Games in Media
Goodbye Gamification, Welcome Reflective Game Design

Do we need a new name for something that is at least two centuries old? Read on to know why ‘gamification’ is going out of style, and what’s today’s game designers are focused on instead.

By Sonia Fizek

Games and play have always been an integral part of our societies, regardless of the historical period or cultural background. The phenomenon of using games and playful experiences to raise engagement is not new. Pre-digital precursors of more recent gamified practices can be traced all the way back to the 18th century.

In the late 19th century, while working on The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain designed Memory Builder, a gamified system for memorising historical facts and dates more easily. The early 20th century introduced the American population to a playable version of Georgism - a political and economic theory of land ownership enabling a collective wealth distribution. Elizabeth J. Magie Phillips, known as Lizzie Magie, invented the board game The Landlord’s Game and patented it in 1904.

The above examples are just the tip of the iceberg. Despite a rich history of playable experiences and games designed to teach, awaken and motivate, the term of gamification has not emerged until well into the digital era. Let us ask ourselves, why do we need a new frame for practices that are at the very least two centuries old? In other words, is gamification not reinventing the wheel; only this time with a utilitarian and neo-liberal twist?

The marketing-driven rhetoric of gamification has been structured around accumulation and pointsification. In this understanding, game elements are used for strategic purposes in order to influence intended behavioural patterns by means of an applied rule-set. Core to the idea of gamification in marketing is the co-called gamification loop – a mechanism based on the allocation of points through creating challenges, win conditions, leader boards, badges, and social networking, which in turn lead to the achievement of status.

The name of the game

This above interpretation of ‘games with a purpose’ may seem convincing at first glance. The problem is, however, that gamification offers a very narrow vision of what games really are. And these tend to be much more than engines driving engagement through rewards, incentives and competition.

This strong emphasis on measurement and reward systems has been widely criticised by game scholars. As Ian Bogost famously highlighted, “points isn't the point”. He also encouraged researchers critical of the marketing usage of the word gamification to stop using the term entirely and replace it with “exploitationware” or develop innovative approaches to the use of games in different contexts. However, alternative terms – such as serious games, games for change or persuasive games – have never really gained as much recognition as gamification has. This critical perspective on points was also maintained by Margaret Robertson, who noticed that gamification was not a fitting term for products based predominantly on point economy. She stressed the fact that players’ choices in a gamified product are not choices of meaningful impact but rather those of quantity alone, stating, “[d]eciding to run two miles today rather than one, or drink two litres of Coke instead of four are just choices of quantity”. Some researchers went even further and linked pointsification with potential surveillance strategies. According to Daphne Dragona, gamification opens up the possibility for new forms of measurement, which in turn may lead to exploitation and control.

Gamification then carries with it a very specific ethical baggage. It is a term which is deeply rooted in the neo-liberal system of values, in accordance with which games are supposed to make us more efficient and more motivated at work. This drive to make play, and along with it games, into utilitarian endeavours is so common that we rarely put it into question.

Points isn’t the point

However, experiencing the world does not only entail upward movement, scoring, ranks, and the achievement of status displayed in corresponding social platforms. Therefore, the process of gamifying people’s daily rhythms should not be defined solely by points and quantified rewards. A great example of a playful reframing of the everyday experiences leads to The Fun Theory initiative, including such fun activities as the Piano Staircase - an experiment conducted in Stockholm whose goal was to encourage people to take the stairs rather than the escalator by turning the traditional staircase into an interactive piano. In contrast to many gamified experiences, this simple technique of applying a fun factor to a mundane everyday task did not involve any status-based reward system.

So much money and attention has been invested into the gamification buzzword that an entire discourse around games as tools for driving engagement rose to prominence in the 2010s. As quickly as it caught traction, after a decade it almost faded away.

Hallo, reflective game design

Today, gamification seems like a concept from a by-gone era. What thrives, however, is the creative and reflective use of games in a variety of different contexts. The Media Game Jam hosted by Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Kolkata within the context of the project ‘DigiVerse: How to Read Media’ is a good example that we do not need the frame of gamification to be able to design for awareness, change or inspiration. All the twelve international teams “jamming” between 28th November to 1st of December 2023 came up with a variety of creative interpretations of digital literacy. The teams and solo developers used the language of game design to reflect complex issues connected to digital media – from fake news over echo chambers to deceptive dark patterns. The beauty, complexity and freedom of the design and play practice does not need a gamified engine on top of it. It is high time to say goodbye to gamification. We welcome reflective game design and critical game play.