Ep 13: Gamification as a means of Control; Who's Playing Who?

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Welcome one an all to professor metal's Irate debate and calamitous commentary with the philosophical Chain Gang todays episode gameification as a means of control who is playing who? I'm your host Professor metal I'm Ryver, I'm Bruce, and I'm Sean looking I going to punch myself in the face every four hours like it on twenty more Professor points. I think I may have been giving away too much. Starting to see things double. Yeah I stopped playing the various punching game. I'm way behind. Really no point anymore. So what do we mean by a game of cation as a means of control. What are we talking about here. Well it's pretty damn game buying something used to make something that is not otherwise thought of his game into a game like when you tell little kids hey who can pick up the most toys off of war. That's game of vying for another good real world example is there's a protein folding game university had come up with to have people practicing protein folding simulations in an attempt to kind of work out how certain molecules work almost crowdsourcing. Yeah exactly. But even those people rewards which may or may not have any value intrinsic or not. No you do imaginary points that games provide. Bob seems like it's going to be Badger value right. It has to be some sort of social value. You can buy things do things within the game. The ultimate value of any of those things you buy will be social value and the most useless one when they want to limit currency from their systems they create more and more ridiculously expensive fanciers suits of armor or you know extra equipment with different skins and no static rules just merely hats or hats which can become their own form of currency. But yeah I know it's bad value it's showing up to other people value it's hey look at this fancy thing I spent twenty five work hours on to obtain exactly. Yeah actually even if you know it show you know up to other people at least you get a sense of having done something some kind of well not tangible fixed goal that you have surpassed which if you don't have enough that going on in your real life. Someone's accomplishment it is very much the treatment response and there have been a lot of games doing that lately a lot of free to play games I don't games which I personally don't big fan of Especially since they don't cost money but they it seems to be not necessarily play to win but the more you play the better you went in to the point where it almost the the term win lose its meaning. While there are many little marker achievements going on there's never actually a full sense of release that shipment once you've never actually. You're always on a treadmill you never cross the finish line. Which gets to the point that a lot of these games and I'm thinking it was in games in particular seem to exist to keep you playing. More of it as much as possible using techniques other than simply providing him or getting your friends in Paul real world money. Stuff like that. Singing praises on social media has crossed over from what Jimmy cation is intimately mean by using it for real right to cause someone to do something that they otherwise would choose not to do is a form of control particularly when we're talking. Whereas you might be inclined to only tell some of your friends sometimes about it in that you play. If you think they would also enjoy it and it's really that good that you want to be associated with it. Into instead of tell everybody about it all the time to win points and becoming a salesman effectively and that's actually not a great example would be an invitation that almost everyone is familiar with the sales company right the idea that I'm doing the work you were hired and thus incentivised to do in the first place you are actually earning points towards winning something is another thing in an environment where people are doing things outside sales calling things like you know whoever had the most sales at the end of the day or week or they're always few and they'll be nominal prices for that you know compared to everyone's daily paycheck. This prize values are pretty pretty minor in you know in a daily grind. There's really not much else to do but play that game but the real concern comes in what that represents. Right because if you are making a choice that is contrary to the choice that you would make. Absent that kind of incentivize Asian kind of overlaying with the game it becomes a problem. Deception almost perhaps where willful participant in the deception in so much as we choose to continue to go along with the game even though we know want some level that we're being tricked. Doing it it still seems like we're having or will subvert it in a very fraudulent kind of way. A lot of these sort of online games that free to play games have a very Skinner Box feel to them because they were designed very similarly like you something going to game very early on that you really get a reward. You really see something come of it. But over time it starts to stretch out. You don't see the reward for doing as much work unless you read it on Facebook. So there's a term we should probably begin to Skinner box. Certainly certainly. Skinner box refers to behavioral experiments done by B.F. Skinner with mice amongst other animals in which Skinner created a mechanism that dispensed food for mice if they press the button they would get a pellet of food and the thing about these boxes is that after a while they start producing food. Every time the mouse press the button sometimes it would take two sometimes it would take three and more and more. They found that the mouse kept clicking the button like no matter how long it took the house kept clicking the button to get this this reward. They were willing to put into effectively more work through the same reward. And it turned out surprisingly effective on humans. The techniques also to get the most pushing the button even when it's no longer in human having a probable wart for work