Recently, as a society we have become more aware of the importance of play in our adult lives, and what used to be considered only the realm of children is being brought into the world of adults. Play is loosely defined as an activity that is voluntary, flexible and fun (Keller). Play is a behavior that is found in many species on earth and it is something that many adults have lost in their lives. Part of that loss is due to the stigma around play in the adult world; ”we associate play with childhood, and therefore ‘playing’ with childishness” (Keller). This paper will discuss why play is important, how playful technology is currently being used and the problems it has caused, and how playful technology perhaps should be used in the future.
Why is Play important?
Play is crucial for self-discovery, freedom and joy, but also for allowing us to fail and learn in a safe environment (Keller). It is essential in the lives of adults for far more than just this as it is also deeply connected to creativity and innovation. The paper Playful Technologies: creativity, innovation and organization talks about the relationship between innovation and play. They state that “innovation may be to technology what play is to work: a possibility to break free through prescribed, controlled environments and offer a temporary relaxation of rules in order to explore new alternatives” (Dodgson, p. 1). Some factors the authors discuss as important to consider when developing a work space for playful interaction are the need for ‘play time’ to be unstructured and allow for failure, the need for people’s work to be seen as play and how useful play and creativity are to the company. To achieve these factors companies need to give its employees time for voluntary and uninstructed play, a need not addressed by current management styles. To make work feel more playful the authors discuss the use of location cues to encourage different types of interactions as well as playful designed avatars in digital communication spaces.
Current Use of Playful Technology
Playful technology has begun being introduced into more and more environments. A few places it has shown up are in trying to reduce the seriousness of conferences, to provide motivation for workers, and as a marketable product feature.
Fun Furniture
The MurMur seats were used to research the introduction of play into a formal conference setting. These seats are a low seat or footrest that are able to interpret sensory input, shown in Figures 1 and 2 are people interacting with different iterations of the MurMur seats. Each device has a different personality which they express through their reactions to different actions such as the user sitting down, standing up, touching it’s ‘ears’ or swaying side to side. They also interact with each other and can ‘dream’. With these capabilities they are both primary and secondary objects of play with direct and ambient interactions. The researchers collected data by observing the conference speakers’ interaction with the seats and observing the reactions of the attendees watching the interactions of the conference speakers.
Their findings were mixed, varying from positive experiences (they created a relaxed and playful atmosphere) to mixed or negative experiences (they were distracting, they seemed out of place at a conference), and with this data the researchers “were able to explore the important issue of polarized attitudes of adults toward play and provide some food for thought for the future design of adult play”(Kultima, et al., p. 301). A number of people had mixed feelings about the seats, being in favor of the playfulness of the seats but still felt distracted or annoyed by their presence. The varying reactions reflect that “adult play and playfulness as well as adult toy use are still more stigmatized and less discussed”(Kultima, et al., p. 302). These seats are also an excellent example of the use of physical computing in tandem with playful technology. The feedback and interaction with the Mur Mur seats is mostly intended to be with the periphery of the the users attention. In theory, the output of the seats should be enough in the background that it does not distract the user, but simply adds an element of playfulness to the environment.
Fun and Innovation
Technology is also used in the workplace to foster creativity. A case study of an IBM ‘InnovationJam’ that took place in 2006 shows how the design of their communication platform and its playfulness encouraged innovation. This global brainstorming session of 150,000 employees, family members, universities, business partners and clients generated 46,000 ideas in a 72-hour period, the “approach represents a ‘playful’ relaxation of formal rules for seeking ideas: suggestions are judged on their merit rather than their source” (Dodgson, p. 8). This use of the digital communication being an enhancement on communication is a continuation of the concept of Beyond Being There. The playfulness of this ideation process, not to mention the scale of it, would not be possible in person. The IBM ‘InnovatitonJam’ is a prime example of “synchronous interactions [that] might actually benefit from being handled in a way that is not, at least superficially, very imitative of face-to-face encounters” (Hollan & Stornetta, p. 123). IBM developed virtual meeting spaces that allowed for a variety of tones and this allowed them to create the playful atmosphere needed for creative ideation. However, no matter how playful technology is, “its most creative use will lie in the exploration of individuals and groups unbounded and unfettered by restrictive organizational discipline” (Dodgson, p. 11).
