Getting Played: Gamification, Bullshit, and the Article Rise of Algorithmic Surveillance Casey O’Donnell Michigan State University, US. [email protected] Abstract Gamification, the idea that game mechanics can be integrated into assumed “non-game” circumstances has gained ascendance amongst champions of marketing, behavior change and efficiency. Ironically, some of the most heated critique of gamification has come from the broader community of “traditional” videogame developers. Connecting broadly to projects surrounding “big data” and algorithmic surveillance, the project of gamification continues to expand and intensify. This paper examines the complex relationship between game designers and the rise of arguments in support of gamification. I analyze the various actors and interests mobilizing arguments, deconstructing their underlying assumptions about the relationship between games and social phenomena. Turning to an analytic framework rooted in the Assemblage of Play (Taylor 2009) and emergent coercive forms of (played) control (Taylor 2006), the essay critiques assumptions on either side of the debate on the role of games and play. The strained connections between debates on gamification and broader interest in serious games offers an important moment to explore algorithmic surveillance. Introduction Gamification, the integration of game mechanics into “non-game” activities, deserves a great deal of analytic unpacking.1 It is a historically situated phrase rooted in a complex connection between a variety of industry and academic work around games, learning, educational technology, social psychology and a host of other fields. The essay begins by exploring what is meant by “game mechanics,” as defined by the field of Game Studies. The essay then turns to contextualizing the historical context of gamification. This essay works to situate the term with reference to specific historical moments and debates. Finally, the essay frames what became a very public discussion about the ideas, presentation and possibilities of gamification by examining a series of videos, editorials, blog posts and public debates. Two different, but connected, ethnographic projects inform the material presented in this essay. The first was a three-and-a-half year (2004-2008) exploration of a “AAA” (“triple-A” or mid-sized console- focused) game studio. The second project, the study of a community of scientists, educators, game developers, teachers and students involved in the development of a variety of science-learning Serious Games, began in 2009 and ran through 2012. However, the essay is more a cultural history of the early 1 It could be argued that everything is always a game in our current socio-technical-political context (Wark 2007). But I think surrendering everything to a massively multiplayer not-so-alternate reality game should be resisted. There are contexts that perhaps are not games, though we might imagine them as such. Looking to work by game theorists, would suggest that too broadly construed, marking everything as a game breaks the “optional” or “willingness” components so crucial to their play (De Koven 1978; Suits 1978). O’Donnell, C. 2014. Getting Played: Gamification, Bullshit, and the Rise of Algorithmic Surveillance. Surveillance & Society 12(3): 349-359. http://www.surveillance-and-society.org | ISSN: 1477-7487 © The author(s), 2014 | Licensed to the Surveillance Studies Network under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license. O’Donnell: Getting Played debates around gamification, rather than an ethnographic account. I attempt to point to video-clips of the individuals discussed in this essay talking about their perspectives and online resources that denote additional materials. The purpose of this is to provide entry points to where these reflections come from and historicizing the events that became important markers throughout my research. They are not chosen randomly, but as important indexical moments that flag emergent core categories in my research. On Game Mechanics and Analytics Other scholars have done exemplary work describing the means and methods by which games structure and systematize the play activities of the user and how ultimately those games also exceed those boundaries (see Whitson 2013). Yet, often there are a variety of different frames through which a game’s mechanics are being described. As such, I will briefly explore my perspective on the relationship between game design, game mechanics and the role of systems in the building of games. Game design, in addition to the development of stories and visuals for which they are most frequently noted for, is about designing a system that provides meaningful feedback to a player exploring that system (Sicart 2008). Games are often a collection of systems and subsystems that provide a variety of feedback loops that respond to a single player or many (Hunicke et al. 2004; Salen and Zimmerman 2004). Games can be relatively simple or complex. It isn’t the goal of this essay to define or review this literature. Rather it must be noted that games are always already information systems. Even non-digital games have a state and a player’s actions shift that state according to a predetermined set of rules. In the case of digital games, the number and variety of feedback loops can be numerous, as the computational side of the computer can be leveraged in ways that players of a non-digital game might find daunting. Games are always already a series of algorithms that respond to a user’s input. Or, more eloquently, games are, “uniquely algorithmic cultural objects” (Galloway 2006: 86). Games leverage a variety of data sources as input to make these interactions meaningful. In a way, games cannot help but surveil the user: it is how a game reacts to its player. Especially in the case of games that persist over time or platform, they increasingly store data in a variety of locations, presenting a variety of interfaces to the user. A player’s in-game avatar can be customized on a mobile device, the character’s inventory managed from a website and the game played on a console or personal computer. Each of these interactions inherently involves the monitoring and storage of information about the player. Beginning as early as 2000, games began incorporating a variety of “analytics,” ostensibly to better understand how a given game was being played. As other researchers have noted, many console manufacturers viewed this as simply “closing the loop” with their players (Kline et al. 2005: 120), though at the time those loops were primarily through the use of a monthly magazine and telephone support system. In some cases the metrics were as basic as the capabilities and capacity of the computer it was running on. This information helped game developers to know what kinds of hardware their games were being played on. Crash logs were used by teams to fix errors in a game or respond to bugs that may not be reproducible outside a player’s highly specific context. As the power and potential of this kind of data gathering and analysis increased, games expanded their use of analytics. For example, information about play time and the number of times a player succeeded or failed at a given task provided insight into whether a given game level was too hard or easy; or if some in- game items were too weak or too powerful; what levels or areas within an online game were the most frequently visited; and what players were doing in those areas. This information was used to adjust the underlying systems and rules within games. Indeed an entire sub-discipline within Game Studies and game development emerged (El-Nasr et al. 2013). Games were already surveillance systems and the expansion of that surveillance in the name of “fun,” seemed a small trade-off for players. The opacity of these systems was no different than the opacity of a game’s underlying rules and systems. It was normal. Surveillance & Society 12(3) 350 O’Donnell: Getting Played The Rise of Serious Games A discussion of gamification should begin with the rise of “serious games.” Games, and particular games such as Go or Chess, have long had ties to war and warfare (Peterson 2012). War games have been serious business for military leaders over the years. The ascendance of military simulations and military attention to game theory have also proven influential. In 2005, two “Serious Games Summits” were held. These events were organized in collaboration with UBM Tech, a company spun out of the CMP Media organization, which was responsible for the organization of the annual Game Developers Conference (GDC). One of these summits was held as part of the larger conference, while the other was organized as a stand-alone event in Washington, D.C. Coincidentally, the later event coincided closely with the release of the Xbox version of the America’s Army: Rise of a Soldier game, which resulted in a significant military focused marketing campaign (and thus military presence) at the event.2 It was this event that prompted me to bracket Serious Games from my first ethnographic project, an exploration of the “AAA” videogame industry (O’Donnell 2008). A more detailed version of this account can be found in this monograph (O’Donnell 2014). Image 1. However, rapidly after the inadvertent military focus of the initial summits, the role of Serious Games in other realms spread. Emerging work included the use and potential of games in the classroom (Gee 2007) 2 For a more detailed account of the development process surrounding America’s Army see Allen (2011). Surveillance & Society 12(3) 351 O’Donnell: Getting Played and the role that games could play in teaching habits of mind for scientific practice (Steinkuehler and Duncan 2008).3 During the same period of time, with the help of funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a sub-community around Games for Health also emerged.