Gamification: A Fix for the World’s Problems or a Brave New World?

For a class project and just generally desiring something to read, I started Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken, a book about how gaming, specifically video gaming, can be deployed to alleviate many of the world’s problems. McGonigal (2011) points to the massive “exodus” of people to game worlds and explains, “It’s overwhelming confirmation of what positive psychologist have found in their scientific research: self-motivated, self-rewarding activity really does make us happier” (p. 51) . For libraries and educators it seems that her ideas are most applicable to education, motivation, and learning; video games can be used to give people “hard work” that is meaningful and gratifying for them.

Full disclosure: I am a (probably medium-core) gamer, so the notion of games making the world a better place is inherently appealing to me. McGonigal’s ideas do make a great deal of sense, to a point. Gamification (an unfortunate nominalization) is something of a movement, and, certainly in certain scenarios, the benefits of gamifying many work or educational tasks can provide users with immediate feedback, get their adrenaline glands working, and generally provide a sense of stimulation and engagement to combat the apathy and depression that an alienating world often instills. There is a reason the title of the book is what it is: the central idea here is that reality is broken. Institutions, practices, and work all over the world seems fairly poorly suited for human psychological needs.

This is all well and good, but one term kept popping up in my brain while reading the first several chapters: Centrifugal Bungle Puppy. The term comes from Aldous Huxley’s novel Brave New World and is one of several elaborate, consumerist games that keeps the populace happy and distracted. This term represents a potential problem with McGonical’s ideas: games might make us happy, but happiness can just as likely instill ignorance and apathy, outside of games (and drugs, in the novel) and other such engaging activities.

Still, McGonigal’s notion that games can connect us better to one another and our ultimate goals is very appealing. Yet, how to do this without devolving into Brave New World-style blissful ignorance is unclear. When does a game, or more accurately, a gamified institution, get people to engage meaningfully and when does it just superficially trigger our pleasure systems? With librarians obvious concern with Edward Snowden’s revelations, is the fear that government or corporate interests could use games to control and appease the masses so unreasonable?

Works Cited

McGonigal, Jane. Reality is broken: Why games make us better and how they can change the world. New York : Penguin Press, 2011. Print.