If it’s Boring, No One Wants it
The original Technology Acceptance Model was developed in 1989 and is a popular model used in research into individual users acceptance and use of technology. It takes into account two factors in determining how much a system is actually used, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (Surendran, p. 175), but an update on the Technology Acceptance Model found that “if consumers do not perceive the device as fun or enjoyable, the usefulness aspect would have no effect on their attitude” (Chtourou & Souiden, p. 341). The update, done in 2010 was more thorough and representative of the general population, however their sample was not large enough to reliably determine if there was any significant difference in the importance of this factor for different demographic groups.
The new Technology Acceptance Model, shown in Figure 3, essentially means that if a technological product is boring, no one cares how useful it is. I believe that this finding may be connected to the recent rise in gamification in products, such as the inclusion of point systems and competitions with friends.
A Critique of Playful Technology
Unfortunately with the rise of the popularity of playfulness in technology there has also been an increase in the use of playfulness as a disguise. Three examples of this that I found in my research are the use of fun facial recognition, of the likes of Facebook auto-tagging and snapchat filters, as a data source to improve military facial recognition, gamification replacing the possibility of a raise or promotion as a motivation for workers and the lack of meaning in a large number of digital applications.
Function Creep
Facial recognition software had transitioned from a militarized surveillance technology to a playful consumer product and now it is starting to transition back into the military sphere. After 9/11 many CCTV systems were installed with promises of facial recognition stopping terrorism, however this was not reality of the technology at the time, as accurate identification was only possible under ideal conditions. In 2008 the transition from facial recognition as a purely surveillance technology occurred as it was introduced to social media. The use of facial technology for photo organizing in applications like Facebook shifts its image away from the the serious towards the fun. This wider use also helped fixed some of the issues present in the software as a surveillance technology as the user was willing to help the computer to learn people’s faces.
The technology being used in a more playful manner has obscured some of the problematic features of the facial recognition. One big issue was prevalence of racial profiling in the facial recognition algorithms, as the systems were both more likely to make a false positive match and have “difficulty coding facial contours and shadows on dark-skinned individuals”(Ellerbrok, p. 532). This is only the latest in a lengthy history of biometric technology being used as a tool for discrimination. Changing the use of the technology from controverial to playful “fundamentally altered both its popular representation and the ways in which it is taken up by the public” (Ellerbrok, p. 530). In addition to the problems present in the original system there is now also the issue of function creep back to the original use to consider. The much more robust data set present in the facial recognition of social media has created a much more accurate software for government surveillance to use.
Points Instead of Promotions
Another insidious aspect of playful technology arises in the concept of gamification. It is, at its most essential, three elements added to a system; validation, completion and prizes. The article, Gamification: What it is, and how to fight it by Woodcock and Johnson shows gamification implemented by the workplace as the subcategory of gamification-from-above. Gamification-from-above is games separated from playfulness, using the interaction and feedback of games as a system of regulation and standardization. It is often found in the workplace and is using gaming techniques to motivate people to work faster, better, or with less error to increase revenue or productivity. It is incentivizing behaviors that management wants their workers to have. In the current economy with workers only having temporary relationships with the company they work for, gamification has become the new method to “motivate, control, supervise and ensure the maximum extraction of value from labour” (Woodcock & Johnson, p. 547) rather than the company loyalty of the past. For example, some companies assign point values to certain activities to encourage employees to earn as many points as they can, but these scores to not translate to any real gain for the employee. This is where the play becomes a disguise, because instead of workers working towards a long term career at a company and working hard for promotions, workers are working hard and the corporations are benefiting while they are not. This differs from gamification-from-below, because with gamification-from-below workers are creating their own playful environment inside the company and frequently against the company’s wishes. Despite the lesser association with technology in gamification-from-below (it is more strongly associated with traditional elements of play) it is an important case to show that the intention behind gamification influences the intrinsic value to the user.