rather than a certain one and I think our activates our gambling pleasure instinct. If I'm doing this for a chance in something it's a little more exciting than if I was doing this to get something. We should probably also cite at this point that Cracked dot com has an excellent article about this particular in this games and it's been about stuff I think it is a good reference for it. Here it would be more honest if you gave me a game and said OK. Early stages if you do well when you reach a certain level of achievement you unlock new things that you haven't seen before that are fundamentally different types of gameplay new areas different kinds of choices you can make. But with the kinds of games that we're talking about the mechanics stay the same. There might be some new names or pictures. All that really happens is that the treadmill speeds up but it's the same game. The numbers just count up so you're not really getting any real value for your achievement real value would be more game or different game. Again another key problem with these is they give the illusion of choice and central to any game is you make choices and order with the choices you make from the kinds of choices you make each other branching or success in a strategy. The choices that you make don't matter nearly as much as the frequency with which way that's what they're getting out of you. Playing frequently you can choose option eruption B. If you choose Option A Now you get option be a little later in the end of the it could have gone either way. But the frequency that you play on that makes all the difference. And to that extent you'll see a lot of games that all of us model very be very. And here are stories that things just happen one after another because then it disguises the fact that you don't have a lot of choice within that system by covering up of not just telling your story interest or woman that are to go to as opposed to other systems where people would feel like that was off constraining that framework. The ones I'm thinking of Pickler didn't object puzzle games that have been so popular in the past. Usually the story associated with it is very linearly narrative. You go from this place to that place because that's where the game goes in and they tell you a little story in between to cover the fact that you can't. Don't want to play something else. You know this thing about frequency over choice is another example of the manipulative The games are. If I were to sit down again where mostly made a difference whether I make choices A or B. and so forth I might play the game the same number of hours per month week or day that I might otherwise and the choices that I make within the game don't affect that. If however my success is determined not on the choices I make in frequency of play now where real life is changing I am playing the game with different frequency patterns or more often than I would otherwise I'm not just making different choices it's actually changing the line in it's not doing it by being a good game. It's doing it through its sick psychologically manipulative techniques and some time to talk while this may not seem very important for us when we talk about it if you like Oh you've wasted a few more minutes Clementina every month or oh you spend a little bit more time advertising this on Facebook all of your friends than it was other one polite to do. It can grow in the other and that's the danger is that it just may not be the final evolution of the game of buying things in this way and losing Game think agenting urge or discourage people from certain kinds of actions. Imagine a social media game in which you get more points for voting in a way proven that you had gone to the polls or particular candidate whose campaign produced a certain kind of game. At some point or perhaps just tagged onto a game that was already very heavily invested I think already seeing this a little bit in the popular media you know I mean not in the same sort of Skinner box. Well we're way we've seen game of occasion as a means of recruitment. I'm specifically thinking of the first person. We're game America's only which is produced by the United States Army as a method of advertisement and meant it is put out for free on the Internet to sort of help Laura fight the life of a soldier I guess is the best way to put it make it more appealing to teenagers and youths that if you're a soldier you're going to be real cool until the bad guys get to shoot guns and stuff like that and it is a surprisingly effective tool for recruitment numbers. Interestingly enough for game the U.S. military as we wanted to give people an accurate picture of what life soldier looks like and we were concerned about games like Call of Duty that don't give an accurate picture of what this looks like. Interestingly enough that you know include K.P. duty or similar unpleasant past in America's Army the glorious parts of the US I was thinking it was going to be on us the first A.D.R.'s again they'll be getting yelled at and jogging there is a camp segment but it's you know it's very much as a Tauriel in any other game definitely drops out the boring bits of the less than desirable bits you know you go to boot camp and you go through that and then you you're out in the field and yet it still seems very much even if it is slightly more realistic than say the battlefield or Call of Duty games it's still a glorifying piece of work. We also see unification happen outside of just within games things like you know McDonald's Monopoly game there's all sorts of rewards programs that companies get that metaphor Anytime a company tries to involve people in social media to some extent they're going to be coming up with a unification strategy whether they call it that or no. Absolutely. And we've seen some very insidious versions of that line in specifically of Pepsi points back in the ninety's. This was essentially gambling by buying Pepsi over the top to find out how many points you got towards the really amazing prizes that they offer. Of course nobody but that one kid ever got