It’s all fun and games…until you don’t know you are still playing.
Is the Gamification of Facebook immoral?
Lately, my unnerving ability to scroll through Facebook for *what feels like five minutes but was really an hour* has gotten me thinking. Is gamification a manipulative technique that profits from our addictive use of social media? Or is this just another case of the dreaded moral panic?
As the world knows by now, the Facebook empire has experienced unparalleled success as a social media platform and business venture. Of course this is attributed to Zuckerberg’s initiative in creating one of the first truly multimodal social networking platforms. But this success has also been retained through the process of Gamification, which Facebook has employed in many aspects of it’s usership.
What is Gamification?
‘Gamification’ was first coined in 2002 by British computer programmer Nick Pelling. It is described by Van Den Boer as ‘the use of game elements and game thinking in non-game environments to increase target behaviour and engagement.’ So put simply, gamification is not gaming itself, but the use of game techniques.
Facebook implements game techniques to enhance the user experience and maintain interest. Specifically, the desire to ‘level up’ in every area of life is a well established human activity, and the extensive gamification of Facebook harnesses this innate desire to compete and to excel.
So how has Facebook used Gamification?
A prominent example of gamification is FarmVille. This rather addictive game allows players to tend to their own virtual farm, and profits by encouraging players to purchase ‘FarmCash’ with real dollars.
But here’s the clincher, you can only access it through Facebook. The game is designed such that once users start playing, they ‘are not only giving up valuable information…they are also giving access to the information contained on their Facebook profile.’ Here lies the actual gamification; the information is used to create a newsfeed full of advertisements and optimised content for the user, that is designed to keep them scrolling.
Another piece of Gamification is Facebook’s new ‘Top Fan Badge’, which Kelly Ann Collins calls a case of ‘Pavlov-style classical conditioning’. The badge is awarded to Facebook users who frequently comment and interact on the posts of a certain page. This relationship benefits both parties; the company who runs the page receives continued engagement on their posts, keeping them on the news feed, and commenters are ‘rewarded’ for their hard work with a visible Top Fan badge.
Though it seems a trivial reward, the comments on my Facebook from users who have, or are trying to achieve a Top Fan Badge is starting to permeate my whole news feed…and admittedly, is keeping posts I would otherwise overlook right where I can see them.
So Is Gamification immoral…Or just a clever service design?
The gamification of Facebook is often deemed immoral because it continually creates reason for us to log in. Meanwhile, our obsessive use of social media is already detrimental to our health. Not only this, when you strip away the frivolity, users who engage in gamification unknowingly become cogs in the Facebook business wheel, as they are encouraged to participate in concepts like FarmVille which provide profitable data for Facebook.
Philip Man affirms this perspective in Taking the Game out of Gamification. He writes that ‘Gamification is the latest enticement of the modern landlord to profit from its citizen’s livelihood. Game mechanics are implemented, supplying an enslaving substitute for the demise of meaning.’
Of course, other academic commentaries believe the Gamification of Facebook is simply an effective way of tapping into our competitive human nature. Yu-Kai Chou, a leading expert on Gamification believes that it provides the self-actualisation we humans thrive on. The cerebral cortex even benefits from gamification aspects like ‘accomplishment, creativity, empowerment, problem solving, and storytelling’.
We can easily see that gamification techniques promote increased user time — and money — spent on Facebook. However, this technique is utilised in many areas of commercial business. It would be a moral panic to deem the gamification of Facebook as downright immoral rather than what it is, a business adaption in our consumer driven society. Nevertheless, users could benefit from Facebook providing more transparency on their business model, which often blurs the lines between ‘free social media site’ and ‘profitable networking platform’.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to read all the Top Fan comments about the Game of Thrones finale…
