Have you ever felt mildly irritated – usually on the internet or other media – when you’ve responded to some cue, had your attention diverted, and then spent (wasted?) time in unproductive activity?
Of course you have. Or maybe you just shrugged and moved on, muttering to yourself, stupid tech.
Or maybe you haven’t really noticed, so familiar and inured you may have become to constant manipulation of what we perceive, and how we subsequently behave.
This is gamification – the intrusion by online systems into your daily plans, not to help you achieve your goals but to achieve it’s goals; the unwelcome, or at least, uninvited, distraction from what you intended to be doing.
What is gamification anyway? My American-Heritage Dictionary defines gamification thusly: ‘the application of typical elements of game playing (e.g. point scoring, competition with others, rules of play) to other areas of activity, typically as an online marketing technique to encourage engagement with a product or service’. Hmmm. Seems innocent enough, but somehow gamification seems more sinister?
Is gamification related to gaming? Well, maybe. Both are derived in some way from gambling. Most people who gamble do so for the entertainment value – the only reward is the pleasure in playing the game; some gamble thinking they can ‘beat’ the house, but it’s a mug’s game – the house ultimately wins. Some would say the house wins because it ‘games’ the system. That is, it sets up the game such that the odds always favour the house in the long run, though rewards the player from time to time in the short run. The player is ‘gamified’ – i.e., receives periodic reinforcement of psychological satisfaction – in order to keep the player(s) playing, and coming back.
Legitimately setting the odds that generally favours the house is usually well understood, and despite this the participant plays for the fun of it, or perhaps with the delusional belief that she can beat the odds. But this is not ‘gaming’. ‘Gaming’ is the hidden or underhanded manipulation of the game that assures the house wins. The house may install confederates to maneuver the stooge, or even the overconfident veteran, into losing situations. Some players may figure out how to ‘game’ the system and beat the house or the other players. Gaming is otherwise known as ‘cheating’, hence the pejorative feelings we associate with the word, and by extension, gamification.
Engaging in computer games – on-line or device-based – is also called ‘gaming’ (but not the pejorative ‘gaming’). People who play computer games – called ‘gamers’ – are subject to gamification all the time. The game is designed to attract and hold the attention of the participant. Even if you don’t play on-line games, you probably know what I mean: the famous pioneering video games (Pacman, Mario Brothers) challenged the user to navigate ever more complex situations; the violent war and crime video games (Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto) in which the gamer’s icon risks life and limb to overcome enemies, or die in the effort; the construction games (Tetris, Minecraft). You know what I mean, computer games have become part of our culture. They feature animated characters (often called avatars – an icon or figure representing someone or something, and in many games the player him or herself), and situations that the ‘gamer’ identifies with; the gamer is ‘rewarded’ in playing the game by some feedback mechanism or ‘reward’, or scorecard. The gamer is able to track his or her performance and get a dopamine hit when he achieves some goal, or, more insidiously, is depressed if the performance slips – okay, just one more round. If the scorecard being kept involves other players playing at the same time, the gamification has moved up another notch to rivalry.
These rewards are not just there to engage the player in a pleasurable pastime; they’re there to encourage persistence, to keep him or her playing the game. The player signs on in anticipation of a little distraction and is rewarded with endorphins; the gamer keeps on playing to get repeat hits, or (often, unconsciously, to seek other psychological goals: learning, winning, achievement, approbation). The hits become addictive, and the gamer keeps on playing, against all reason.
Gamification in video games is not unlike gambling: the thrill of a ‘win’, the gradual habituation of the dopamine hit, (you went to the casino for a couple of hours of innocent fun, and you can’t believe you stayed five hours – ah but the drinks were cheap, and I was ahead for a while there), the constant enticements for ‘just one more round’; you’ve been gamified. In video games the gamer gets gamed by the constantly changing and challenging obstacles to be overcome; like gambling, and now the ubiquitous on-line gambling, endorphins repeatedly flood the gamer’s brain and becomes an addiction until, tragically, you’ve lost the house, and the truck, and the wife; maybe not the dog. With non-gambling video games you don’t lose the house but you might lose untold hours, interest in other human activities, maybe your job; maybe even the dog.