enough points to actually make any of the really amazing prizes happen and he had to do that but that's another matter entirely. Advertising has been doing it for years. I'm sure there are plenty of plenty of people myself included I would be surprised if those of you in the room can remember all of the banner ads to win a new car cruise vacation by spending this virtual slot machine or scratching off or something like that which all of the time one some exclusions. One example that I think is interesting along those lines is actually telemarketers who call up to tell you that you have won something as a means of getting what you've won in huge air quotes is the same offer that they give to everybody that they call and how you won it was by having a phone number that they got. But you have one of them he was a cruise vacation that you're only going to need to pay three thousand dollars for dry dock fees and such for what you've won is one hundred dollars gift certificate to the shopping center of your particular area or the grocery store of your particular area. If you only need to sign up for two hundred dollars worth of various subscriptions to terrible services in order to get and for all of these times marketing is actually we needed more layers of this string of voters. I mean or they're fake. There are some times where the top leader board is the person that some people aspire to. He is Lake named after one of the programmers or is not even a real person. It's just you know you want to beat them because you want to be the target whatever game this is and chances are he never will but I'm thinking about the extreme couponing as the people who just go completely nuts on this type of stuff and take advantage of everything they can and do quite well in it which to me just this kind of tracks like a lot of games there are a handful of people that are just doing so crazy and just devoting their whole lives to it completely devoted throw themselves into everything and try to do to take over your life. You know works OK for him. I mean they're there they're tangibly doing well at what they're doing. Problem is aren't doing anything else for life and there was a pool of managers. Yeah yeah I have a closet full manage that's for completely different purposes. You know this sort of negative talk is exactly wind and a view that's why it's always hard to keep ahead of you guys. We all is saying I know I will collect my medal points for face punching for another three hours is just good practice though. That's certainly going to be right. Let's talk a little bit more about the danger of forms of control that we do not actively associate when we don't actively look for the ways in which we're being controlled. We open ourselves to a huge amount of meaning which misses a huge problem and internet huge problem for anyone who doesn't want to be controlled by advertising. Huge advantage for anyone who wants to control you better ties in some sense. When we willfully disregard the knowledge that we are being manipulated and give ourselves over to a system like that because it provides for work like going to Mars you know. Very good feeling of having earned the prize or won the new fancy armor or whatever else. What we do in those instances translates to a general sense of disconnection from the choices that when we are allowing ourselves to be manipulated by so many forces around us we are essentially lowering our defenses by yet to notice these things when there are truly harmful what's coming in the case of games. So far most of them seem pretty benign but we start to see what happens when people go off the deep end when people take it too far. We start to see people who spend too much time to the exclusion of other activities or leaving the house or eating or wearing diapers to stay here. Most of those problems have less to do with singing again a thing where you're taught that you have to stop playing for a certain period of time and then come back in two hours. But the same principles apply that being too easily manipulated by things. Letting ourselves be more and more manipulative. We're just at it towards a situation where we can be manipulated in ways we would otherwise prefer to avoid being because we have not only that control over our own behavior as examining the psychological manipulation techniques we can sometimes be inoculated ourselves certainly becoming aware is probably one of the best ways to fight something like that and I don't want to see the curtain drawn back but something very similar to kind of take a look at the actual mechanism that doesn't. Along with you know good examples or ways in which these things. And I personally play some of these games I know what people do I don't think it's always a poor decision to engage in this kind of there's a difference between gauging it and allowing yourself to be deceived. Being aware and making a conscious choice to be a certain way is one thing. Allowing yourself to forget what the mechanism you are interacting and allowing it to become a controlled course is a very different question. That's what I'm sure people know I'm paying attention to the decisions they're making in that way I think it's also important I think it might be interesting to look at the different kinds of value involved if we can arbitrarily make it once and pass them out. How do we get people to value them. I have saved five thousand air miles at that bunches on my Starbucks card at twenty six. Whatever points two bucks in my pocket I get a whole bunch of my portfolio in the twenty first century I want to level seventy druid. You know this is my portfolio of value that I have earned in the cheat. How's this valley you know I mean what does it mean that makes that importance behind it recent history since really interesting examples of that question becoming one. I think you have that coin for one there's a form of currency backed by very little other than people saying it's worth something not a central group of people who determine this shall be worth something. Throughout this geo political