Gamification as the Post-Modern Phalanstère - The Video Game Industry: Formation, Present State, and Future - page 196

I am certain that egotism and greed in contemporary democracies make
the decline of productivity theories evident, as they have been conceived of
to date, and that it is in the context of life, in creativity and self-motivation
where gamifi cation should operate, teaching us how to fully develop our
mental capacities, and not only as an input-output cycle that serves merely
economic or marketing purposes.
THE ÜBERMENSCH
As Federico Fasce has pointed out, “gamifi cation is the wrong word for the
right idea. The word for what's happening at the moment is pointsifi cation”
(Fasce 2011), in other words, a reifi cation and measuring through points
( score in the video game world) of absolutely every human activity, a math-
ematical-digital dictatorship imposed upon every event. “There are things
that should be pointsifi ed. There are things that should be gamifi ed. There
are things that should be both. There are many, many things that should be
neither” (Margaret 2010). We feel like someone did all the tasks for us; we
feel like a labour SIM whose activities are measured through scores . “Ben-
jamin's career as a theorist is also an algorithm. There is a start condition:
he must have 8 friends, 4 charisma points, a 7 in creativity, and so on. It has
end conditions, too. With 10 friends, 5 charisma points, and 10 for creativ-
ity, the Theorist career can end and another begin” (Wark 2006).
The controversial and defi cient interpretation of some of Nietzsche's the-
ories about the Übermensch (superhuman) for ethically questionable pur-
poses cannot minimize their insightful and persuasive character. According
to the German philosopher, superhumans are the people capable of gener-
ating their own system of values and of regarding as good everything that
comes from their genuine will to power (Nietzsche 1966, 1976). Value and
power are the key words to attain high levels of self-motivation and hap-
piness. Will and power are necessary to intervene participatively in our
environment; however, it must be us (and not the imposition of others more
powerful than us) who create our system of values that allows us to partici-
pate freely in a way confi gured by ourselves.
Certainly, problems are not fun in themselves—at least those of the real
world—and we prefer pulling the trigger, mouse clicking or pushing our
gamepad buttons to discussing face-to-face with our “adversary”, mak-
ing an ef ort to fi nd solutions that require commitment and real sacrifi ces
(monetary, physical or mental). It is also true that video games interconnect
minds in a way previously unfeasible, establishing a cooperative network
through which thoughts and actions fl ow mediated by digital systems.
I can compare this brain network to the Zerg Hive in StarCraft , where
all beings are actually part of a single great Being and share joy and pain,
brilliant ideas and bad thinking. Video games or gamifi cation may not be
the defi nitive tools that will complete the apparently contradictory duality