In this talk I will examine how the play-element of videogames is deconstructed to try to bring fun back to real life. Games are reality-broken technologies in the sense that they are rule-bound elements that constraint action. Videogames are game-mediated technologies that take advantage of ICT to create more compelling user experiences. Two modern approaches, gamification and playful design, extract the constituent elements of videogames and take them to other non-game contexts to engage users and motivate action. Examples as well as theoretical approaches from game theory and the psychology of motivation will be presented to conceptualize this new level of brokenness. I will argue that this new attempt to bring fun back to everyday activities reflects an underlying brokenness in reality. This new framework addresses the multistability of game technologies and reality.

1. HUMINF Seminar Broken Technologies. Alcalá de Henares. Nov 2014.
Gamification:
Breaking videogames,
reconstructing reality
Luis de Marcos Ortega (Univ. of Alcalá)
luis.demarcos@uah.es
http://www.uah.es/pdi/luis_demarcos

2. TOC
1. Games
2. Videogames
3. Serious Games
4. Playful Design
5. Gamification
6. Multistability
7. References

3. Games
• Wittgenstein [on language]
– “For how is the concept of a game
bounded? What still counts as a
game and what no longer does?
Can you give the boundary? No.
You can draw one; for none has
so far been drawn. (But that never
troubled you before when you
used the word ‘game’.)”
Philosophical Investigations,
Aphorism 68

4. Games
• Huizinga: Play cannot be denied
• “play-factor was extremely active all through the
cultural process” (Huizinga, 1949)
• Magic circle
– All play is a voluntary activity
– Rule-bound
– Absolute order

5. Games
• “playing a game is an
attempt to overcome
unnecessary obstacles“
• Elements:
–Objective (prelusory goal)
–Rules (lusory means)
–Lusory attitude
(Suits, 2005)

6. Games
• Game Technologies are reality-broken
• “the idea is to create a belief of authenticity; it is
a technology that works as a belief-factory”
• “we understand this technologies as reality
broken, understanding ‘reality’ as the level of
completeness that the everyday world demands
in space and time dimensionality”
(Flores, 2009)
• Suspension of disbelief (Coleridge)

7. Games
• Counterargument 1: Inseparable duality reality/imagination
• “A child does not behave in a purely
symbolic fashion in play; rather he
wishes and realizes his wishes by
letting the basic categories of reality
pass through his experience. The
child, in wishing, carries out his
wishes. In thinking, he acts. Internal
and external action are inseparable:
imagination, interpretation, and will are
the internal processes carried by
external action” (Vygotskii, 1978)

8. Games
• Counterargument 2: Reality is broken
• “Reality doesn’t motivate us
effectively. Reality isn’t engineered to
maximise our potential. Reality wasn’t
designed from the bottom up to make
us happy. Reality, compared to
games, is broken.”
• “What if we decided to use everything
we know about game design to fix
what’s wrong with reality?”
(McGonigal, 2011)

9. Videogames
• Computers provide to games:
–immediate feedback
–multimedia enriched narrative
–connectivity

10. Videogames
• Types of brokeness (Flores, 2009).
Videogames are:
–Game technologies
• Reality-broken (space + time)
–Virtual technologies
• Space-broken
–Intermedial technologies
• Media-broken

11. Videogames
• “virtual realities are less than three-dimensional
realities, and that means a reality that does not
belong to the dimensión of the real-presential
and cannot be touched. Any study of virtuality is
then a study of ‘non-presential’ worlds, worlds in
which the human body and the sense of touch is
not available”
• “virtual reality does not reach the level of
everyday materiality, it could be considered as a
form of objectifying thought-representation”
(Flores, 2009)

12. Videogames
• Play vs game (Caillois, 1958)
– Paidia  Play
– Ludus  Game

13. Videogames
• Deconstructing games (Deterding, 2011)
Gaming (Paidia)
System
Playing (Ludus)
Elements
(Serious)
Games
Gamification
(Serious)
Toys
Playful
Design

14. (Serious) Games
• American Army
– First-person shooter designed for recruiting
– Most effective marketing tool of the American Army

15. (Serious) Games
• Fold-it
– Real world-problem (protein folding)
– Meaning  contributing to a larger goal

16. (Serious) Games
• (Serious) Game = Game + System
• Seriousness is just in the purpose
• Not belonging to a different category of analysis
from any other [video]game
• All games are serious!!!
• Similar analysis applies for (Serious) toys
• (Serious) Toy = Play + System
– Just that it is not an extensive field of research

17. Playful design
• Playful design = Play + elements
• Piano Stairs
– Behavior change
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

18. Playful design
• Stairs are stable technologies
– never to be broken
• Escalator
– whole technology while being used
– mixed technology
• Stairs + Elevator
• Piano stairs
– broken as piano  impossible to play
– temporally turns the scalator into a
motivational-broken technology (not
ludic)

19. Gamification
• Gamification = Game + elements
• “Gamification is the use of game
design elements in non-game
contexts to engage users and
promote action” (Werbach, 2012)
• a.k.a. gameful design

20. Gamification
• Game design elements (Werbach, 2012)
– Dynamics (5): Constraints, emotions, narrative, progression,
relationships
– Mechanics (10): Challenge, chance, competition, cooperation,
feedback, resourse acquisition, rewards, transactions, turns, win
states
– Components (15): Achievements, avatars, badges, boss fights,
collections, combat, content unlocking, gifting, leaderboards, levels,
points, quests, social graph, teams, virtual goods.

