Note: The following writings is a flow of consciousness, not intended as a research document and thus I’ve kept much of the references out. Most of these can be found on my other writings.
You can tell that the industry is filled with idiots and charlatans just by the way they explain their conclusions. One examples is the “dopamine revolution” they endlessly promote where their techniques are supposed to constantly trigger dopamine in our brains, leading to “happiness” at the very best, entertainment doing boring tasks at the least. They logic is as follows:
- Video games create dopamine in the brain
- Gamification takes techniques from video games into non-game contexts
- Gamification is causing dopamine releases like or similar to those in video games outside video games
This is the application of deductive logic in a social setting through different domains. This is NOT how you use deductive logic, here you should have at best inductive logic. First of all, deductive logic is used mostly in contexts like mathematics or physics, fields were we can find a direct causality. In social settings this doesn’t exist. It’s kinda like the equivalent of saying:
- People liked X movie
- People liked Y actor
- Make X movie sequel with Y actor and people will like it
The conclusion isn’t conclusive, it may or may not be liked by the public. Neither is the conclusion of the “gamifucation gurus” conclusive. People like different games for different reasons (and it has nothing to do with their “personality type” nonsense), video game reviews will have those who loved the game, those who hate it. Even the first premise used that “games create dopamine” isn’t a guarantee, so we can’t use deductive logic in this case (but this is what they are doing).
So the dopamine triggers isn’t guaranteed for everyone. Also, the games are usually not played for very long and gamers will soon move on to different games, the number of hours per day and for how many days, weeks or months they play will vary from person to person Some people may enjoy playing video games in general for eight hours a day everyday, most people don’t. And those who do will likely want to vary the games they play.
Imagine sitting on a comfortable sofa. Maybe sitting there for twenty minutes will be comfortable, but stay there for twelve hours or more will become torture. The logic from gamification is that they found a pleasurable sofa they’ll keep people sitting on it indefinitely and they’ll enjoy it. Why would you assume that because a person spends some time in a hobby, that’s all they want to do all day and it should be applicable to employees and students? It’s easy to see how absurd this view is if you compare it to forms of entertainment universally enjoyed by everyone (unlike video games while having a large audience, isn’t enjoyed by anyone, hardcore gamers are a minority in the gamer community): Music and movies. Because someone enjoys movies on their free time do you think they want to be watching movies all day for a living? Same with music.
What do you think is more likely to happen when we replace video games with music and movies? Do you honestly believe that because movies and music release dopamine in the human brain (fact) someone who is exposed to music and movies nonstop will experience of everlasting bliss?
The gurus love to say that “work will no longer be work” because it’s going to be fun like a video game… and yet some have been working at this for over fifteen years and there’s not a single case of this being achieved. Even in their own literature they claim that 80% of gamification attempts will fail (and the solution is to pay them more money for consultancy fees, they use this as a warning for going at it alone instead of an actual flaw in gamification) and those that do succeed don’t see any effects lasting for very long. Based on conversations with management, effects that have positively lasted in increasing employee performance lasted at most two or three months. Which begs the point: Why even bother spending all the time and money to apply these “gamification techniques” when four out of five times it will fail, and the ones that do fail won’t last very long anyways?
I read one gamification blog addressing this issue of short life span of a “successful” gamification with somewhat indignation, stating why should we care about it failing anyways, we can just start the 4/5 fail management style called gamification again in two or three months (and pay him for the fees to create it obviously).
But going back to applying deductive logic to promote gamification conclusions:
The problem is there is no direct research on “gamification” rising dopamine levels (and if they do, for how long do they last), but they’re taking data from video games, and assuming it’s applicable outside games through their misapplied deductive logic. Just because dopamine is released in a video game it doesn’t mean it’s being released on employees being forced to go through a gamification process.
And yet you see the whole industry based on these misapplied deductive logic and outright logical fallacies to justify their consultations. Another example is education, the one area they’ve been pushing for since I can remember. They like to say that the brain is learning when it plays a game, therefore introducing video games into the classroom (as directed by their paid consultations of course) will help students learn. This is a very bogus statement, you have to realize that if you’re watching 12 hours of Netflix on a day, your brain was also learning (you will remember plots, scenes, character names, etc).
They go so far as to claim that their gamification designs should replace traditional education, and some have even claimed (one atleast in in a Ted Talk) and video games will replace book reading, and this is actually a good thing.
I’ve written about this in more detail elsewhere, but these people do not understand how learning works. Games are good at opening a pathway for tacit knowledge called implicit learning. An example of this is learning a new accent when moving somewhere new without learning you’re learning it. This type of learning is really good is you’re doing something you’ve never done before, and this why mammals play when they’re young. Gamification gurus aren’t aware that this is how they you learn in games and encapsulate it all into “learning.” The other form of learning comes from explicit knowledge, which is remembering facts and figures. You can quickly tell that the “gamification gurus” are idiots who haven’t studied how learning takes place by listening how their gamification techniques will replace traditional learning (books and lectures). The declarative memory pathway (explicit knowledge) can’t be open at the same time as the implicit memory pathway. it’s one or the other. Traditional education is really good at promoting explicit knowledge, while it shouldn’t rely on exclusively, it’s designed to do that.
Explicit knowledge is necessary for cognitively complex tasks. Studies done on the deliberate practice for chess players showed that the top performers saw a correlation with the amount of reading they did. That is to say, the more reading, the better their score in the game of chess, the less reading, the worse their performance. And yet the gamification gurus want to eliminate books for games?
Then you have the issue that screen time (time spent in computer, TV, smarthphone, tablet, etc) will start causing brain damage in children really quickly (after about two hours if I remember correctly). So their argument is that we need to introduce VR and video games into the classroom, while most children are already spending over the limit to prevent the damage in their free time, and their solution is to increase this screen time and make it mandatory in the classroom!? Knowing this, you can came of a quick conclusion that no matter the design of the instructional video game, you will have it damage the childs brain by the simple fact that screen time will cause damage and autistic behavior in otherwise healthy children. The gurus know about this brain damage (it’s in one of their must read books Reality is Broken) and yet they still push it. I’ve asked them to explain how you can justify video games in the classroom after pointing out the damage of scree time, they say they know about it (they don’t want to be caught not knowing about X bit of info because they’re the expert), and yet they defend this practice (since it’s a source of revenue).
They try to justify it again with the “you learn with video games” fallacy.
- You learn by playing video games
- Children like video games
- If children play video games in the classroom they will be better educated
It’s this over-simplistic and misapplied deductive logic that the whole industry is based on. They do not know how to do research or the foundations of critical thinking and have now wasted away ten to fifteen years of their life, and wagered their entire professional identity on nonsense that is both damaging to the enterprises and children it’s being applied. Essentially what they have done is claim to have discovered universal cookie cutter solutions that makes them capable of managing any subject under the sun (sales, customer service, health care, finance, education, etc) through these universal solutions, and be able to consult and redesign in these different fields they have no experience on. It’s a scam.
Imagine this scenario: You’re the CEO of a company and need to hire a VP in sales for your growing business. A man comes in and tells you he has zero experience in sales, but has studies video game design and will apply these techniques into your sales team and uses deductive logic to explain how through dopamine stimulation your sales numbers should theoretically increase, which they will because he is an expert in studying game designs books, even though he doesn’t have any experience or training in designing games either, but has connected the dots between the two domains through deductive logic. Would you hire him?