Gamification as the Post-Modern Phalanstère - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 181

This system of “business simulation” would not have made sense unless
the whole team of the company (then four passionate associates, yet short
of money) had spent hours in front of the computer playing StarCraft in
multiplayer and collaborative mode, until we all were “in tune” with one
another, so that a shared understanding of all the management processes
we needed to simulate emerged. The ai nity and shared learning was
such that our expressions came directly form the video game situations:
“we will have to research updates”, “we will have to send marines here or
there”, “we need to relocate our command centre”. . . . Needless to say,
this meant neither that we had stopped studying business management
nor that we had given up the business entrepreneurship courses we had
taken, although the game allowed us to design a vivid and fl exible mental
metaphorical map about the features of the market and how to intervene
in it, even of its problematic aspects and of issues like economic growth,
investments, R&D, etc.
All these things happened before the term gamifi cation was fi rst used to
explain how games are transforming reality.
GAMIFICATION
Zichermann (2011) has commented that “in tactical terms, gamifi cation
can be thought of as using some elements of game systems in the cause of
a business objective [ . . . ] gamifi cation is being used to create experiences
that use the power of games [ . . . ] in spheres as diverse as HR, healthcare,
fi nance, government and education”.
On the other side, Schell (Magrino, 2011) states that “gamifi cation is tak-
ing things that aren't games and trying to make them feel more like games”.
“There is no doubt that video games are the emergent cultural form of
our times and that the process of gamifi cation is transforming our world,
contaminating it like never before” (Reilhac 2010). That is, the game has
never had such an important role in our society; it has transcended the
limited context of the living room table on Sunday evenings and has been
digitalized and found its way into the devices that we use in our daily life.
Video games, as an evolution of the analogical game, as a digitalization of
the game, have become the most relevant contemporary emergent cultural
form, in terms of consumption and business volume.
The game as described by Huizinga (1938) and, subsequently, by Caillois
(1958) is a non-productive activity, according to a logic of capitalistic pro-
duction based on the monetization of ef ort, an ef ort that is transformed
into a service provided to others or into a marketable good. Gamifi cation
goes just in the opposite way, i.e. it takes a 180-degree turn and converts
the “non-productive” ef orts of the game into a huge source of energy and a
driving force capable of changing the world and, as McGonigal (2010) says,
of solving the big problems of humanity such as poverty, war, hunger, etc.