
Is that whole gamification thing really over? - jhought3
http://www.information-age.com/industry/software/123458201/whole-gamification-thing-really-over
======
calinet6
The elephant in the room is that gamification _does not work_ in the
workplace. Work, a place where we spend most of our time and energy in our
entire lives, is something most people want to be meaningful and
important—treating it like a game is the opposite of purposeful.

On top of that, it's not effective. The idealistic idea that competition
breeds productivity and effectiveness is a flat-out lie. Instead, you get in-
fighting, unfairness, bitterness, resentment, and incorrect direction. Even in
a seemingly simple procedural job like a production line, gamification and
management by objective leads to the wrong results. It is extremely difficult
to correctly align the objectives with the true goals of the company, and
especially difficult to produce quality output.

Instead, what companies need is good leadership, clear communication of common
purpose, and ways and motivation to improve both individuals and systems of
production constantly. There is no replacement.

Start here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming)

I'm quite happy to see the natural rejection of this entire industry, it
inspires confidence.

~~~
freejack
You seem to be conflating competitive games with using game mechanics to
achieve a result. Gamification goes well beyond points, badges and
leaderboards and helps managers tap into intrinsic motivators (like personal
satisfaction) to achieve results. Done poorly, its all PBL all day and doesn't
work for the reasons you've outlined. I think its fair to say that "bad
gamification" doesn't work, but its a big leap to toss out the entire field
based on the narrow selection of "bad execution" that you use in your example.

~~~
chavesn
I like to think of "good gamification" as "help people notice the stuff they
are actually getting done."

When people notice what is getting done, they'll more likely be able to judge
whether it's the right stuff to be done and what actions produce more of it.

A corollary of this is "you get what you measure". Whatever you are rewarding,
you'll get more of it.[1]

[1]: Wally from Dilbert: "I'm going to go write me a minivan!"
[http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/](http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1995-11-13/)

------
VLM
From working at a giant megacorp I can see three gamification trends:

1) Everything is slower at a big corp than a startup, so they're laughing and
onto the next big thing whereas level 7 middle manager at megacorp inc is just
implementing it at megacorp inc because they've just caught up to where
everyone else was 10 years ago. There's still money to be made, but to slow
moving non-tech billion dollar companies not million dollar companies and
other tech startups.

2) Managers hate it because employee reward should continue to be based solely
on golf games and kissing up and physical attraction and socioeconomic class,
just like it has been historically. Having some app decide who's doin it right
and who's doin it wrong smacks of replacing that manager with a tiny little
shell script, and oddly enough managers don't like the idea of downsizing
themselves. Never sell gamification to the manager of "mere resources", sell
to the manager's manager or higher.

3) Someone's 3rd party tool is hard to game and manipulate, but something home
grown can be screwed around with so the "right" people win, both preselected
peons and preselected lower level mgrs. This is crucial. Don't sell an
incorruptible black box, nobody wants that. Sell a toolkit, something where
you can pick the winners ahead of time and then generate the "proof" you were
correct. In other words emphasize customization of algo and ability to run
tests on historical data so the customized algo produces the predefined
result. This also means gather a lot of data so its always numerologically
possible to generate the predetermined result, even if you have to do
something weird like divide the coffee budget by the internet bandwidth
consumed multiplied by the number of ceiling tiles in the department, this is
also called "data mining".

~~~
ttruett
#3 is a very interesting point to be made and something that I (as Ambition
co-founder) think about a lot. We've tried to make our product powerful in a
responsible way but there's definitely the fine-line of "what's best for the
company" and "what's best for the person paying for the product". We receive
requests every day from managers asking for the ability to manually manipulate
the (objective) data that we're automatically pulling in from CRMs, Phone
Systems, Spreadsheets.

I remember talking to PG a couple months ago about how Ambition could
potentially decrease office politics and thus "optimize work". Maybe it's a
fool's errand given a company of X size or Y age.

~~~
sillysaurus3
Are you sure you want to spend your life catering to corruption? It seems
better to resist corruption than to profit from it, both for your own personal
life and for the lives of those your product would be influencing.

