Title: Gamification: Exploring the Debate within Game Design This paper explores the concept of gamification and the current debate engulfing the movement. Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts (Deterding 2011). This concept has experienced a rapid growth within the game development community since 2009 and received popular recognition following the release of Jane McGonigal’s Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (2011). Gamification has come under criticism from its supposed leaders, including Ian Bogost and Jane McGonigal herself. Specifically, games scholars have criticized the adoption of gamification by marketing and public relations companies. This paper will define the gamification movement, examine the current debates within gamification, and critically analyze the gamification phenomenon through close reading. This is part of a multi-phase research project examining digital games and home energy conservation in Toronto.

Context The recent phenomenon of using digital games to solve social problems and engage audiences is known as gamification (McGonigal 2011). Gamification analyzes the design elements that makes games fun and adapts those elements for applications that are typically not considered games. Common applications of gamification include adding achievement rewards (badges, medals), achievement levels, virtual money, leader boards, progress indicators, or challenges between players. Gamification has been used in diverse contexts including brand marketing, aerospace training, elementary education, and military strategy (amongst others). This concept has evolved from Abt's serious games: "games that have an explicit or carefully thought-out educational purpose and are not intended to be played primarily for amusement"(Abt 1970). Gamification is the latest articulation of serious games and differs by creating a game layer on an existing application/product rather than a game-first design. Canadian philosopher Bernard Suits’s The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (1978) defines games as follows: “Games are unnecessary obstacles that we volunteer to tackle” (10). This definition has been championed by Jane McGonigal and serves as the foundation for the gamification movement. If players are willing to volunteer and undertake challenges involving unnecessary obstacles, games have the capacity to mobilize. McGonigal’s vision of mobilization is game as social transformation tool. As a game developer, McGonigal has created projects aimed at social progress including Evoke (2010) to crowd-source innovative solutions for developing nations, Superstruct (2008) to simulate global crises like famine and disease, World Without Oil (2007) to encourage alternative fuel awareness. Similarly, Ian Bogost’s Persuasive Games group have developed games for alternative power sources, debt management, and nutrition. Gamification has gained significant popularity as a commercial prospect. Speculation on commercial opportunity through gamification is growing. Gamification can “help workers become more engaged” (Clark 2011), “exert a strong psychological influence over consumers” (MacMillan 2011) and “encourage behaviors amongst your customers” (Lovell, 2011). Bogost and McGonigal represent a group of scholars (including Sebastian Deterding and Margaret Robertson) who criticize gamification as a commercial strategy. Bogost describes these ventures as “exploitationware” (Bogost 2011), Armstrong as “inadvertent con” (2010) and Deterding as “pointless” (Deterding 2010).

Methodology Using a close reading approach, this paper examines gamification through foundational texts in academic and commercial publications. These include the scholarly gamification work (Ian Bogost, Sebastian Deterding, Jesper Juul, Jane McGonigal and Margaret Robertson) and the non-scholarly public treatment of gamification (Business Week, Forbes, New York Times, and Wall Street Journal). Based on these close readings, this paper provides a critique of the debate and presents an analysis of gamification.

Research Questions What is gamification? What are the current debates surrounding gamification? What are the biases and theoretical frameworks of gamification from a commercial perspective? What are the biases and theoretical frameworks from a scholarly perspective?

Thesis Gamification is a socially transformative framework for gaming created by its scholarly tradition. Through the work of Ian Bogost, Sebastian Deterding, Jesper Juul, Jane McGonigal, gamification is presented as a vehicle for personal and social transformation. Through the principles of positive psychology, McGonigal has championed video games as a space for personal growth and a vehicle to “make us better” and “change the world” (McGonigal 2011). These scholars have denounced the commercial applications of gamification as violating the spirit of gaming, namely fun-focused design.

Conclusion The growth in popularity of gamification (and subsequently commercial interests in gamification) has created significant debate within the scholarly video game community. Specifically, McGonigal, Bogost and others have denounced the commercial adoption of gamification. This group argues that adding game elements to a non-gaming application does not capture the “spirit” of a game. This paper concludes that these game scholars are operating from a particular ideological framework that privileges video games as a space for personal development and social transformation in opposition to commercial development. References Abt, Charles. 1970. Serious Games. New York: The Viking Press. Armstrong, Margaret. 2011. Can’t Play, Won’t Play. Hide and Seek: Inventing New Kinds of Play. Blog. http://www.hideandseek.net/2010/10/06/cant-play-wont-play Bogost, Ian. 2011. Gamification is Bullshit. Wharton Gamification Summit. http://www.bogo.st/wm Clark, Tim. 2011. Gamification Gets Down to Business. Forbes. http://www.forbes.com/sites/sap/2011/09/15/gamification-gets-down-to-business/ Deterding, Sebastian et al. 2011. Gamification: Towards a Definition. CHI 2011, (Vancouver, Canada, May 7-12, 2011). Deterding, Sebastian. 2010. Pawned. Gamification and its Discontents. Playful 2010 (London, September 29, 2010). Lovell, Nicholas. 2011. Gamification: Hype or Game-Changer? Wall Street Journal. http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/05/04/gamification-hype-or-game-changer/ MacMillian, Douglas. 2011. Gamification: A Growing Business to Invigorate Stale Websites. Business Week. http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/11_05/b4213035403146.htm McGonigal, Jane. 2011. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. New York: Penguin. Suits, Bernard. 1978. The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview Press.