force usually defined by whatever system it's coming from right. Well I mean it's not an authority of some sort of things or something you know it's just this is worth something. Yeah it's the people that are willing to buy the right people say or. Not at the rate like it's I mean my view is it's kind of a buyer's market because it's not only dictated by what people are willing to sell it but what people are willing to buy oil runs specifically what the market will bear what it's not like you at one point where in the olden days where you either had some kind of points or that definitely have value lights and money that you could exchange for goods and services and other points that weren't early arbitrary The thing about with all of this unification Medland from all of these different directions as you have pointed sort of the line between some imaginary points they made up and something that you can actually exchange for value in exchange for certain types of value in limited instances that only you know in terms of commissions. Why so. Because kind of a gray area between money and just brownie points. Well certainly there's a great example of this actually is the game EVE Online has a multiple currency system that is fairly transparent with actual money one currency conversion to another at an extremely high rate. The other has a sort of fixed value with world currencies. There's actually a market for it and there are people who have made their living playing this game by accumulating enough wealth to exchange it for real money and basically do their job that way and as I understand it you know online currency is backed by more months of game play it would not cost you real money. Yeah that's why it's sort of fixed is the company that makes C.C.P. puts out the ability to buy what's called plex which are pilot license extensions for a specific amount of money and think it is you can basically buy and sell these all you want They've never put any restrictions on players' ability to do so and you can buy and sell them. For real world money a price. Both parties will agree upon or for him to get money for the same thing. This is what's kind of funny about that I find is that let's say I have twelve hundred months worth of worth of Eve on one way that's more than one hundred years of me playing the game I could possibly never have a use for more than that. Problem with the total amount of this currency going on inside the system is probably more than old people actually playing the game will ever need and you know they still chase it beyond any real world news ticker And even though it does have a real work dollars transfer Well I think that's partially because he's almost transparent with with world currencies that people still seek out this specific type of currency because there are I'm sure plenty of people that are looking to get rich or get rich quick on this game because they've heard the success stories about people basically cashing out and getting rich was the backing you bottom line paying anyway. Seems at least to me and I don't so sure. It seems to me that is the ideal continues to grow so long as you have more players entering the system you will have need of more months of game play. As soon as you see your own personal life and this is the whole system as a whole these are personal to a shrinking of the number of players the currency would collapse. So it's not entirely unlike the Federal Reserve and it's interesting because we're starting to see it elsewhere too. World of Warcraft was recently announced that World of Warcraft would be implementing a similar system where you could buy months of game play as tokens and sell them for in game gold. So we may at some point. The economy and in some ways already are seeing an economy built up around the similar style of currency that has a real world transparency to it. Graduations if you see it playing this game you get the chance to play more. Well it seems to me that the Elephant Room in terms of transparency to the world value lives Second Life and Linden dollars which is directly transferred to cash through Linden companies and next and it has made no claim ever that it wasn't like this is in no way ever been a roundabout way of getting money out of the system. They directly transferred acting as a central bank. Again that's a very good point the fact that there's a real world transparency directly to the primary Indian currency is kind of a huge thing. Then again Lynn Labs has very much tried to almost sell Second Life as a replacement for social interaction in the real world. In at least in the way I've seen it and I honestly haven't played that much of it so I may not be the best interpreter of this so I think an all too great example of that. I think when the words of probably say they don't want to be able to form real world interactions but instead an alternative to real world interactions that you probably should still have real world interactions but that if you want to have second life interactions which mimic most of the functions of real world interactions you could do that also or as an alternative to depending on the situation. I think women want sparkle under a lot of fire of their life. Don't talk to people. Second Life them and that's that's entirely fair. It's a little bit in your name. Second Life Since you have the first one. Not everybody plays it that way though. I mean certainly there are there have been many examples of people getting a little too deep into any number of games to tragic results. It's sometimes and while I feel that is not necessarily the fault of the developers these very schemes are looking to do a specific thing and have in some sense done well you know they don't really count for people who might fall in the spiral people who might be more prone to like gambling addiction or simply other anti-social behaviors and stuff like that who end up almost falling into these holes that these games help them dig become a very very impactful very real world consequences sort of thing. We're definitely moving a little bit