 _Someone 's 3rd party tool is hard to game and manipulate, but something home
grown can be screwed around with so the "right" people win, both preselected
peons and preselected lower level mgrs. Don't sell an incorruptible black box,
nobody wants that. Sell a toolkit, something where you can pick the winners
ahead of time and then generate the "proof" you were correct._

On one hand, this is something people clearly want, and YC's mantra is "make
something people want." On the other hand, your life would be subservient.
Indeed, you'll be directly subservient in that you'll be answering to the will
of those who are corrupt, and indirectly subservient in that you'll be
perpetuating corrupt systems.

------
iamthepieman
I use Duolingo ever day. Their app/website is heavily gamified to the point
where I think it's part of their tagline. But, at least for me, language
learning is fun. When it's not fun it's at least engaging and/or challenging.
I don't know if gamification can be painted over fundamentally miserable modus
operandi.

~~~
jamieomatthews
This article talks about gamification pretty specifically in the Enterprise
sector. Gamification in the consumer sector is definitely still booming

------
Vaskivo
I don't like the idea of gamification. At least the "do stuff -> get points"
kind of gamification.

I find that it makes people do the right thing for the wrong reasons. I should
work hard because it's what I'm supposed to do. It is the _right thing_ to do!
Not to say that these systems can be "gamed" (pun intended). It gets
incredibly demoralising for a hard worker, doing stuff by the book, to see a
colleague exploiting and cheating the system.

Imagine it with software development. You get points each bug solved. The hard
worker will carefully correct it, the right way, with proper testing, acessing
impacts, all that stuff. The "exploiter" will just thow around a quick hack so
that it works correctly, in about 1/5 of the time. And he can use the
remaining 4/5 of the time to solve more bugs, and earning more points!

TL;DR: It encourages people to do stuff for the wrong reasons and, in my
opinion, that is bad and wrong.

~~~
delluminatus
I also dislike gamification, because it usually puts emphasis on arbitrary
metrics that are not necessarily related to success.

Having said that, I want to note that the exploiter you're talking about
exists in every organization, whether they use a scoring/ranking system or
not. Gamification systems are abusable, but hardly any more abusable than any
other human management system.

------
incision
In my experience, enterprise gamification, like enterprise facebook,
enterprise twitter and enterprise wikis are, for the most part me-too bullshit
bought and sold without any real justification beyond an easy, hip-sounding
KPI for some executive.

That said, underneath all the Gartner (Expensive Cliff's Notes for CTOs)
references and stilted 'enterprise' language there's a good point.

 _" Turning the office into a Chuck E. Cheese isn’t going to hide the fact
that Big Brother is watching over them every second of the workday, and they
aren’t receiving a single tangible benefit from it."_

Exactly.

I've rarely, if ever seen an enterprise that didn't treat its new processes,
SLA and policies as utterly one-sided hammers to bludgeon the rank and file
with. It's all downside for the employees.

