My Old Man sent me an article via the e-mails yesterday on the topic of Gamification. For those not aware, the term Gamification means to take regular activities and inject game-type elements in them. Things like Achievements, points rewarded for certain actions, etc. Websites like Livestrong do this by adding in achievements for losing X amount of weight, or regularly exercising for X number of days in a row.

I only skimmed the beginning of the article, assuming it would be about increasing Gamification in the work place. I was incorrect. Still, this place has been desolate enough that I figured my response was still worth posting online.

Yeah, I think this arose from the Serious Games industry. I’ve read some articles on it, though I think I mostly saw it being used in educational environments rather than work environments.

Microsoft recently took their Achievements system from Xbox 360 games, where certain actions and accomplishments “unlock” an achievement that rewards the players points, and implemented it into their most recent version of Visual Studio. It’s a decent enough idea, as Achievements in video games allowed for players to explore and try things they normally wouldn’t have, becoming better at the game while simultaneously getting more mileage out of it. They’re hoping that programmers will try and explore more advanced features of Visual Studio that might have been glossed over before.

I don’t know if it’ll work, though.

In terms of the work environment, well, it works in education because education is already built off of a series of metrics. The thing about video games, role-playing and adventure games like Final Fantasy or Zelda in particular, is the design has a balanced challenge/reward ratio. If you fight a tough enemy, you are reward with better experience and treasure. If you go out of your way to explore, increasing chances of encounters with foes and taking extra time to explore the unknown, then some form of reward is expected to be at the end.

Education already has that sort of system. The harder you work, the better grade you get. Adding other elements of game mechanics should encourage this further, but basically there’s already a sort of challenge/reward ratio. It’s merely a matter of making that reward more substantial and making the challenge worth tackling (if you can call modern education a challenge).

The work place operates differently, though. A sub-par job results in a sub-par product results in sub-par sales. There’s more at stake. Trying to add in additional metrics and rewards so that an employee does a better job is just going to cost the company extra time and money.

The secret to the work place is morale and allowing employees to be happy. I’ve read other studies on this, and I think they have better ideas (minimize over-time and crunch-time, as studies have proven these are actually detrimental to a project rather than beneficial, and allow employees some time to work on personal projects like Google allows (though these often come with the clause that whatever is created must have the goal of being implemented into the company)).

It’s all very interesting, really, though unfortunately too many companies have already ignored the numerous studies over the past several years saying overtime and crunch-time doesn’t work. So I doubt there will be any major changes any time soon.

I actually find it depressing that the concept is garnering more attention as a method to make money than how to get children and teenagers more involved with education. I guess that’s just how life works.

Maybe I’ll write more about challenge/reward systems in the future, though, and how they can be applied in real life.