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Paradoxes of Gamification
Writing about gamification is a paradox which is not only related to the term but also to considering that such a term can be used as if it was a concept; the uses of the term are in no way stabilized. The question is intensified for me by the fact that, in French (my mother tongue), the term gamification has imposed itself without being translated, and none of the proposed translations having met with great success1.
We may wonder about its rapid revival by the academic world. Is it a fear of missing out on the en vogue concept? The academic world has been criticized for its reaction time in the face of new phenomena, as was the case with video games, and one wonders if this is not going too fast now. Admittedly, this revival can be critical and, in accordance with ambient fashions, it is often a matter of deconstructing the notion of gamification; the problem is that this deconstruction took place even before the concept was constructed. Perhaps this is a beautiful metaphor for our (post)modernity, where one would have all the less stability of thought, the more destruction would precede construction.
Gamification is not, for me, a concept but a phenomenon, a practice (partly linguistic) to be studied and not to be deconstructed because the uses of the notion are very varied and there is nothing truly constructed that can be deconstructed. And one quickly arrives at a set of paradoxes that I will try to highlight before proposing alternatives for thinking about this question.
1.1. Game and play
Let us begin with the definition often taken from Deterding et al. (2011): “Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts”. This seems to be the most frequently cited definition, as Seaborn and Fels (2015) attest in their meta-analysis of academic articles on gamification. I will try to draw the complex and paradoxical consequences for thinking about gamification using this definition before asking whether it captures all the uses of the term gamification today.
The term is in connection with the difference between game and play. It is said that it is unknown to the French who could not grasp it. This is not the case. Indeed, if French, alongside other languages, has only one term, jeu, to designate something that is distinguished in English, this does not mean that there is confusion, as language develops a polysemic logic, which means that from similarities, from family resemblance to speak like Wittgenstein ([1953] 2001) and from all kinds of associations, each term in the French language will designate different things without making the language unusable. This is how language works, which is more economical than multiplying new words ad infinitum. A certain principle of economy (which does not, however, overlap according to languages, since the economy is not located in the same place) organizes the use of a language. To take a slightly different example, in French like in English one plays the guitar and plays chess (jouer de la guitare and jouer aux échecs), while in Spanish it is tocar or jugar. But who would argue that in French or English the two actions are confused? It is the same for the word jeu as “object” or “system” (game) and jeu as “action” (play). In general, the context allows us to distinguish the two. Nonetheless, I claim that it is an advantage of the French language, as Henriot’s work (1969, 1989) shows, to have a single term; this makes it possible not to conceal the fact that behind the jeu (game) there is play in English as well as in French, but perhaps it can be forgotten in English. While game (and therefore gamification) is on the side of the device, it is indeed a device intended for play, a term which underlines that there can be playful activity without a specific device; but in the other direction, even if a game can remain on a shelf or if the mediocrity of its design results in that no one plays it, it has nevertheless been designed to play. In their text, Deterding et al. (2011) refer to the game as the ludus, as defined by Caillois: “ludus (or ‘gaming’) captures playing structuring by rules and competitive strife towards goals”. This is to emphasize that the game only makes sense in relation to play or playing, even if it is one extreme of play, the one that supposes rules and structuring – on the other hand, but we will not develop this here, or find the toy that refers to another extreme of play, the one that Caillois calls paidia. The game is not the opposite of play, it is a device that makes possible certain forms of play, those that require media to develop, from board games to video games, through games of skill or construction sets. We could consider that the game is original, seizing elements of nature to structure itself – we think of the traditional games known among others under the term awalé and which use seeds – before being reified in media, devices that are increasingly complex not only from a technical point of view but also in terms of their playful principles. If the game is not play, it is closely related to play, and this can be meant by the idea of the game itself (but this is also true of the toy) as reification of play. This should be understood as a historical and cultural process that leads to inserting traces of experiences (here, play) into objects (here, games). We cannot separate the game from play, there is only a game in relation to a play horizon, which is what the French says using one word jeu, that gives the advantage of avoiding separating the two.
This is all the more true since the definition of gamification (Deterding et al. 2011) refers to game design, i.e. design with a view to the use that is related to playing. Designing a game is indeed aiming for a playful use, otherwise it is not a game that must be designed, but a cartoon or a simulation (rather than a video game, if it is not about playing but about living a fiction or practicing). Neither cartoons nor simulation are games, but the game can use animated images and simulations. These are elements of game or game design. There are two implications when talking about games: we are aiming at play that requires a medium (and we do not deal with play without a medium), but the medium is there to make play possible (if not inevitable); we use the device to reach play, which can lead to focus on the object and its material characteristics, forgetting what is actually done with it. This sometimes gives the feeling that one is making games without really taking into account what they are playing for.
1.2. Gamification as a deconstruction of the play
But if we follow the proposed definition (Deterding et al. 2011), then another paradox of the term gamification appears. It is a question of integrating elements from games (game and game-design) into devices that have an objective other than play and entertainment. Gamification is not about making a game – if so what would we need the term for? Making a game, even a serious one, is not gamification – it is about bringing game elements to a different reality, and this at the device side. That is probably the entire problem: what is the point of bringing game elements without making a game? It smacks of the trickery that Erasmus practiced and stated about games to teach children, especially Latin, for it was difficult to “motivate” them, we would say today (Brougère 1995). It was a question of giving the “finery” or “appearance of the game” (Erasmus 1529), of giving the impression of a game, but above all not playing a game, especially since the term at the time evoked gambling and could not therefore be valued in education. Erasmus did not talk about motivation, but it is the most common term used to justify gamification, as Seaborn and Fels (2015) show, while at the same time emphasizing a rather loose use of motivational theories, which leads me to think that behind this modern notion lies a strategy of trickery or attractiveness to capture the user (Cochoy 2004).
The paradox is that gamification is in fact a degamification: it is a question of using a game (a video game at the origin of the concept), of taking elements and characteristics to implant them in an activity whose aims do not refer to leisure or entertainment games. If there is indeed deconstruction, it is the deconstruction that gamification operates in regard to the game, broken down into elements that are considered to have a play value in themselves, independently of the set to which they belong. It is therefore very clear that it is a