These places don't need leaderboards, they need to remember how invest in
their employees and offer tangible incentives.

~~~
michaelochurch
_These places don 't need leaderboards, they need to remember how invest in
their employees and offer tangible incentives._

Bingo. No one who is savvy _wants_ to be on a leaderboard. That's actually
horrible for your career. It doesn't identify you to upper management in any
meaningful or positive way (it's "good at grunt work") and it makes you a
target later on.

------
Lewisham
So I have some experience in this, having researched gamification quite
heavily as part of my PhD thesis [1]. Note that I am going to talk about
gamification as described by Zichermann and as used in this article, not about
"gameful interfaces" as used by Jane McGonigal et al. after the "gamification"
term was so thoroughly poisoned by gamification companies as mentioned in the
OP.

The OP hits on two key points. The first is that employees know bullshit when
they see it. The second is that the wrong metrics were often chosen, and that
anything that didn't have a easy metric was thrown out.

These two points are symptomatic of the root issue at the heart of this:
enterprise gamification companies _don 't, and never did, care about employee
well-being_. This was true of every gamification salesperson and author
(Zichermann in particular) that I ever came across. They were all snake-oil
salesmen selling stuff to CEOs who read about gamification in an airplane
magazine. And to be fair to them, they were very good at it, and I guess the
smartest ones also took the money and ran.

Gamification used buzzwords and metrics to provide feedback about employee
productivity, but never provided any meaning because no deeper motivation was
ever attempted to be tapped. Zichermann was infamous at misrepresenting or
ignoring the psychological literature that ran counter to the nonsense he was
spouting [2]. He particularly rejected intrinsic motivation, which is pretty
much everything anyone ever wants out of their employees, in favor of the
extrinsic motivators, which creates this arms race known as the hedonic
treadmill [3], where employers would have to offer more and more motivators in
order to keep interest. Note that paying people more is a classic extrinsic
motivator.

So you have a whole bunch of points and badges and such, but to what end? What
do they represent? What do they mean to those that hold them? The value of an
Xbox 360 achievement, of a Boy Scout badge, of a Weight Watchers token, was
never about the thing at the end, but about the meaningful trip they
represented and reminded holders of. Gamification never bothered with that,
and enterprise gamification, in particular, couldn't have cared any less.
Making employees more productive was never the goal, it was selling stuff
while the buzzwords were hot.

Gameful ideas _can_ and _do_ work when employed in a thoughtful, meaningful
way that supports the intrinsic motivators of the given task. However, that's
_very tricky_ , as it's way too easy to misalign incentives (e.g. giving a
badge for archiving email quickly, what's the result going to be?) which is
why actual game designs take years to perfect before they are released. There
are often simpler, quicker wins for improving employee motivation.

[1] More easily digested book - [http://www.amazon.com/Irresistible-Apps-
Motivational-Web-bas...](http://www.amazon.com/Irresistible-Apps-Motivational-
Web-based-
Communities/dp/1430264217/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1404922929&sr=8-1&keywords=irresistible+apps)

Free dissertation - [http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~ejw/dissertations/Christopher-
Lewis...](http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/~ejw/dissertations/Christopher-Lewis-
dissertation.pdf)

[2] [http://gamification-research.org/2011/09/a-quick-buck-by-
cop...](http://gamification-research.org/2011/09/a-quick-buck-by-copy-and-
paste/)

[3]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill)

~~~
basyt
I didn't read the article but I am going to read your thesis. I have a
question: Is it possible to have enterprise gamification? What should be the
end goals - the achievements so to speak?

Isn't the whole idea of gamification(an idealization that didn't quite happen
I guess) is to make crud work seem like fun? But, then, wouldn't repetition of
the same joyless task be mundane to the point of being Sisyphean? I agree that
a game achievement is fun to get but archiving mail day after day would get
old pretty fast(I think).

And as a grad student myself I must ask, have you considered the possibility
of gamification systems in academe(school in general)? I guess that's what the
trophies(and convocations) are for, right?

~~~
Lewisham
So there is evidence that people will go looking for intrinsic motivation. The
famous example is that of a car builder as described in relation to Flow
Theory [1], where this guy on an assembly line would try and make a game out
of his small piece, trying to assemble it faster and faster. However, what
happens when you introduce extrinsic motivators into the mix is what is known
as the Overjustification Effect, where people start to think they are doing it
for the extrinsic motivator and erode their intrinsic motivation. If we gave
our car mechanic an extra $20 if he was always in the Top 20% of workers, he's
going to start thinking he's doing it for the $20 and not because he wants to
do better at his internal game.

So if we assume that people will go looking for intrinsic motivation in even
the most tedious jobs, then we can design structures that provide feedback to
enhance that motivation. The key to metrics is that they need to provide
feedback on the things that the employee cares about and helps them to
understand how they are doing in whatever motivates them. For our car
mechanic, maybe we want to do things like:

* Show a timer with how long it's taking him to make them, how he's doing over the day, how he's doing in comparison to yesterday

* Show him the cumulative effort, illustrating how many widgets he's put together

* Show him how his work is important to the company (providing him with purpose), maybe with how many cars he's allowed to be built, and which dealerships they go to

None of this is really "gamification" as you'd think of the term. They're
means to support the gameful context that the employee can choose to, _or not
choose to_ engage in (e.g. the stock market is basically gambling, you choose
whether you treat it as a game or not). It is, however, going to help get the
sort of output that you wanted when you went looking for gamification.

Notice the risk here: If he's building things faster to play his game, his
work might get sloppier. That's why such things need really careful monitoring
and tweaking before being deployed. Same thing with the Target checkout thing
where it shows how quickly the checkout person is pushing people out the door.
My guess Target's real goal isn't getting people out the door, but getting
_happy customers_ out the door. If a checkout person is being incentivized to
actively not help out customers with problems that require more attention,
then it's possible it's working to harm the overall goal.

EDIT: As far as gamifying education, you might be interested in "Punished by
Rewards", which is a book about intrinsic motivation in schools, and was
published long before gamification appeared on the scene. The book has it's
critics, but it's an interesting take.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_\(psychology\))
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overjustification_effect)

~~~
hackuser
Very interesting; thank you.

> if we assume that people will go looking for intrinsic motivation in even
> the most tedious jobs

How safely can we assume that? Is there any research on it?

~~~
keerthiko
I don't have research for you off the top of my head, but here's anecdotal
support -- there's no way these people can get this good at their tedious
menial jobs[1] without finding a strong (superlatively strongest in the world)
intrinsic motivation to perform better.

As Lewisham puts it, structure to maximize enjoyment of their intrinsic games
is the best. Ideally, find out directly from the employees (or by being them
for a while) what intrinsic games they play for their tedious tasks, and then
try to build structure around making it more fun -- there's essentially 4
parts to it - holistic goals, performance stats, realtime feedback (these 3
are mentioned by example by Lewisham), and the hardest-to-implement, fun
interactions.

The last is complicated, but for example, it's the reason why a clickety
mechanical keyboard may be more fun to type on than one of those polymer
rollable keyboards, if you have an employee whose job is to type all day [you
and me probably]. Sometimes workers find ways to turn their interactions with
their work fun on their own (like those in [1]), but for the less
intrinsically motivated, employers facilitating it can have a huge effect.

[1]
[http://www.collegehumor.com/post/6319342/goodatjobs](http://www.collegehumor.com/post/6319342/goodatjobs)

------
nobodysfool2
I don't think it's over at all. Look at 'Target' \- when you check out notice
the employees have like V and G's all on their screen like GGGVGG. That shows
how well their doing. G means they did good. V (or R I don't remember) means
that they were too slow. The goal is to get all Gs. Call it gamification if
you want. I think its not a 'new thing' anymore, its becoming to the point
where it's commonplace and not really mentionable. Acceptance Apathy or
whatever you want to call it.

*edit: Here's a link. It's 'R'

[http://www.levelspro.com/targets-cashier-game-is-it-
really-a...](http://www.levelspro.com/targets-cashier-game-is-it-really-a-
game/)

~~~
ececconi
I worked at the cash register in Hollister in 2006 and we were already getting
graded based on how fast and accurate our checkouts were. If you were an 'A'
you could process returns without getting a manager's permission. Checkout
employees being graded isn't a new thing at all, nor did it come from this
gamification trend.

~~~
VLM
Speaking of cash registers, I have an anecdote that shows you don't have to
actually look at the data as a manager, just publish it.

More than 20 years ago a giant poster at a grocery store I worked at as a
student, displayed the delta between a cash registers contents and the
computers theory of how much cash was there, per cashier. With the obvious
implication a large string of large negatives would be detected. So nobody
swiped cash out of the register, they're looking too closely.

The act of generating the data and publishing it was enough to get the result
without ever taking action. I would imagine there are enterprise level
gamification implications here. Put the call center stats on the big screen
for all to see and the mgmt can simply ignore the stats, more or less,
assuming the employees fall for it.

------
win_ini
Note that the "article" is sourced from a "gamifier" called
[http://ambition.com](http://ambition.com) Sounds a bit like second generation
gamification for enterprise. First gen companies included companies such as:
Badgeville, bunchball, Gigya.

Ambition's tagline? Ambition Makes Companies More Money: Transparency
increases efficiency, competition boosts production.

