Gamification and Developer Ethics
Even if you haven’t heard the term, if you’re a user of the the internet or own a smart phone, you’re likely to be intimately familiar with the concept of gamification. From dating apps to language-learning software, the mechanics of gameplay have become commonplace in web development. There’s something inherently rewarding to see your likes going up on an Instagram or Twitter post, or have your phone alert you that you’ve met your step goal for the day. This is ultimately the goal of the businesses applying game mechanics to our technology: user engagement.
The Bright Side
Games and play are deeply ingrained in our nature, and have been an essential part of human social interaction going back to ancient times. It’s natural for them to be a part of our culture, and as more of our interaction takes place online, it’s natural for game mechanics to carry over into our online life. Some arenas, like education, are logical beneficiaries of “gamified” design. As students at Flatiron School, the Learn platform and its structure of labs and lessons are part of our daily life, helping to structure our education and encourage moving through the curriculum. The language-learning app Duolinguo employs levels and badges to incentivize incremental progress and reward persistence.
There are even companies using gamification strategies in an attempt to better the world, such as RecycleBank, which rewards users for taking environmentally-friendly actions with discounts and deals. And while it’s clear that gamified design can be satisfying for users, and even provide a positive impact on people and communities, it’s important to remember one thing: these are not games.
Not a Game
Gamified systems mask the fact that these applications and utilities aren’t games at all. While the fun we get out of such systems can help teach us or improve our health, they can also function as systems of social control. One of the reasons the arenas of education and work have embraced gamification strategies is that they haven’t progressed at the same rate as our entertainment and recreation. Movies are giant spectacles, video games are a multi-billion dollar industry, and future-tech like Augmented and Virtual Reality are entering the mainstream. All this adds up to a crisis for corporations who are already vying for our engagement.
In a traditional ad model, the consumer is being sold a product through various channels (e.g. television, radio, and magazines). In the ad-based model of digital businesses like Facebook and Google, the user is the product, and your data is being sold back to advertisers. Roger McNamee, an early investor in Facebook, has recently sounded the alarm on this type of business model, where engagement is the most important metric.
As a result, gamification strategies are being implemented to artificially drive user engagement, leading to unhealthy behaviors. Even Apple, whose suite of products is designed to keep you in their ecosystem, has introduced ScreenTime — a tool that reports how much time you spend staring at their screens — due to concerns about the effects of being overly engaged with technology.
Exploitationware
Systems of gamification are global, and often terrifying. Both Disney and Amazon have systems of worker control that use game strategies — displaying scoreboards in warehouses and laundry rooms that display workers’ information — to push productivity at the cost of mental and physical health (skipping bathroom breaks, pregnant workers falling behind, etc.). China has been rolling out a social credit system that will rank its citizens and adjust their score based on infractions like bad driving or smoking in no-smoking areas, with punishments that include preventing access to travel, the internet, and even higher education. Drone technology abstracts the horrors of war to the realm of video games, removing the immediacy of real life violence to a target (or “jackpot”) on a screen.
“Tech-shock” was a term coined by ethicist Thomas Donaldson that describes the lag time between the development of new technologies and the frameworks necessary to assess the ethical considerations they raise. Given that gamification is one of the fastest dispersing behavioral tools in business, developers need to be vigilant about the strategies they design and employ. At the very least, we should be thoughtful about what we’re making, and why.
- IEEE Computer Society Code of Ethics
- Aeon.co: “The Dark Side of Gamifying Work”
- TechCrunch: Roger McNamee on Facebook
- Ian Bogost: “Gamification is Bullshit”
