Gamification

when are games no longer play?

I’m in a weekly accountability group with wonderful parent-writers, and we talk a lot about how to trick ourselves into writing. They taught me the word gamify: to turn the task at hand into a game. Like Mary Poppins. “In every job that must be done there is an element of fun. You find the fun and snap, the job's a game!”

Mary Poppins is play personified.* The original film is still a go-to in our house. Watching the other night, singing along with my daughter, I wondered if Mary Poppins is also to blame for our over-synonymizing of “games” and “play.” In childhood they often do mean the same thing—games are engaging and so they are fun. We invent most of them ourselves. But as we get older, games—and gamification—can take a more sinister turn.

I just started listening to Land of the Giants, a great new podcast hosted by Sangeeta Singh-Kurtz and Lakshmi Rengarajan examining the history of internet dating apps. “Gamification” is a trend in tech where companies intentionally design interfaces to look more like games so their apps are “fun.” Swipe right, and get locked in a ‘ludic loop,’ the term coined by Natasha Schüll, a professor at NYU who studies the effects of slot machines on human behavior. It’s the loop of the dopamine hit, infamously doling out just enough pleasure to keep us going back for more.

We could applaud companies for being creative, keeping the slog of dating fun, except the goal unequivocally isn’t to have people engaged in something they love doing. It’s to hook them. The goal is profits.

It can become hard to tell the difference between things we do because we love them and things we do because we’re hooked. Between true satisfaction and dopamine.

are puzzles play?

For me, puzzles are an example of this tertiary territory. I love puzzles. Really love puzzles. I’m good at them, and for a mind that often struggles to make order of chaos, it feels therapeutic to repeatedly click pieces into place. Doing a puzzle is one of the few activities that consistently holds my focus.

One way we measure addiction is by how a behavior negatively impacts your life, or the lives of the people around you. Increased negligence, high risk-taking, financial irresponsibility. I’ve never let a house burn down over a puzzle, but I’ve definitely gotten an adrenaline rush trying to finish one on the ferry before we dock. I get agitated and resentful if interrupted. I forget to eat and feed my child, and everything I should be doing goes by the wayside. Is this because puzzling is a creative act—the true flow state of play—or an addiction?

I really don’t care if I’m addicted to puzzles. I’m pretty sure I gain something healthy, and in the end it’s an analog process that involves beauty and order. There’s no elf in the box working around the clock to make sure a thousand-piece colorful landscape keeps me hooked, endlessly tweaking the design to drive profits.

Engagement—one of the cornerstones of play—is another concept frequently distorted in tech. How many people are clicking and liking and sharing your thing? They call it “engagement,” but there’s no way of knowing if people are driven by truly activated minds or loyalty to the screen. Not to mention the addictive quality of constantly checking these arbitrary “stats.”

I approach gamification as it relates to work with some trepidation. Of course I want to bring more play to work, but it’s overshadowed by a fierce desire to protect play itself. I don’t want to contribute to a perception that it’s only acceptable when it serves our work goals or productivity. And I definitely don’t want play itself to start working for money.

I also don’t want to punish myself. It can be refreshingly easy to turn work that feels repetitive or daunting into something delightful. When I switch on a healthy gamification mindset with writing, I get more creative and always like myself better. The days I’m successful at weaving elements of fun into my work are some of my favorite days (and most productive, which can’t be the goal, but sure is a nice outcome). I’ve started calling this “applied play,” promising myself it won’t replace the non-applied kind. We can bring play to work, but must remain vigilant about work consuming play. Pure play requires regularly exercising the muscle of “just because.” This takes practice, but it’s also what makes us.

When writing a book gets overwhelming, I switch to play. First step: color. The rest follows.

Today’s Assignment (choose one):

A. Gamify your work. Ask how you can approach one boring work task this week with an element of fun.

B. Question your game. Before you do a “fun” thing you do all the time (crossword puzzles, checking Instagram, going on Hinge again), ask what other thing, after doing it for 15 minutes, will leave you feeling fuller.

*P.L. Travers might not agree, as she did not care for the film’s adaptation of her character.