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Research, Innovative Theory and Methods in Social Sciences and Humanities Set
coordinated by
Albert Piette and Emmanuelle Savignac
Volume 2
The Gamification of Society
Edited by
Stéphane Le Lay
Emmanuelle Savignac
Pierre Lénel
Jean Frances
First published 2021 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:
ISTE Ltd
27-37 St George’s Road
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UK
John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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USA
© ISTE Ltd 2021
The rights of Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020950513
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78630-645-6
Introduction: Gamified Capitalism
The most widely shared definition of gamification presents this process as the transposition of game elements into non-game contexts (Deterding et al. 2011). This definition, derived from “gameful studies”, is based on two streams of research: game theories produced by the humanities and social sciences (HSS) on the one hand, and applied design research on the other. The latter is mainly fueled by video games and establishes the structure of games as operational in terms of involvement, progress and creativity.
If the first current feeds the reflections of the second, the HSS still explores, criticizes and analyzes far too little the practices related to gamification. However, the fields of application in regard to gamification are multiple and wide-ranging. Work1, education, health, the media, citizenship, emotional relations and the quantification of the individual are all concerned by gamified practices. As for the research conducted on gamification, it most often concerns technical objects or processes (digital or not) and does not address gamification as logic – whether it is a matter of “empowerment” or a manifestation of the “new spirit of capitalism”. Consequently, gamification as a “model” (structure) and “referent” (charged with social value) needs to be considered beyond its objects of application.
Within the public space, initiatives in the areas of education through games, learning through games, raising public awareness through games, advanced computing for the benefit of science through games, managing one’s lifestyle through games and other initiatives based on the principle of playing games are rarely questioned. Any commentator who is a bit curious but also questioning, as are – ideally – social scientists, runs the risk of being seen as a sad character. However, this book proposes to bring together various studies (on early childhood, political action, quantified self, etc.) that question what games and their “mechanics” do to the social world. The contributions gathered here question the social meaning given to games and the mechanisms that have enabled them to become legitimate resources for action. More specifically, some of them show how, through gamification, several organizations try, and sometimes succeed, in transforming individuals and producing lasting effects on them – in terms of skills, capacities, understanding of their environment, etc.
The positive attributes spontaneously lent to play (pleasure, social connection, relaxation, emulation, etc.) present it as a clever solution to make many of our not very playful activities more engaging. Driven by design, the challenge here is “broke reality” (McGonigal 2011), that is, to use play as a prism or mediation that, whatever the activity considered, would be capable of “making people feel the quality” of it, and would be able “to prevent suffering, and to create real, widespread happiness” (McGonigal 2011). Gamefully designed, this activity can be transferred to the game field which then extends far beyond its primary spheres of relaxation and leisure. That is how we become homo ludens (to twist Huizinga’s (1951) terminology somewhat), in the literal sense of a kind of homo who occurs or exists through play, even when he works, votes, eats, walks, etc. (McGonigal 2011).
We are not, however, faced here with an extensive definition of play that exhausts its outlines. Playing games, here, is closer with the idea of the underlying structure of games than with the creativity of play. It coincides with the distinction that was made by Caillois (2001) between paidia and ludus, and it induces concrete effects on gamified actions and objects. As Deterding et al. point out:
Whereas paidia (or “playing”) denotes a more freeform, expressive, improvisational, even “tumultuous” recombination of behaviors and meanings, ludus (or “gaming”) captures playing structured by rules and competitive strife toward goals. (2014, p. 6)
This definition of a game has similarities with that favored by other central authors in the gamification literature, for whom “a game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome”