Reality is Broken is the recent book about gamification by Jane McGonigal (New York, The Penguin Press, 2011) that has been getting a lot of attention. My copy finally came in the mail so now I guess I have to read it. I sound reluctant because everything I’ve read about the book disposes me to dislike it. The vapid “computers are going to save the world” (once more) hype by and for the author is enough to choke on. The idea that gamifying can solve all sorts of problems reminds me of when I thought I could get students to learn by making games out of completing assignments (yes, I too used scratch-and-sniff stickers to gamify learning.) I say all this to acknowledge that as I write one or more blog entries on this book as I read it, I am not reading the work with a fair mind, so readers of my comments beware.
Defining Games
McGonigal starts the book with a chapter on “What is a game?” that defines games by four defining traits, goals, rules, feedback system and voluntary participation. This definition works well for the purposes she wants to put it to in that it helps here then discuss work and happiness. (Reality is broken because most of our work doesn’t have the energizing “eustress” (as in happy stress of challenge of a game, p. 32.) As she puts it in her first “Fix”:
Fix #1: Unnecessary Obstacles
Compared with games, reality is too easy. Games challenge us with voluntary obstacles and help us put our personal strengths to better use. (p. 22)
The problem with this definition and what she does with it is that just about anything, including the work of reality would fit in the definition. Most work has goals, rules (often called law), feedback and is voluntary (at least in so far as we can, theoretically, quit our job.) She, like most writers on games falls into Wittgenstein’s trap of trying to define games and ends up with such a broad one that it can do just about anything but explain what is special about games.
To be fair, McGonigal is not trying to define games as a philosopher would so much as defining in order to introduce them in her larger theme of life and work. This is the focus of the book. It isn’t really about gaming but about the place of gaming in leisure and work. Her argument, at least in the beginning, goes something like this:
- Millions of gamers are spending more and more time playing,
- So, there must be something wrong with reality,
- Therefore we should make reality more like gaming.
Put this way, the argument seems sort of silly, and there is more to it (including a section on happiness research). Nonetheless, I put it this way to show the flaws:
- The fact of all the people playing gaming doesn’t mean anything in particular without research. It is a standard move to take some shift (like a growth in game playing) and try interpret it to suit whatever snake oil you want to sell.
- We might just as well point out that millions of people spend even more time watching television. Does that make reality broken or prove anything about reality? For that matter all sorts of people spend hours and hours a week in all sorts of leisure from gardening to reading. No one tries to argue that reality is therefore broken and we should make work more like reading. The tensions between work and leisure have been with us since we had philosophers to think about them. McGonigal thinks she just discovered such a tension and can save the world by erasing it.
- Gaming is reality. There is nothing but reality, at least as reality is normally defined. McGonigal, however, is defining reality as the non-gaming work reality we all face Monday morning. Again there is a long tradition of seeing gaming (and other forms of leisure) in contradistinction with work reality – see Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. Why can’t work be as peaceful as reading a novel, or as entertaining as watching a live spectacle or as challenging as playing a game? Wouldn’t it be nice if we could make work into play? Huizinga and Suits (who she quotes with approval) tell us that games are by their very nature not efficient work. What makes them playful is that we don’t have to do them and they don’t have consequences outside the game. They are inefficient if compared to work as a way of getting things done, as Suits points out. And herein lies the problem with gamification and serious games. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have games that are work and not work. It isn’t play if it is work that has to be done and for which you get paid, no matter how voluntary the job sort of is. Work reality isn’t broken, it is just different from play (by definition.) We can change the ratio of leisure time to work time; we can blur the borders between the two, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves into thinking we can solve the reality of work with its other.
What really annoys me is the political innocence of this work. One has the feeling that McGonigal is oblivious of centuries of political science, Marxist thought about work, and political struggle to make the reality of workers better. If reality (in the sense of our work world) is broken the problem is just as likely to be political. Perhaps people don’t have meaningful jobs because the jobs are going off-shore or being automated or workers are having their rights to collective bargaining legislated away? McGonigal seems to be of the psychic self-help tradition where you can solve everything just by changing your attitude and being happy. She quotes with approval the literature about happiness as flow as if that were all it takes to live a meaningful life. If all it takes is flow then just turn your life into a game and go with the flow. Gamify your oppressive dead-end job, don’t worry about the politics or the fate of others, just be happy through gaming because the games industry is there to lend a hand. (And we all know how the games industry is generous and altruistic. They are looking after our best interests and making sure that their games aren’t too addictive and don’t fleece us of too much of what little we have.)
No doubt I exaggerate, but there is a real danger for any of us to study gaming that we can become complicit in the industry. Reading the opening chapters I feel that she wants to justify gaming rather than examine it. As her subtitle suggests, her book is not whether games make us better or how they make us better or don’t; instead the book is about “Why games make us better and how they can change the world.” She starts by trying too hard to prove that games are good in order to predict that they will change things for the best (if enough of us cranks can just get with the program.) No doubt this makes her book a satisfying read for any gamer who has felt guilty that they aren’t doing other things, but it doesn’t make it convincing. Perhaps I’m judging a popular text by critical standards, but she does have an academic background.
More to come if I can keep on reading.