Everything Is a Game; We Just Don’t See It That Way
And how we can
There is a famous definition of games by Jane McGonigal. She says that:
“When you strip away the genre differences and the technological complexities, all games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.”
— Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
When I read this definition for the first time, I realized that everything is a game. We just don’t see it that way. Any project, any task, anything we do or are up to is this way.
There is a goal defining what we want to achieve. We set rules for ourselves, or we get them set for us. For example, in a project, how to carry it out and what tools to use or not for it. The same is for a task or an assignment at school. And there are one or more feedback systems. We get feedback: how well — according to the rules — we are doing in any given project or activity. Even a phrase saying, “the game finishes when you reach this goal,” is a feedback system of its own. It can be that simple.
Here is what Jame McGonigal says about it:
“The feedback system tells players how close they are to achieving the goal. It can take the form of points, levels, a score, or a progress bar. Or, in its most basic form, the feedback system can be as simple as the players’ knowledge of an objective outcome: ‘The game is over when . . .’ Real-time feedback serves as a promise to the players that the goal is definitely achievable, and it provides motivation to keep playing.”
— Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World
Voluntary participation reflects the balance of the other three core game components. It’s your will and drive to play it. Your will or, rather, your ability to come and go at will. This happens in games, of course. People come and play or stop playing the games when they want.
But the same happens with real-life assignments. If we have a larger project, we don’t do it all at once. We don’t work on it for the whole twenty-four hours. Just like the games, we don’t play them the whole day.
Instead, we assign ourselves some time slots. For example, during the day, we work, we go to school. In the evening or afternoon, we let ourselves play games, those we consider or call games.
That means games and anything else in our lives have the same basic structure.
Thus seeing anything in our lives as fun games is nothing else than reminding ourselves that whatever we do or are up to is already a game and has always been. Another reminder is that we can adjust the definition of our real-life game components so that we are eager to play these real-life games.
A couple of days ago, something happened that made me aware of the necessity for this reminder.
I have two children; one is ten years old and another six. My daughter is six years old. She still has some challenges waking up in the morning, and I have to motivate her or help her motivate herself to wake and get up. So that morning, I realized that I was a bit reluctant to go to her room, and I feared how waking her up might work out.
Fortunately, I managed to remind myself about this being a game. So I asked myself, “What’s my goal in this game?” I looked at the clock and saw that it was ten to seven in the morning. My goal took the following shape: wake my daughter up, have her out of bed and dressed for the day before seven in the morning.
I went to her room more motivated and enthusiastic than I was a minute before. I woke my daughter up as tenderly as I could, and at some point, I shared this game with her. Emma became eager to help me win the game, which was, in turn, helping her to get up ready for breakfast within ten minutes. So you could say we helped each other in this game. And my son, Niklas, helped us by looking at the clock and calling out the number of minutes we still had until 7 a.m.
In the end, it was a fun game for all of us. We had a brilliant mood as we gathered in the kitchen for breakfast. My daughter was still a little tired to start the day, but the smile on her face and the joy she had while helping me win my little game was sweet and lingering for quite sometime after that.
So what was the difference between that morning and the other ones before that? In the mornings before, I forgot this activity could be a game and entered more than once my daughter’s room worried and a little stressed myself. That wasn’t very helpful for either of us. I am not saying that we didn’t have other mornings where we had a great time while getting Emma out of bed. We did. But those great mornings resembled the little game above very much, even if we haven’t called them explicitly that way. But we might have seen and experienced them as playful and gameful.
When you turn something into — or rather see it as — a game or a collection of games, you become resourceful, approaching whatever you are up to with excellence and without fear of being judged either by yourself or others. And the best of this turning life into fun games is that all these great reasons and traits don’t need to be forced but become fantastic byproducts as you simply enjoy the game and have fun.
Yes, the experience with the little morning game reminded me that anything is already a game, and I just need to recall that every once in a while and adjust the components of my daily games in such a way that the game becomes enticing for me to engage exactly where and how I am.
Thus, remind yourself that whatever you do, whatever you are up to, is already a game because it has the same structure as games — in their traditional sense — do. All you have to do to be excited about what you want or need to do is become aware of your real-life games' goals, rules, and feedback systems and adjust them so that you can’t wait to engage in them.
I’m super glad about the little reminder I recalled a few days ago and invite you and myself to develop a habit of reminding ourselves about that whenever we get stuck or in doubt of how to proceed and persevere.
I wish you a beautiful and gameful day!
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