Stats for nerds
1recommend
6mentions
3people
2022–2026years
17% recommend83% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Cute, but the industry has vastly outpaced humans at gaming and abusing the brain’s chemistry. You’ve Been Played is a good book, as is anything by Jaron Lanier.
For the majority, there is no healthy relationship with ‘technology’ — in the smartphone and modern web sense — until technology stops trying to make them into addicts.
- Interesting piece! I’m co-creator of Zombies, Run! so I’m glad to see it mentioned here - we designed it to be in the best interests of players, which is why it doesn’t feature streaks or leaderboards or other ways to manipulate you into overexercising or playing more than you want to.
That said, I’m more sanguine about gamification than the author. There are indeed many games to choose from, but the ones that are most concerning that those we have little choice but to play, whether they’re from our employers or in our schools and colleges, or built into devices and platforms like the Apple Watch and iOS.
If you’re interested in this subject, I wrote a book critiquing gamification called “You’ve Been Played” - the NYT called it illuminating and persuasive!
- Self-promo: If you're interested in the rise of gamification, how it works (and doesn't work), and how it's being used in workplaces, schools, governments, and social media, I published a book last year called You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/adrian-hon/youve-be...
I've been designing games for twenty years, and I'm CEO at Six to Start, the co-creators of Zombies, Run!, one of the most popular examples of gamification to date. I also originally trained as an experimental psychologist and neuroscientist.
The most prevalent forms of gamification, including the ones mentioned in this link, are ultimately based on behaviourism as a theory of motivation. It's not that points and badges and levels don't work – clearly they do, particularly for some people – it's that there are other ways people motivate themselves and others, and the better forms of gamification harness them.
- Self-promo: I recently wrote a book critiquing gamification of this kind, examining it across health and fitness and lifestyle apps, video games, workplaces, finance, and more. It’s called You’ve Been Played and you can find a bunch of excerpts and reviews and discussions here: https://www.metafilter.com/197065/Youve-Been-Played
I think I have a unique perspective on the topic as CEO of a games company (Six to Start), designer of a fitness game with 10 million players (Zombies, Run!), and being a former neuroscientist.
- You've Been Played https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/books/review/youve-been-p...
- Self-link: I wrote about this excellent study in my recent book critiquing gamification, You’ve Been Played: https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/adrian-hon/youve-been-play...
Gamification is significantly more widespread and influential than commonly thought. We’re aware of it in our own corners of life and work, but less aware of how it’s being used on, e.g., truck drivers, gig economy workers, school students, video game players, and more.