~~~
btrautsc
We did source this piece a few days ago - we think the industry can deliver a
lot more _actionable_ impact moving forward (specifically to enterprise/
smb's).

Our mission is to build more productive, enjoyable, & inspiring work
environments... because life is too short for work to suck. (tagline still
WIP)

------
mosselman
Obviously the article talks about a very specific example of how gamification
could be applied. In fact, the implementation discussed seems more like Big
Data, the gamification merely present in 'displaying' this big data.

This is all fine, but then the article starts to get into what 'gamification
companies should be doing' because "specific-example-A doesn't work". That is
funky.

The definition of gamification is: "the use of game design elements in non-
game contexts". Unlike what this article implies, using big amounts of data or
'data analysis' is not per se an integral part of gamification.

Gamification can be the use of social elements within a digital system;
avatars, chat, social boards, the creation of your own character; reward
systems such as receiving company points for each sale; visualisations such as
translating the amount of steel produced today as how many % of an aircraft
carrier is completed, etc.

The issue that gamification is not necessarily positive or useful is very
valid. It does not mean that there are nog positive gamification examples or
that it is dead however.

~~~
jamieomatthews
I completely agree. I also agree with the author that companies should be
doing more to tell the employees and managers WHY they are doing good/bad.
However, I don't think thats gamification...that's basically Business
Intelligence

~~~
mosselman
Why certain behaviour is desirable in companies and other behaviour isn't
might not be a gamification, but one could most certainly use gamification to
communicate it.

------
bayesianhorse
The first step in any gamification effort is feedback. The second step is
offering "what to do next".

This can be achieved with or without PBL (points, badges, leaderboards). If
the PBL stuff doesn't connect to feedback, if the feedback is overwhelming or
the calls to action are too cumbersome, unattractive or obscure,
"Gamification" fails.

------
ignu
I work better and harder when I'm actually playing a game.

Pomodoros, sprints and CrossFit all take work and turn it into an actual game.

If you are doing well you feel a surge of pride that the drudgery of typical
'work' can not provide.

Gamification is bullshit because it is not making the activity a game. It is
just assigning a thin game layer on top of mundane tasks.

~~~
ejain
Pomodoros, sprints and CrossFit are not games, just structure (that many
people find useful).

~~~
ignu
CrossFit is literally a game. The metcon at the end of every class is scored,
and there's often a leader board. (I'd argue this is why people, included
myself, get so addicted)

I'd argue that Sprints can be a game where the score is velocity.

And a Pomodoro is a game if you try and get done in 25 minutes the thing you
set out to do.

------
rajatrocks
This seems to be a popular, if misguided meme. I actually wrote a response to
this on our blog when it reared it's head in Fortune a month ago:
[http://www.bunchball.com/blog/post/1462/gamification-just-
ge...](http://www.bunchball.com/blog/post/1462/gamification-just-getting-
started)

I've been living and breathing this for 7 years now. Like anything else, when
executed well it works, and there is ample evidence of that, which is why
companies like SAP, Applebee's, Marriott, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Urban
Outfitters, and Adobe are all customers of ours.

btw - I also wrote a book on the topic:
[http://loyalty30.com](http://loyalty30.com)

------
nmolo
This article is right on time with me as I'm working to figure out if the
gamification in our internal website is really worth it.

Here is the premise: Anyone can create an event and based on the type and
duration its assigned a score. Once the person attends the event they are
given a secret keyword to prove they were actually at the event. Then they go
back online and enter the keyword and get points.

The idea of the points is to use them to enter contests for prizes and such,
hopefully making attending events more enticing.

I'm not so sure the gamification is worth it. If the event is good enough it
should warrant attendance based on a persons interest. Anyone have any
thoughts on this?

------
mherger
My landmark book on gamification in the enterprise was just published and I am
talking extensively about intrinsic/extrinsic motivations, the problem with
rewards and competition, and how to tackle blue collar workers. Exactly all
those questions that you raise. And with tons of examples.