off track with that. But just to say that there are always going to be people with compulsive behavior issues no matter what the thing is there are people with goals of behavior issues around collecting things for collectors of antiques been known to have houses and storm rooms and whatnot all of N.T.'s that they can either use nor sell because they have gotten it can also be your own life. There are all kinds of compulsive behaviors around almost any type of activity and call it seems like certain kinds of activities are more prone to it. There is definitely a certain amount of that that comes down to all involved with not the fault of the producer of that thing or the people starving it may be unfair to blame people who started collections of one thing or another or hoarders who can't differentiate between a valuable and you certainly sure couldn't in terms of gain control. It seems to me we're more concerned about those cases where companies someone sets up a system that is designed to bring on addictive psychology in order to get us to play the game as much as possible. The Advocate itself again to our friends in sci. Get confused about values and start giving them real money or meaningless points. Anyone can do that just as a licensed looney as you were going to migrate but what we're talking about is definitely the manipulative that event when people intentionally set up doesn't you know point that term you know because I think that it carries far too much into the conversation that might or might not belong here depending on your opinion and really sort of thinking here about the similarities between a slot machine and skin and bones. How about instead of something like. Which definitely can and does end in a lot of cases carry its own connotations when we say something compulsive The better way because compulsion popular views on compulsion is a mess. It's more accurate especially for the context getting here but yes when compulsive behaviors are incentivised or are set up in such a way so as to draw the user into a compulsive cycle or change then you definitely have a danger of manipulation. Stick with them and I think when that is happening the only defense that we have is to have already been practicing to be aware of the choices that are made within that system. If we do that on a regular basis if we don't allow ourselves to fall into the easy trap of getting the ward system out of it we will instead then have an opportunity to catch when the manipulative action and say Do I really want to be able to cycle. If you do that's willful choice and that's your right as an adult to make that choice. I do as I said play some of these games but I do so intentionally. I know that they're trying to set up a site like that and I decide when I really want. That and piece of armor that I'm going to get from our union every day for three hundred years in a row or when I think that's too much of a cost for a value I'm going to get I know and it's my hope that this conversation is a way for people to start to think about that for themselves to start to make those decisions consciously and with intention rather than allowing each getting sucked in by an easy prey system to just you. I agree that education is really good to fight the retore nature of some of these companies that things like that so we're talking a lot about the negative consequences of manipulative game of occasion but there's one positive instance cation too. Oh absolutely I mean a lot of the edutainment games falls under your math blasters the stuff you play in a lot of people my age would have played in school to kind of build up fundamental learning in math or reading or what have you and it's still persists today I mean the typing of the dead. Yeah absolutely. Khan Academy even made to speak and he's just fighting the game again. So I mean you know absolutely. It wasn't as directly analogous to another video game not to be mentioned as I think that that was but certainly if it had been a woman to it you play any games and tried to teach it through a medium that was much more personally or to someone who used when exactly King like that it does is give the cation techniques their badges or its achievements is something those of us something that accomplishment and any form of competition driven system like that we all have a kitchen element a leader. Words are a form of implication because we're taking elements from games and using. It's certainly there is something to be said for positive game of cation and using games to help learn to help you know get things across to help be better I guess or more than that you mentioned earlier the protein folding game was just that was an instance of which issues history hugely positive to distribute our amongst human beings trying to do tasks take long time or a computer to have done instead use many many human beings to do the same task relatively quickly. Fine variations. It's certainly I mean not just that but the like folding it home which does distribute computing instead of the player interacting with the the protein it just uses your or the player's computer to. Well they're not using it to do a similar thing. And their leader boards and you can join teams and you get points for you know how complex the protein was and how much work you put into it or how many calculations you did before it was complete and stuff like that. So almost horrible I didn't dream vacation if you will. Certainly there's a there's a few different types of I don't get invitation and one of the more interesting and I think kind of positive aspects of gamification that we've seen recently is that are his vital games as well as a concept because they are ninety percent completely free to play. Skinner box the sort of games but instead of the risk reward response coming further and further apart it gets greater and greater as time goes on it's almost over Skinner box. The more you do the more you make almost exponentially ending on the game and it gives you the sort of accomplishment feeling it triggers that accomplishment response. Well