But Does it Mean Anything?
Another problem with playful technology is that it can suck people in without giving them any meaning in return. In a study from the University of Washington of What Makes Smartphone Use Meaningful or Meaningless?, the authors looked into the motivation and type of app use and its association with the meaning the user got from the activity. As you can see in Figure 4, the activities that fall into the categories of Entertainment and Social Media, the ones that are most likely incorporating playful technology, result in the least meaningfulness for users. A “participant explained why he considered entertainment uses to be meaningless: “I just tended to gain more out of using it as a tool rather than using it to pass the time or using it to do something that didn't have like an end gain” (P3). As in this quote, participants often attributed meaningfulness to a lack of ‘productive’ output” (Lukoff, et al., p. 12). This association is concerning because it would appear that playful technology is being used to hold users attention, rather than to bring joy. Technology being fun means that people turn to it to fill the time rather than turning to other activities that might give them more meaning and fulfillment.
The Future Potential of Playful Technology
Based on my critique and additional research, I think there are a few ideas that should be part of the future of playful technology. Gamification can be implemented for the benefit of the worker rather than the company, meaningful interaction could be a larger priority for designers, we cannot forget to consider children in our designs and playful technology can be tremendously beneficial at a city-wide scale.
Gamification for the People
Playful technology can be leveraged in the workplace for more than just improving productivity. Woodcock and Johnson, the authors of the paper Gamification: What it is, and how to fight it, offer a response to their critique that gamification in the workplace can be detrimental to the worker. Their concept of gamification-from-below uses the tools of fun and playfulness for the benefit of the workers. It “transforms work (and everyday life) into a game whose mechanics are its own antithesis, rather than a game whose mechanics are complicit in the work environment that created it. Context is, therefore, everything for ‘gamification’” (Woodcock & Johnson, p. 553). When gamification is implemented by the workers, it may not make them work faster, but it does make work more enjoyable. It requires collective action from a large number of the workers and can frequently be found in use alongside gamification-from-above. Using a number of examples from political ideologies from the 1950s and ‘60s, and mostly focusing on the Situationists (a fusion of Marxism and Surrealism), the authors show how games can be a tool of a social revolution, how “gamification is a tool, and it is therefore vitally important to identify who introduces it, uses it, and for what ends” (Woodcock & Johnson, p. 543). Currently gamification-from-above is the predominant form found in modern society with gamification-from-below as a truly playful tool of opposition to it.
Creating Meaning
In addition, I think that more work should be done to make technology more meaningful to those interacting with it. I agree with the authors of What Makes Smartphone Use Meaningful or Meaningless? that “designers should examine how an app supports or distracts a user from their purpose for visiting” (K. Lukoff et al., p. 21) and should use that data to inform their design. I believe that this is especially true with a playful technology that risks the qualities of addictive gamification and meaningless engagement. Users should feel joy after using a playful technology, not meaninglessness.
Don’t Forget the Children
The toys of children is where the most dramatic technological changes subtly premiere. Playful technology can be used in toys to reflect “profound revolutions in simulation, the science of materials and digital communication” (Pesce, p. 8). The technology of tomorrow is be inspired by the toys of today, as they are what developed the worldview of the next generation, and in the same way we can implement technology to shape the future that we want to see. Because of the stigma around adult play, many adults have lost much of their ability to play, but “our children will know how to make sense of this playful world, an important lesson they will be happy to share with us, if we are willing” (Pesce, p. 272). We can work with children to develop playful technology because they are the experts of play.
