Gamification: No Game, No Life.
To game is to live, to live is to game.
Homo Ludens. Latin for “The Playing Man,” historian and cultural theorist Johan Huizinga coined the phrase with its namesake book in 1938. One of the most influential works in modern game studies, the book teaches about the importance of fun and its role as a creator of culture. In a reverse to all of history before it, Homo Ludens touts play as culture’s building blocks rather than benefits grown of it.
I’d like to take this one step further as Animus Ludens,“The Playing Soul.” Though Huizinga recognizes that play is crucial to forming culture, he glosses over its importance to the individual as a separate and independent entity. To draw a parallel, if it is the needs of individuals that drives culture, then it is the needs of play that drives the individual.
We see this in the animal kingdom once we’re above a certain neurological complexity: baby seals play with rocks to practice opening shells and puppies play bite to calibrate jaw strength. Functioning as universal triggers, play and fun allow the brain to go into learning override, enabling rapid absorption of new information, quickening theorycrafting, and instilling behavioural changes that would normally take years of deliberate thought or generations of natural selection. They are such game changers that scientists theorize they may be an evolutionary advancement, to ensure the fortunate today use their spare resources productively to prepare for a less fortunate tomorrow.
How did we get here?
It is interesting then to consider how much fun is neglected, almost scorned. Work and play are given a firm boundary, and for the most part are thought to be mutually exclusive. In every family, no matter the age, no matter the country, no matter the culture, boys and girls are told that they have until but a certain age to enjoy themselves and play. It is almost taken as a given that aside from sparsely taken vacations (which some even argue is paying not to do work), play ends with adulthood. Workaholics are glorified globally, and some cultures even treat on-the-job nappers as hard workers who’ve neglected proper rest for work. We worship and mimic billionaires who keep insane sleeping schedules and take no vacations in a mad bid for a piece of their success. We think: “If work sucks, then I must be getting something out of it. Since I want success, money, and happiness, it must be that. So if I work harder, it’s only logical that I’ll get more.”
A phrase by Elon Musk is perhaps the most telling of our obsession with work. In one of the rare and only vacations the famous Tesla CEO ever took, he contracted malaria and almost died. His response?
“That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: vacation will kill you.”
Yet ironically, rather than serving as a model for work, Musk is the best argument for play. The secret is that Musk enjoys his work. The goal to reinvent the world is his game, and every move he makes, every car he sells, are actions that he derives a rush from and calculates to defeat the final bosses of unbelievers and market forces.
Gamification is the study of drive and subconscious reactions to incentive. It is the renaissance of work, where the cultural institutions farthest from nature (i.e: white collar work) can regain a sense of playfulness and realign with human drive. As cognitive jobs grow and manual labor gets increasingly allotted to our steel brethren, gamification will be needed for both companies to tap into their employees’ creative states and individuals to find meaning at their jobs.
An importance beyond profit
But, is this all just companies trying to milk more out of their employees? Maybe, and for most companies, probably yes. But that’s not a bad thing, especially when what gamification results in is a win-win proposition. Though companies would benefit greatly from gamification: cutting recruiting costs and increasing productivity, they only do so because the benefits to their employees are so strong.
Just a few statistics concerning only the wellbeing of the employees themselves:
- Only 16% of the US workforce describe themselves as “fully engaged” at their jobs, yet those who report so are 42% more likely to evaluate their lives as being happy
- 28% of people would volunteer a $5000 pay reduction if it meant a more engaging workplace
- 70% of millennials leave or plan to leave their first jobs after graduation within 2 years
This doesn’t include the stress spent on recruiting, the money and financial security lost between gaps, or just the time lost that could have been spent on greater personal development or relaxation.
Gamification seeks to end that. It looks to see how to transform work so that its connotations are destroyed, replaced instead with workflows and goals that allow greater enjoyment and achievement.
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