if you do I. Other things like their idol games out there that actually sometimes even lace you for checking in on them for fiddling with them and stuff like that they're for the most part like the most famous one would be cookie clicker buy or tile. It's something that you just kind of set up you play with a little bit to start with and then you set it up and leave it alone. You walk away you come back every once in a while to influence how things are going and then you walk away again. So again the rewards if you're not playing it exactly it is an almost complete reversal for the model and all that it was as a general thing. We've seen a lot of it in recent past with the rise of motion controllers consuls and invocation of exercising particular dance central heat yet in exports various games like that actually give you word of Sun's work for anything around our game cation of exercise as a tool a sort of doll matter that tracks your steps and you can compete with your friends or a group of people you know what was a man to you to get the most like energy burned or most steps in a day or week or something like that. So yeah we admit it's our reward centers can be manipulated or can align themselves with arbitrary goals that can be a tool used to manipulate us to our detriment or it can be a tool that we can leverage to make our lives better. Another example might be you know Mary Poppins in medically well and there is a very famous statement Mary Poppins for sugar makes the medicine go down right. That's the heart of implication. A little bit of something you like makes it easier to deal with. Or perhaps not even noticeable to deal with the video you go in. Really get something you want or need. There's not just a lot of danger in it when it's used against This is a lot of power in Gaelic occasion when we use it ourselves. There are definitely a lot of instances where pulse investigation is totally a thing and definitely shows potential for good to make things easier to make things better to swallow or fall I mean give me a little bit of a homework assignment if you haven't wanted to live in the area. I suggest if you have Netflix that you get on that first UK great show but there's a specific eps of the deals in Asia and I actually asked a lot of very interesting questions about what you tour in which came with occasional use instead of being something special that happens to certain kinds of things becomes the norm and I think that raises a lot of our concerns about implications for manipulation what if your job was game that might seem great at first it might be something where you've got to do something a little bit more fun than your average Jane we brought but he could also try to do a situation in which you do a job you would be unhappy with otherwise because it was Game five because it was set up in such a way that you felt the need to compete and due to social pressures you would just do the job you were very unsatisfied by just to get social So if you haven't seen already look for that upsurge of like near silence groups I grabbed on to you the last in a sense what we've been talking about is hacking the concept of fun in your brain that could be hacked by you or by someone else by someone else then you're essentially tricked into not really being under your own control. If by you it becomes a little more difficult if it's what I want to follow is certain. Course because it's fun. Then what does it mean when I change what's fun to me. Could it be fun to make different kinds of games of different kinds of things and go mad on that. Sure but as important as it is to look at the psychological techniques that can be used to manipulate us I think ultimately the best thing we can do about this is to ask ourselves what is it that you value. Are you chasing this imaginary armor or an imaginary character because it allows you to upgrade to some new kind of armor after that which is also imaginary or is what you're getting the feeling of identifying with an imaginary character who looks cool in his or some other way you could get that easier. Are you chasing this reward points system because you'll have more of them than most all other people and therefore you feel accomplished. Is there some other way you could get that self esteem that would be easier than the amount of work that takes this way and to some extent this sort of segues into real life a little bit it's not all just in a computer or or in an obvious game. It's a people who chase money beyond what they have real material needs for because it ties into things like self-esteem or sense of achievement. If they're doing it beyond their needs and to detriment of other human needs that they have then they may need to re-evaluate what game they're playing with in every single game that we could play or might not play. They're all contained within one medic. That's life. That's our subjective state of being in which games we play which ones we're drawn into sucked into or which ones we create for ourselves. Those are all strategies in this overall. Again and I think it's up to up to us no matter how well we might play any of these sub games within the game of life. To recognize that these are tactics and strategies and choosing them well designing them well perhaps refraining from a sum which might become dead ends beyond a certain point. That's playing life well and I think that's something that it's hard to argue against that should be our overarching strategy regardless of what we like to play around with. Well that's all the time we have for today. Don't forget to subscribe and review on iTunes. Follow us on Twitter send us your questions and if you like what we're doing support us on Patreon. Join us next time after the philosopher's harvest jams in a week for my farm and village simulator. I've been your host Professor metal. I'm sure this river and it's not at all crushed under all it can be only I could find a diamond pick axe to get him out. Here we go. Here he is a reading as if it is the same.

 

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