadvantaged people to hear human background noise or “Non-Player Character” live in these worlds.

Gamification: meeting essential needs

The solutions for successfully implementing gamification in the workplace, reducing tension between employees and managers, and creating potential metaverses (whether Web3-based or not) all overlap. , satisfaction), not just our exogenous things (money).

Satisfying essential needs has always been at the core of the best gameplay experiences (many of which lack indicators of bad gamification such as scoreboards, points, and badges), and gamification It means that aggressive implementation is not impossible.

In Hong’s view, harmful gamification thrives when it denies us “the dignity of having intrinsic motivation.” It causes us to compete with ourselves in ways that are little more than self-monitoring, allowing work (or whatever) to better control our behavior. Conversely, good gamification treats us as individuals and allows us to meet deeper needs.

The solution to bad gamification is as simple as orienting these mechanisms like better (challenging) games instead of tracking mechanisms. Tracking mechanisms, like successful employee and management relationships, are heavily biased towards empathy and understanding.

As virtual work becomes more common and demand for top talent rises geographic flexibility, successful organizations can leverage the distinction between good and bad gamification as a first step to being attractive to this workforce pool. Experiences such as the Metaverse, which originated in games, are uniquely poised to harness the superpowers of gaming to meet essential needs, but this direction is more about building the metaverse and the future of work. has not yet received enough attention among those most active in

With the growing relevance and power of video games, gamification and the metaverse have come to mind.

Our understanding of games and their applications must move beyond their potential weaponization and into the ways in which humans are satisfied with them. Whether we’re talking about gameplay, work, or the future of the internet, a focus on true human intrinsic motivations always results in a more positive experience.

Jonathan Stringfield is Vice President of Global Business Research and Marketing for Activision Blizzard..