Gamification as the Post-Modern Phalanstère - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 191

of the product sale (some kind of proto-Marinaleda—see http://www.
marinaleda.com/) , having all-day-long working days, yet without spending
more than two hours on the same kind of task would be satisfactory for
its inhabitants precisely because of the satisfaction the “attractive work”—
as Fourier named it—would yield. A new triangle of interests was thus
formed: capital, talent and work (Wikipedia Foundation 2011).
In 1958, Roger Caillois raised the question about the contamination of
real life by the game: “What happens [ . . . ] when the universe of play
[ . . . ] is contaminated by the real world in which every act has inescapable
consequences?” According to him, “what used to be a pleasure becomes
an obsession. What was an escape becomes an obligation, and what was a
pastime is now a passion, compulsion, and source of anxiety” and he con-
cludes: “The principle of play has been corrupted” (1958, 44-45).
Leisure, and within leisure, games, fulfi ls certain objectives: therapeutic
objectives, objectives related to self-realization, social or even institutional
objectives, all of which have been expanded thanks to the usage of video
games, because self-realization under the form of challenge, therapies, edu-
cation or training digitally “enhanced” have made a very positive contribu-
tion (see “Technological Gamifi cation”).
The dif erent levels of the Moslow's pyramid (suggestion by Javier Candeira
2011) show which elements (from the satisfaction of physiological needs at the
bottom to the need for self-fulfi lment at the top) contribute to our happiness.
It is interesting to note how important it is that all the needs of the pyramid's
layers be satisfi ed in our relationships with the exterior (work, friends, family,
neighbours) and interior (our own body and mind) worlds: from respiration,
satisfactory sex and respect to recognition and, fi nally (at the top of the pyra-
mid), our capacity for infl uencing the improvement of those worlds: creativity,
problem solving, acceptance of other, work reforms or vital development, etc.
All these would bring us closer to full happiness and self-fulfi llment.
Forced work directly attacks our dignity; mechanical and non-creative
work do not allow us to move upwards in Maslow's pyramid to our full
self-fulfi llment. This kind of work can be disguised through a mask of gam-
ifi cation, but it still must be explained how such gamifi cation can ef ectively

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Figure 10.2 Kind of jobs taxonomy and self-fulfi lment.