But gamification is not restricted to computer games. It’s now in many parts of our lives, especially those parts involving shopping! The geniuses in the marketing and sales departments of retailers everywhere are seeking to stimulate you – ‘incentivize’ you – engage you and ultimately to inculcate in you brand loyalty. Clever marketeers have even marketed their goods with their recognizable logos displayed on their garments and goods so that we consumers compete with other consumers in a status game of one-upmanship, and in the process we become walking billboards for the company’s brand we’re wearing.
Advertising is a form of gamification which has been around for a century; Barnum and Bailey and hucksters at country fairs have been enticing us for centuries more.
With the rise of online shopping and e-commerce, retailers and merchandisers have had to find ways to entice customers into their ‘stores’, sample the goods, make a purchase and finally feel satisfied enough with the experience to want to come back. In a bricks and mortar store the enticement is the store window, being drawn into the show-room, the display of the goods in attractive ways, the invitation to sample the goods/try something on, sit in the chair, pick up that book and leaf through it, engage with the friendly sales person, take your purchase to the cash register, buy the product, accept the loyalty card/future discount reward, and take your purchase out of the store. The e-commerce store attempts to do that via your computer or mobile device through the use of a virtual setting, perhaps an avatar representing you the shopper, a navigation of the virtual store (catalogue), possibly engaging an avatar salesperson, progressing to making a selection and to the checkout.
[Okay, what’s an avatar: look it up on the internet and mostly all you find is James Cameron’s ridiculous movie, Avatar, but in computerland an avatar is an icon or figure representing a particular person in a video game, internet forum, etc.]
Replicating a real-life experience is a lot to ask of a piece of software and a computer but it is rapidly becoming the preferred way to shop: and increasingly the experience includes an interactive virtual store, an avatar shopper, and the gamification enticements: virtual participation, feedback, comparison information, discount prompts, loyalty points. Oh, and maybe free shipping and easy returns. What could be wrong with that?
Loyalty cards (Air Miles, aeroplan, Scene card – updated on your on-line account, Plum card at Indigo bookstores – even your neighbourhood coffee shop stamp card) are there to get you coming back: you’ve been gamified. Me too; I’ve got a wallet full of loyalty cards. I’ve also given up my name, address, email and phone number, and my credit card numbers. And I get a constant stream of emails encouraging me to come back to enjoy new product offerings, the latest release, bonuses and discounts, if I act now.
I mention all this from a recent experience I had – more of a thought experiment really – thinking about the marketing and selling of books.
As I have written previously, often (go here, and here), Indie authors such as myself have a devil of a time trying to get their books in the hands of readers. This is true for authors everywhere but especially so in Canada where Canadian buyers are largely drawn to name recognition authors, and most of them are American. Indie bookstores in Canada don’t have the capacity to promote all the books published by emerging Canadian authors even if they had the latent desire to support Canadian literary arts. Knowing this, indie bookstores, struggling themselves to stay afloat against the big box stores and the giant on-line presence of Amazon, are in no position to promote indie authors’ books, even when the intrepid author has persuaded them to stock it. So the lonely author is obliged to market and promote his books himself. It takes stamina, persistence and resilience to pick oneself up and keep on keeping on. Many authors give up and try to get represented by an agent and a publisher in the hopes that these established channels will do the work the author is reluctant to do himself. Authors soon discover, however, the publisher does very little to promote the books of relatively obscure authors and so the author still has to be his own promoter.
In the face of all this, Canadian Authors have been noodling the idea of establishing its own on-line bookstore, a virtual retail place for Members to sell their books. The CAA currently has a static catalogue of Members’ books with links to their websites or distributors; What it lacks is a way to attract shoppers to the site, induce them to buy and encourage them to come back, and recommend it to their book-buying friends; there are no 3D graphics, no avatars, no gamification.
There are many hurdles to installing our own online bookstore, not the least of which is venture capital to get the site up and running and overcoming all the supply chain challenges. Even to attract the funding for this authors’ cooperative, the venturers would need abundant hubris, and luck, to go where Amazon and Indigo already are (and even they don’t have avatars). We need a major benefactor, like Bob Young, or even Tobias Lütke.
Even once established, like all businesses, we would need to attract customers to the ‘store’ and entice them to buy Canadian Authors’ books.
What we will need are some clever marketing strategies. We’ll need to ‘incentivise’ readers to visit our virtual bookstore, and buy our books. We’ll need to set up the visitor with her own avatar and reinforce her positive experience, thus encouraging her to return to the virtual bookstore, often. We’re going to have to gamify our site.
Doug Jordan, reporting to you from Kanata
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