Enterprise Gamification by Mario Herger
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LO5W6L6/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_oO1Vtb...](http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00LO5W6L6/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_oO1Vtb1ZR4BYF)

------
Macsenour
I worked at a game company where "they" brought in someone to teach us to
game-ify our work. We rejected it during the meeting. We already make games
for a living, we don't need to add another layer of gaming on top of that.

The basic concept of competition WITHIN the company is counterproductive to a
creative workplace. We should ALL be working TOGETHER to make the best
product. We have plenty of competitors outside the building, don't need to add
to the list.

~~~
seanflyon
"The numbers are looking good and we haven't even added any gamification [to
our game] yet" \- a Chief Product Officer

------
joshdance
We can't paint with too broad a brush. Gamification doesn't work for all
situations but does for some. Our sales reps love the leaderboards and will
make extra calls or a come in a bit early to be #1.

Consumer products use gamification well in a few cases (Duolingo, Carrot app
etc).

So is the whole gamification thing really over? No. Are we getting smarter and
trying not to cram it into every place where it doesn't belong? Hopefully.

~~~
sheepmullet
"Our sales reps love the leaderboards and will make extra calls or a come in a
bit early to be #1."

Because the top few sales people are treated like royalty and almost always
directly benefit from each extra sale (usually via commission, also through
network effects).

"Consumer products use gamification well in a few cases (Duolingo, Carrot app
etc)."

Because people want to learn a language, get fit, etc. We already have the
desire and know the huge benefits and these gamification products help make
the journey a bit easier.

The reason enterprise style gamification doesn't work is because cranking out
an extra 5 widgets a day doesn't improve the employees life one little bit.
The incentives are all wrong.

I can either:

1) bust my ass off putting 100% effort into getting an extra 10-20% done each
day then be too worn out to do anything else. Upside is I might be a little
bit less likely to get fired and I might get a bonus bottle of wine each
month.

Or

2) stay in the middle of the pack and invest my energy and determination into
my side projects and l&d. Upside is in the long term I can fairly safely
double or even triple my pay.

Not a hard choice and gamification isn't going to stop anyone from picking
option 2.

------
talles
Just adding to the discussion: Stack Exchange had a whole (Q&A) website
dedicated to gamification. Didn't passed the beta due to low activity.

"The Gamification site didn't have enough activity during the beta, and has
been closed."

[http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/44478/gamification](http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/44478/gamification)

------
tornadonoob
The term and the idea of gamification is good but making it really stick the
creative genius must be applied to an appropriate product to make it really
work. Otherwise it looks like you are just trying too hard.

------
ejain
Don't know about enterprise gamification in general, but in the context of
health, gamification is just taking off (especially in places with employer-
based health insurance).

------
michaelochurch
_If the energy in an office is lethargic and employees are struggling, there’s
a deeper problem there that an office competition likely won’t resolve._

::Reaches for the "no fucking shit" red button.::

 _Here’s the dirty little secret of gamification software: most are inherently
disrespectful towards their users. They are designed to manipulate employees,
not empower them._

Executives think of "their" people as children, not adults who want respect,
meaningful work, autonomy, fair pay and reasonable job security... and who can
be very clever in striking back when they're being denied those things. The
ones who disengage and draw a salary while doing no work? Those are the _nice_
ones.

It's amazing to me that, every time the people in the organization act in
their own interests instead of falling for some grandiose executive plan that
offers nothing for the careers of those who have to implement it, upper
management is always like "WTF the furniture is MOVING up in this bitch".

Here's why gamification doesn't work. If someone went to Vegas with a year's
salary and gambled it all away, you wouldn't care what the end result was.
Some would come back with 5 years' pay. Some would be bankrupt. But you'd
consider it pathological.

When that much income is on the line, when someone's career is on the line,
it's not a fucking game. Workplace "gamification" takes injury (managerial
oversight, anxiety, micromanagement) and adds insult by presenting it as
"fun". (What do you mean, you don't like "story points"? Doesn't everyone like
a bedtime story?) It's fucking _sick_.