The Big Picture
Using elements of physical computing and the ideas discussed in Tangible Bits playful technology could have an impact on a wider variety of activities. The Tangible Bits paper, out of the MIT Media Laboratory, lays out the authors vision of a future in which users are able to physically interact with objects and spaces to provide computer inputs and that they are able to receive outputs in “periphery of human perception using ambient display media such as light, sound, airflow, and water movement in an augmented space”(Ishii & Ullmer, p.1). Using Tangible User Interfaces “will augment the real physical world by coupling digital information to everyday physical objects and environments” (Ishii & Ullmer, p.2) and combining this concept with that of playful technology brings new the potential for playful technology to a new scale. I believe that the three core goals of the Tangible Bits project, interactive surfaces, coupling of objects and information and ambient media, offer the perfect tools to create playful technology. There is a lot of potential for larger applications of playful technology in the future world. It seems that currently playfulness is introduced on a small scale, an app here, a chair there but at a large scale playful technology would have a greater impact. For example:
“Cities are supposed to be interaction machines, but they don’t really work that way anymore. I would love to re-imagine what a cityscape would look like if it were more playful if street life had things that allow for you to play at bus stops and on sidewalks. I imagine a world where we’re constantly thinking and constantly growing through play instead of smartphones and smart cities.” (Keller)
It is entirely possible with the rate of technological development that in the near future we will be able to create entire cities that use technology to not only improve people’s lives by increasing efficiency and safety but by also increasing the fun and playfulness in their lives and bringing them more joy.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I believe that despite its flaws playful technology will be essential to improving our future. Play is as important to us in adulthood as it was in youth, but the social stigma against in has prevented a large portion of the population from maintaining fun in their lives as they age. Playful technology offers us new ways into integrate play and technology into our lives that can make them both easier and more enjoyable. However, the attitude and intentions behind the technology is as important as the technology itself when it comes to play because it can easily become meaningless and lose the benefits associated with traditional play. Many of the criticisms of playful technology come from it being implemented by those with motivations other than to improve people’s lives. Overall play is important and we are lacking it in our adult lives and playful technology has the ability to fill this gap, but unmeaningful play for the profit of others does not fulfil the need for play humans have.
Annotated Bibliography
1. Rethinking the TAM model: Time to consider fun Chtourou, M. S., & Souiden, N. (2010). Rethinking the TAM model: Time to consider fun. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 27(4), 336-344. Retrieved April 24, 2018, from https://www-emeraldinsight-com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/doi/abs/10.1108/07363761011052378.
Summary: This paper is a research report on how fun impacts consumers adoption of mobile devices. The current technology acceptance model (TAM) does not take into account emotional factors. They started with a literature review covering previous research on fun in product adoption. Next they covered the methodology they used to understand the influence of fun on consumers. They sampled using a convenience sample of 169 respondents from Quebec and 178 respondents from France. Unlike the original TAM study the respondents were not all students and were users of mobile devices in their everyday life and so was more representative of the general population. The data was collected with a questionnaire that covered the type of device, the use types of the device, and the users attitudes toward the device.
They found additional confirmation that the TAM model is accurate and that fun is as, if not more, important to the consumer’s attitude toward a product than other elements of the product. These findings “encourages product designers to develop interfaces and products that are not only satisfying the utilitarian needs of consumers but also their hedonic and enjoyment motivations” (340). Additionally, “if consumers do not perceive the device as fun or enjoyable, the usefulness aspect would have no effect on their attitude”(341). This study was limited by it's sample size. Due to the small sample size, researchers were unable to make any conclusions about the impact other factors, such as the age or location of the subject, could have had on the importance of fun to them.
Comments: This research provides solid evidence for the importance of fun in technology design from a profit standpoint for a company. This gives an argument for the further introduction of playfulness into everyday technology that contrasts against some of the negative factors shown in other articles, even though for-profit could also be seen as a deceitful use of technology, depending on who you ask. This also connects to the other papers as the reason that some of the more deceitful playful technologies were made; to make a profit.
2. Playful technologies: creativity, innovation and organization Dodgson, M., Gann, D., & Coopmans, C. (2008). Playful technologies: Creativity, innovation and organization. DRUID’s 25th Anniversary Conference, June 2008.,1-19. Retrieved April 26, 2018, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Dodgson2/publication/43505072_Playful_technologies_Creativity_innovation_and_organization/links/00b495295d8db884b3000000/Playful-technologies-Creativity-innovation-and-organization.pdf.