21. Gamification
• PBL triad:
–(P)oints
–(B)agdes
–(L)eaderboard

22. Gamification
• Foursquare
– Social network of places
– Visits (check-ins)  Badges (social recognition)

23. Gamification
• Nike+
– Fuel points + community (challenge friends)
– 11 million users (2013)
– Market share (U.S shoes):
• from 47% (2006) to 61% (2009)

24. Gamification
• Starbucks loyality program
– Points (stars) + levels
– Nice integration: Payment App
– 6 million users (2013)
– $3 billion in sales

25. Gamification
• Hurrah! & Microsoft CRMGamified
– challenge, competition, rewards (trophies)
– points, badges, leaderboards, achievements
– "generate and inspire key behaviors that drive more
sales, encourage and motivate your employees“

26. Gamification
• I suggest that gamification technologies are
ontical-broken
• “both pragma an noema exist but they, but they
are not related with each other in full
correspondence. The ontology created in this
incongruent relationship is technological but
incomplete” (Flores, 2009)
• Ontical-broken means tehcnologies of poverty
• But… gamification is supposed to motivate, add
value, create richness…
26

27. Gamification
• "More and more the sad conclusion forces itself
upon us that the play-element in culture has been
on the wane ever since the 18th century, when it
was in full flower. Civilization today is no longer
played, and even where it still seems to play it is
false play" (Huizinga, 1959)
• “at its core gamification is about finding the fun in
the things that you have to do” (Werbach, 2012)

28. Gamification
• “even routine activities can be transformed into
personally meaningful games that provide optimal
experiences” (Csíkszentmihályi, 1990)
• Just think of it AS a game
– games at school  school as a game
– games at workplace  workplace as a game

29. Gamification
• Motivational design is a promising proposition
– How might we restructure a system to support intrinsic
enjoyment, using game design as a lens?
– Put differently, if this were a game in what ways is it
broken? (Deterding, 2012)
• Therefore (and again): Is reality broken? Could it
be that gamification is just a naïve approach to
bring [essential] fun back?

30. Criticism
“Gamification is bullshit. I'm not being flip or
glib or provocative. I'm speaking
philosophically. More specifically, gamification
is marketing bullshit, invented by consultants
as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast
that is videogames and to domesticate it for
use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big
business, where bullshit already reigns
anyway.” (Bogost)
http://www.bogost.com/blog/gamification_is_bullshit.shtml

31. Criticism
• Cow clicker
–“deconstructive satire of social games […]
gamification, educational apps, and
alternate reality games” (wikipedia)
–Pointsification…
http://bogost.com/writing/blog/cow_clicker_1/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker

32. Criticism
“Gamification is an inadvertent con. It tricks
people into believing that there’s a simple way
to imbue their thing (bank, gym, job,
government, genital health outreach program,
etc) with the psychological, emotional and
social power of a great game.” (Robertson)
http://www.hideandseek.net/2010/10/06/cant-play-wont-play/

33. Multistability
• In terms of action / perception
– Games are reality-broken (rules constraint
action)
• Videogames are media-broken
– Gamification is ontical-broken
• In motivational terms
– Reality is broken
– Games are whole technologies
– Playful design & gamification are endevours to
bring fun back to reality

34. References
• CSÍKSZENTMIHÁLYI, M. 1990. Flow: The psychology of optimal experience, New York, HarperCollins.
• CAILLOIS, R. 2001. Man, play, games. Combined Academic Publishers.
• DETERDING, S., DIXON, D., KHALED, R. & NACKE, L. 2011. From game design elements to
gamefulness: defining "gamification". Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek
Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments. Tampere, Finland: ACM
• DETERDING, S. 2012. 9.5 Theses on the Power & Efficacy of Gamification. Presentation in SlideShare.
• FLORES, F. 2009. Broken Technologies: The Humanist as Engineer, Lund, University of Lund.
• HUIZINGA, J. 1949. Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-element in Culture, London, Routledge & Kean
Paul.
• McGONIGAL, J. 2011. Reality Is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the
World, New York, Penguin Books.
• RYAN, R. M. & DECI, E. L. 2000. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New
Directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25, 54-67.
• SUITS, B. 2005. The Grasshopper: Life, Games & Utopia, Toronto, Broadview Press.
• VYGOTSKII, L. S. 1978. Mind in Society: Development of Higher Psychological Processes, Cambridge,
Massachussetts, Harvard University Press.
• WERBACH, K. & HUNTER, D. 2012. For the win: How game thinking can revolutionize your business,
Philadelphia, Wharton Digital Press.

35. Thank you & Questions

36. Conferencia. ANIEI, CNCIIC 2014. Aguascalientes. Octubre 2014.
Luis de Marcos Ortega (Univ. of Alcalá)
luis.demarcos@uah.es
http://www.uah.es/pdi/luis_demarcos
Gamification:
Breaking videogames,
reconstructing reality