As video games have grown from an obscure hobby to a $67 billion industry, management theorists have begun to return the favour. Video games now have the dubious honour of having inspired their own management craze. Called “gamification”, it aims to take principles from video games and apply them to serious tasks. The latest book on the subject, “For the Win”, comes from Kevin Werbach and Dan Hunter, from the Wharton Business School and the New York Law School respectively.
Some video-game designers are opposed to the idea on principle, arguing that gamification is really a cover for cynically exploiting human psychology for profit.
Messrs Werbach and Hunter accept much of this criticism. Indeed, they go out of their way to warn aspiring gamifiers of the many pitfalls they face. Trying to enliven boring, unskilled work is risky, they say: presenting cutesy badges to call-centre staff can easily come across as patronising rather than motivating. Workers already toil for a reward—money—and will be suspicious of attempts to introduce a new form of compensation that costs their bosses nothing. The authors cite psychological experiments suggesting that intrinsic rewards (the enjoyment of a task for its own sake) are the best motivators, whereas extrinsic rewards, such as badges, levels, points or even in some circumstances money, can be counter-productive.
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