Summary: Using discussions of challenges to innovative companies, the relationship between creativity and play, playful technology and the case study of IBM’s innovation technologies the authors of this paper aim to argue that “innovation may be to technology what play is to work: a possibility to break free through prescribed, controlled environments and offer a temporary relaxation of rules in order to explore new alternatives”(1). This summary is focused on the paper’s sections analyzing playful technologies and innovations. The authors discuss both the historical and current importance of visualisations in facilitating creativity and communication between those involved in the process. They argue that the, then new, virtual environments of Second Life and MySpace were “becoming a venue and mechanism for connecting designers, marketers, scientists and engineers for innovation”(7). These environments support “creativity, experimentation and play”(5) by “facilitating connections between actors in the innovation process”(5).
The case study of IBM focuses on an ‘InnovatitonJam’ that took place in 2006. This global brainstorming session of 150,000 employees, family members, universities, business partners and clients generated 46,000 ideas in a 72-hour period. “This approach represents a ‘playful’ relaxation of formal rules for seeking ideas: suggestions are judged on their merit rather than their source”(8). This ability for global communication is one of the areas that the authors see the most potential for playful technology. Virtual meetings in a virtual world would allow more types of communication than just text and speech, they would also allow for visual communication with hand gestures and facial expressions. “The rapid growth in the use of Virtual Worlds is believed to reflect their usefulness and, after the common frustrations of an initial set-up period, the fun and enjoyment they convey”(10). IBM has developed virtual meeting spaces with a variety of tones, for the wide range of tones of meetings that exist. Overall technology “may facilitate and enable play, but its most creative use will lie in the exploration of individuals and groups unbounded and unfettered by restrictive organizational discipline”(11).
Some factors the authors discuss as important to consider when developing a space for playful interaction are the need for ‘play time’ to be unstructured and allow for failure, the need for people’s work to be seen as play and how useful play and creativity are to the company. To achieve these factors companies need to give its employees time for voluntary and uninstructed play, a need not addressed by current management styles. To make work feel more playful the authors discuss the use of location cues to encourage different types of interactions as well as playful designed avatars in digital communication spaces.
Comments: While this paper’s examples of playfulness in technology shows good evidence for why it is beneficial to incorporate into a company, the examples of playful technology given do not seem all that playful in of themselves and would require encouragement from the culture of the company to actually exist as a playful technology. This is a factor that they discuss in the paper, and this is more a critique of IBM’s approach to the development of playful technology. This paper contrasts with Gamification: What it is, and how to fight it as a positive way to introduce play into a work environment.
3. Playful Biometrics: Controversial Technology through the Lens of Play Ellerbrok, A. (2016). Playful Biometrics: Controversial Technology through the Lens of Play. The Sociological Quarterly, 52(4), 528-547. Retrieved April 21, 2018, from https://www-tandfonline-com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/doi/full/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2011.01218.x?scroll=top&needAccess=true
Summary: This article analyzes the transition of facial recognition software from a militarized surveillance technology to a playful consumer product, “‘play’ has a fundamental role in the social life of technologies—even controversial or ‘serious’ technologies”(529). Since 9/11 many CCTV systems have been installed with facial recognition in locations such as airports, border crossings, stadiums and public areas. Many of the promises made about the capabilities of the technology at the time were not lived up to, as accurate identification was only possible under ideal conditions. Another big issue was prevalence of racial profiling in the facial recognition algorithms, as the systems were both more likely to make a false positive match and have “difficulty coding facial contours and shadows on dark-skinned individuals”(532). This is only the latest in a lengthy history of biometric technology being used as a tool for discrimination.
In 2008 a transition from facial recognition as a purely surveillance technology occurred as it was introduced to social media. The use of facial technology for photo organizing in applications like Facebook has shifted its image away from the the serious towards the fun. This has also fixed some of the issues present in the software as a surveillance technology as the user was willing to help the computer to learn people’s faces. In Facebook this means that photos can be automatically tagged, and the user can link the real world identity to the face they identify giving the system more data to work with and making sharing photos with friends easier.
