this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2023
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Socialism
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I'm not sure I agree with the premise that gamification is bad. Many people need a push to do things that improve their lives.
The Fitbit example is one that jumps out in that it is there to motivate people into exercise. While I personally don't respond to comparisons to others, I do respond to data where I can compare my results and recognize that my watch telling me I did a good job feels good about the exercise I just did.
Kahn Academy is gamification of a form of education. Earning points for learning many subjects.
I think there is merit to the argument that Duolingo went a bit overboard with trying to guilt you into continuing, but I don't think it can reasonably be argued that trying to motivate people into language study is bad.
I think mentally, the author is probably just one of those like myself that doesn't respond well to gamification overall but the majority of people definitely do and it can help in self improvement.
That said, I totally agree about a gamified workplace. That strikes me as a slippery slope to an unhealthy relationship with work.
Gamification in your personal life can be a useful tool to motivate yourself to complete a chore you don't want to do, to build a habit that you have trouble forming, to otherwise increase the hit of dopamine you get when you do something if you're someone who has trouble creating reward cycles in your life (shout out to !neurodivergence@beehaw.org). When a corporation does it to increase your addiction to their platform, as so many do with phone platforms, social media platforms, or content consumption platforms, or with their employees, it is definitively exploitative.
Yeah, as someone with ADHD I find the idea that gamification is inherently exploitative to be outright offensive. It’s an absolutely necessary accessibility tool for many people with executive function issues. Hell I need gamification to remember to brush my damn teeth every day.
Sure some corpos can take it too far, but this article is way off the mark.
My ADHD brain also craves the dopamine hit.
However, I recently watched a video on how a Chinese shopping site gameifies itself to entice users to spend money with literal "spin the wheel for a chance at a huge discount" then "refer a friend to spin the wheel again!"
When gameification becomes a gamble, that is when it is exploitive.