Gamification in Libraries: What doesn't work

In my last post, I talked about some of the aspects that work to make gamification of libraries a success. As a flipside to this, I'm going to spend this post talking about some things that will kill your project. I'm not going to bother going over any examples that haven't worked - there are enough out there and I just don't have time to run over them. I think you'll find that most of these aspects are pretty easy to pick out anyway.

In the interest of determining what 'doesn't work' I've taken as a standpoint that these things don't contribute to influencing or motivating players in any way. In some cases they actively denigrate players' experiences.

Not respecting the players

As far as cardinal sins of gamification go, this is on par with the 'immersion' point for holy virtues (if you'll let me torture an analogy). This even goes beyond an aspect of gamification in libraries - in any endeavour you're creating a product or service for customers, treating them as an entity worthy of respect on their own terms and not merely a means to an end is crucial. So why does it bear mentioning here? Two reasons - first, it's another one of those so-simple-you-forget-it things, and second, libraries and gaming are - at least at time of writing - a bit like oil and water. There seems to be a deep suspicion of why libraries should be accomodating to this new medium. Christy Sich (2006) relates this current state of affairs to when music compact discs first came out; there was outcry over whether or not libraries should carry those, and now they almost seem reluctant to properly engage with games. Given the popularity of games of all types and the potential they have for all facets of modern life, this doesn’t seem forward-thinking or respectful of library clients/players. Even the literature that strongly supports the educational and cultural worth of games – such as Futurelabs’ Computer games, schools, and young people (Williamson, 2009) and Steven Johnsons’ Everything Bad is Good for You (2006) seem to justify their standpoint with an overload of data to give organizations who might want to consider games a hard sell. It seems that given the massive popularity of the genre outside of the library sector, as an information repository we should be clamoring at the chance to make the best possible use of the concept as we can. The extremely slow uptake and excessive debate around the subject all bespeaks a negligence here, at least to me. It’s essentially, ‘It might be good enough for consumers out there, but gamification isn’t for us. We’re a serious organization’. And that is why this bears mentioning here. If it’s good enough for them ‘out there’, it should be good enough for us ‘in here’.

If the players/clients aren’t respected on their own terms, as autonomous people who might in fact know what is best for them in at least some cases, then we don’t open ourselves to the full potential of the concept – which is why we end up with things like:

Tacked on Content

Slightly removed from the most core reason that gamification fails at certain times described above, this seems to be the next big one. As Andrzej Marczewski (2013)describes in the first of a few reasons why gamification can fail:

‘If you stick a thin layer of gamification on a broken system, it will have no long term effect’.

This explains pretty succinctly the issue that I’m describing here – gamification won’t fix something that is already broken or boring. It needs to be layered into a successful system to provide a deeper engagement and enhance motivation. At best, the system that’s applied will seem like a gimmick, and at worst it will just be insulting to clients/players – it certainly won’t make a bad system usable. I think this goes back to repecting the player – they won’t be dazzled with pretty lights. Aleks Krotoski (2010) describes this as the ‘Dancing Clown Problem’.

Gamifying everything/timing it badly

In keeping with the idea that intrinsic motivation and immersion is key to making a successful gamification project, the idea of subtlety really came through too. Shoving game mechanics into players' faces doesn't work, as numerous failed schemes have shown. Echoing the same line of thought I wrote about in my last post, I’ll bring up Seth Priebatsch and his TED talk (2010) again. Seth briefly discusses how credit card schemes and corporate affiliation programs make use of game mechanics but don't offer any element of fun or engagement in undertaking them. It’s all too easy, owing to the immersive and popular nature of gaming, to view it as the panacea that I talked about in my last post. Appropriateness and timing are needed to preserve the impact that such a diverse concept can have for audiences. From a design point of view, Christy Sich also comments:

'If developers take the focus off learning objectives... we can simply adopt the Marshall McLuhan adage and trust that the medium is the message'.

           

This also has relevance to the idea of not gamifying everything, because it helps keep things in perspective. Focussing on the narrative and getting smaller amounts of gamification done right whilst also getting rid of the inherent distrust that august old organizations like libraries have for the perceived frivolity of games and gamification (ie. trusting that the medium will be the message) goes a long way to making attempts at gamification work, it seems.

Organization-centred design

Basically put, when a concept that depends on user uptake is designed to directly benefit the organization over those users, it has a very short use-by date. This problem often seems to befall those organizations who like the idea of gamification, but lack the respect, knowledge and and/or resources to implement the concept well, and view it as an easy way to cash in on the latest pop culture craze. Indeed, there are parts of the game development community who view the very concept of gamification as a gimmick cooked up by the corporate sector for that very purpose. One of the more vocal proponents of this point of view has been Ian Bogost, whose post ‘Gamification is Bullshit’ (2011) outlined fairly explicitly how the concept could be seen as a marketing tool that bastardizes the true nature of gaming. This bears thinking about here because it draws into pretty stark relief how easy it would be to create something organization- as opposed to user centred. Considering my previous assertions that users are wise to knowing when they’re being overtly manipulated for gain and that gaming (upon which gamification is based on, if it’s different at all) is an intrinsically motivated concept, the idea of placing the organizations’ benefit above those of the users renders all of this null. It’s easy to see how this could sink a gamification project. Bogost (2013) has even gone as far as to suggest the term ‘exploitationware’ in place of gamification, with the benefits of (amongst others) ‘disassociating the practice from games’.

Taking the wrong thing and running with it

This final point is along the same lines as the ‘Have Fun!’ point that I made in the last post – this is more of my own observation here, and it sort of ties everything I’ve said over the last two posts together. I get the feeling, after all of this reading, that we took the boring part of gaming – that is, the rules – and attempted to crèche that into our library systems. The problem here is that our library systems aren’t broken – they’re just in a state of flux. We run the risk of libraries falling into the trap of cheapening the gaming experience by doing a bad job of gamifying themselves, whilst at the same time missing not only using the interesting bit of gaming, but also failing to utilize one of the libraries’ chief resources. Those two things are one and the same, it seems – the stories of gaming and that the library acts as a repository of. More than scoreboards and leaderboards used the foster bursts of activity and engagement, we need to harness the deep meanings present in narrative to provide a service and education to our users. That might seem a bit lofty, but after these last two posts, that’s what it seems works best.

In my next post, I’m going to look at a few of the considerations that libraries should take into account when they decide to gamify an aspect of their organization. Thanks for reading.

References:

Gamasutra - Persuasive Games: Exploitationware. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2013, from http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/134735/persuasive_games_exploitationware.php?print=1

Gamasutra: Andrzej Marczewski’s Blog - Why does Gamification Fail? A few reasons... (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2013, from http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/AndrzejMarczewski/20130819/198562/Why_does_Gamification_Fail_A_few_reasons.php

Games_and_Learning_educators_report.pdf. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://archive.futurelab.org.uk/resources/documents/project_reports/becta/Games_and_Learning_educators_report.pdf

Gamification is Bullshit. (n.d.). Ian Bogost. Retrieved September 20, 2013, from http://www.bogost.com/blog/gamification_is_bullshit.shtml

Johnson, S. (2006). Everything bad is good for you. Penguin.

Krotoski, A. (2010). Serious fun with computer games. Nature, 466(7307), 695–695. doi:10.1038/466695a

Seth Priebatsch: The game layer on top of the world | Video on TED.com. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/seth_priebatsch_the_game_layer_on_top_of_the_world.html

Sich, C. (2006). From game studies to bibliographic gaming: Libraries tap into the video game culture. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 32(4). Retrieved from http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1003&context=christy_sich