The technology being used in a more playful manner has obscured some of the problematic features of the facial recognition. “These more playful uses of an otherwise controversial technology have fundamentally altered both its popular representation and the ways in which it is taken up by the public—moving from an identification technology widely associated with state control, airport security, and the war on terror to a new representation as a “benign” and user-friendly computer application that instead speaks to pleasure, convenience, and personal entertainment”(530). In addition to the problems present in the original system there is now also the issue of function creep to consider. Function creep is when a technology or data set changes uses in an unforeseen way. In this instance function creep has occurred in the shift from surveillance to social media, but the bigger concern would be function creep of the much more robust data set present in the facial recognition of social media. Play is used as a normalizing technique for controversial technology, as the author says, “playful technologies can and do have serious implications, and fundamentally serious technologies may be used in playful ways”(543).
Comments: This article gave me a new perspective on playful technology as potentially harmful. Prior to reading this I was really only thinking about the positives of playful technology and its use to bring fun into people’s lives, but like all technology it is multifaceted and its history and other uses need to be carefully considered.
I am not a fan of this shift being referred to as ‘feminizing’ in this article, but I do understand the history of the interchangeability of the terms ‘soft’ in the context of science and feminine and the ‘hard’ science and masculine. I’m just not sure it's use was necessary in this paper.
4. Playful Furniture - Breaching a Serious Setting With Interactive Seats Kultima, A., Nummenmaa, T., Tyni, H., Alha, K., Stenros, J., Kankainen, V., . . . Mäyrä, F. (2017). Playful Furniture - Breaching a Serious Setting With Interactive Seats. Games and Culture, 13(3), 301-321. Retrieved April 22, 2018, from http://journals.sagepub.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/doi/abs/10.1177/1555412017718749
Summary: At a game research seminar five MurMur Moderator seats (described below) were set up and their effect was studied through observation, tweet analysis and a small survey. MurMurs are seats designed by the University of Tampere Game Research Lab to create and study playful interactions in the professional environment. It is a low seat or footrest covered in colorful fur and is able to interpret sensory input. Each device has a different personality which they express through their reactions to different actions such as the user sitting down, standing up, touching it’s ‘ears’ or swaying side to side. They also interact with each other and can ‘dream’. With these capabilities they are both primary and secondary objects of play with direct and ambient interactions.
The findings of the study were mixed, varying from positive experiences to mixed or negative experiences, they “were able to explore the important issue of polarized attitudes of adults toward play and provide some food for thought for the future design of adult play”(301). The researchers also received feedback about how the MurMurs impacted the flow of the conference and how to improve the devices. The positive notes included that the seats created a relaxed and playful atmosphere, drew attention to the presenters sitting on them, and seemed to interact with the presenters and the crowd. The negative experiences of the MurMurs were that they were distracting, they seemed out of place at a conference, created concern that others were annoyed by them and some people simply hated the seats. A number of people had mixed feelings about the seats, being in favor of the playfulness of the seats but still felt distracted or otherly annoyed by their presence. The feedback about the flow of the of the experience was mixed. Respondents both said that the seats were more amusing at the beginning, soon became annoying and that they were annoying at the beginning, then began to fade into the background. Another important point brought up was that“adult play and playfulness as well as adult toy use are still more stigmatized and less discussed”(302).
Comments: I think that the concept of adding a playful atmosphere to formal settings such as conferences is a good one but I am not sure if the MurMur seat was the best way to do it due to the discomfort that might be introduced from the noises and unusual seating. However I do think that the introduction of play in such a disruptive way was good to clearly study people’s thoughts and opinions on it.
5. The playful world: How technology is transforming our imagination Pesce, M. (2006). The playful world: How technology is transforming our imagination. New York: Ballantine Books. Summary: I focused on the first and last sections of the book. The majority of the book was examples and anecdotes about playful technology in our world today, such as the Furby or Lego Mindstorms. The introduction covers the rapid shift in our world since the childhood of the last generation as well as how play and toys have always been essential to children’s development and adaptation to the world they live in and how those toys reflect “profound revolutions in simulation, the science of materials and digital communication”(8). Essentially in the toys of children is where the most dramatic technological changes can subtly premiere. “Just as the creative world of children has become manipulable, programmable and mutable, the entire fabric of the material world seems poised on the edge of a similar transformation. [...] because where our children are already going, we look to follow”(9). The technology of tomorrow will be inspired by the toys of today, as they are what developed the worldview of the next generation.
The last section, also titled The Playful World, is a reflection on the implications of the technology laid out in this book. An important point the author discusses in this section is the importance of children and their ability to adapt to the world, “Our children will know how to make sense of this playful world, an important lesson they will be happy to share with us, if we are willing”(272). He says that with our rapidly improving technology and the culture around it our generation will quickly be left behind. In order to keep up with civilization, we have to do something previous generations have had difficulty with, listen to the wisdom of the next generation and learn from them.
Comments: It is interesting to think that the children he refers to in this book are myself and the other members of this class, as we we all 7 to 9 years old when this book was published. This makes me think about how this timescale fits in with the other papers I have read. Are those working on the other playful technology I discuss the same children who grew up playing with Furbys and Lego Mindstorm? Is this first generation of children who grew up playing with technology changing the way we design and use it? I think that this is both a positive tale of playful technology and also addresses the important question of the origins of playful technology outside the realm of children.
6. Gamification: What it is, and how to fight it Woodcock, J., & Johnson, M. R. (2017). Gamification: What it is, and how to fight it. The Sociological Review, 66(3), 542-558. Retrieved April 22, 2018, from http://journals.sagepub.com.offcampus.lib.washington.edu/doi/pdf/10.1177/0038026117728620
Summary: Gamification is essentially three elements added to a system; validation, completion and prizes. This article divides gamification into two categories, gamification-from-above and gamification-from-below, both in the setting of the workplace. Gamification-from-above is games separated from playfulness, using the interaction and feedback of games as a system of regulation and standardization. Gamification-from-below is in opposition to this and adds playfulness to everyday life by using games to make ‘serious’ tasks fun. “A real gamification of everyday life would be the exact opposite of how the term is currently deployed” (544).
Gamification-from-above is often found in the workplace and is using gaming techniques to motivate people to work faster or better or with less error to increase revenue and decrease losses. It is incentivizing behaviors that management wants their workers to have, often against the workers’ best interests. In the current economy with workers only having temporary relationships with the company they work for gamification has become the new method to “motivate, control, supervise and ensure the maximum extraction of value from labour” rather than the company loyalty of the past. For example, some companies assign point values to certain activities to encourage employees to earn as many points as they can, but these scores to not translate to any real gain for the employee. In a similar way to gamification-from-above there has also been a rise in ‘serious’ games for science or education, because only a game seperated from leisure and fun is worthy of our time.
In contrast, gamification-from-below is exemplified by workers creating their own fun in the workplace environment. It “transforms work (and everyday life) into a game whose mechanics are its own antithesis, rather than a game whose mechanics are complicit in the work environment that created it. Context is therefore everything for ‘gamification’” (553). It often requires collective action from a large number of the workers and can frequently be found in use alongside gamification-from-above. Using a number of examples from political ideologies from the 50s and 60s, and mostly focusing on the Situationists (a fusion of Marxism and Surrealism), the authors show how games can be a tool of a social revolution, how “gamification is a tool, and it is therefore vitally important to identify who introduces it, uses it, and for what ends” (543). Currently gamification-from-above is the predominant form found in modern society with gamification-from-below as a truly playful tool of opposition to it.
Comments: I think this article is a fascinating take on the use of gamification in our society today. From the view of the designer we often think of gamification as another feature we could add to a product, but like with most design decisions it is important to consider the ethical dilemmas involved. The emphasis in this article on the importance of who is imposing the gamification on people reminds me a lot of the conversations we had in class surrounding ethics and the topic of gambling. This article fits into the topic of playful technology because gamification-from-above is another example of a way that playfulness can be used to mask the true intentions of a technology. It contrasts with Playful technologies: Creativity, innovation and organization as a negative implementation of play in the workplace.
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