The broader ethics about design I think are complicated and highly subjective. It’s something you have to fight out with your own demons ultimately. Privacy of information is rapidly becoming a distant memory of the past. Most everything we do is recorded by someone, or something… else estimated. The purpose of this data is more often than not to more accurately provide the correct products for consumers that fit their needs. The ultimate goal of course is money for corporate giants, but benefit for the consumer is better designs and experiences.

Some tardiness with my reply. But I think it’s an interesting topic and has taken some time to settle with me also.

I was thinking about the work scenario, and I believe that it could be worked around. For instance, if productivity increased so much, there could be worthwhile to have someone manually alter points for users that are abusing the system. For example, Bob starts slacking off, he earns a ton of points, but it just isn’t quality work. It could be someones job to let him know he’s not doing it right, by manually subtracting points, and updating him with a report at the end of the week, all within the point/game interface. This would put people back in line, gaining the positive aspects of the program back once again.

As for surgeons, the first thing that came to mind was a Kill/Death ratio, I couldn’t help but laugh at the horrible thought. I think something such as this were there is a life and death matter really helps people visualize the issue at hand. There is no doubt in my mind that turning things into a game would greatly alter how people perform, I can only help but feel it would be dangerous in a field such as surgery.

I think the most important thing to figure out is where and where not these systems would be acceptable. I strongly believe they’re going to become a real thing, and sooner than we think, but I share your concern that they need to be done carefully. I for one would love to make a game out of staying in shape and eating right. Walking and riding a bike instead of taking a car or the bus would be fun to keep track of, and any rewards gotten by doing so would be right up my ally of interest. Either way, definitely an interesting read, very glad you flushed out these ideas, keep it coming.

(I’ll try to sum up a few of my ideas on the subject but it is a very complex subject that I have not fully grasped yet…)
Being a young dad of a 1 year and a half, I’m very concerned about children’s education and read a few challenging books on the subject. An important one that goes totally against the reward and punishment system is “unconditional parenting” by Alfie Kohn.

While it is specifically about children’s education, it quotes SEVERAL studies showing clearly that rewards are actualy counter-productive in motivating peoples. Once you start offering a reward for a specific task, the one performing the task becomes much less interested in the task itself than he is in receiving the reward. Thus, he will take whatever shortcut he can to achieve the said task without bothering about it being fun, relevant or even well-done.

It was also found that children who have the freedom to explore and do what they want without being punished or rewarded but instead encouraged and guided develop a stronger sense of self and develop aptitudes much quicker and are much more interested in what they do and so do it better.

There is a HUGE difference between doing something because you are expecting a reward and doing something because you feel like doing it. Obviously the one doing something because he wants to do it is the happier one…

Finally, this is maybe one of the causes of the popularity of games in our current day and ages: because people have been raised with the “carrots and stick” through most of their life, they get to work and are reluctant in doing anything (I still hate washing the dishes and I mostly blame it on being forced to doing it when I was young). I may be portraying a pathetic picture of our society, but games are still a good way to receive the expected pat on the head and also a good way of rebelling against “having to do” something else.

That is exactly my point. These are no longer games we are talking about, but we are treating them like games (and applying actual game concepts to them!)

I agree that this is an exciting time, but we should also be careful not to lose ourselves in that excitement.

We can, of course, wax philosophic and say that in reality all we’ve ever done is apply game mechanics to systems. In fact I sthink that. But we have to pair it down a bit to have a relevant discussion about this *new* way of going about it. Things like Schell’s story of a future ruled by “points” that I think most people would agree seems to be a bad future, followed by “this could make us better people” really raises a red flag to me. I have no way to know if he is right or wrong, but it makes me highly skeptical.

Also, balancing a game and balancing a system in the real world is extremely different. Games are microcosms where you can limit the rules and goals and heck even the players if you want. In the “real world” we don’t have such luxuries. For example, using the prius example where you can watch a little plant grow in your dashboard when you save fuel, what if it turned out that people started getting into accidents because they weren’t focused on the road, but on the plant? Or a more funny, and probably more possible outcome, what if people started driving more so that they could see the plant grow? Thus as they drove more they polluted more, even though they were saving gas during the times they were driving?

And A/B testing is great, but it can’t or at least won’t be applied to everything. And when your yield is measured in the % of lives lost it takes on a little different meaning than when applied to a game.

And I imagine if you applied A/B testing to our government what you’d get is either the exact same system we have, or a full fledged democracy where the minority stakeholders are oppressed

I’m not saying we can’t pull these things off. In fact, we have to.. we have no choice. This is happening. But WE are the people that will make it move forward, so I think we should be mindful of how we proceed. Surely, no one can know how a system will impact the masses until it is released into the wild, but we can try our best and think ethically about it before we do so.

And to make it clear, I may not be arguing with anyone… this may be the popular belief. But I’ve not seen anyone state beliefs in this area, and even Schell side stepped the issue. That’s my reason for bringing it up.

So far we aren’t talking about anything new…just the same old process that game designers have been going through for decade (millennia?). In all game design, you create a rule set, test it with player, fail in some fashion and then fix it.

There are two things that make the movement of game mechanics into the ‘real world’ interesting.
- In multiplayer games, bad game design and the process of failing has social consequences. Relationships are altered, emotions flare and grudges are formed. If you do not properly set expectations that your game rules will change and hard earned skills will be deprecated, then players will often rebel.

- The closer you get to the game affecting player’s basic human needs, the more costly bad design mistakes become. If you accidentally reward doctors for cutting off finger and the number of amputees skyrockets 1000%, the fact that you fixed the issue doesn’t alleviate the damage you’ve already done.

Interestingly enough, these are exactly the same issue that come up in running a government, testing new medicines on humans, and running a religion. It is the universal messiness that comes from intersection between rules and people.

I personally find this to be an exciting time. Most rules throughout history are created by people in power with little reason to select the best solution. Modern developers are creating a vast new set of techniques for engineering effective social systems. Things like metrics dashboards and A/B testing let see what works and what doesn’t…and then you select the pragmatic solution. Heck, imagine if this philosophy were applied to the currently deadlocked U.S government.

take care
Danc.

That is really cool. I was not familiar with that system. So you could literally look at a list of the top pediatric surgeons publicly somewhere? Is there ever an issue with “gaming” the system? Do people often use the numbers to make decisions?

You obviously dont have the stats of a government led health system. You can easily get stats in the uk for pretty much everything in hospitals, we have league tables for them and they are all given ratings out of 5 (I think). The education system is exactly the same, each school already has a percentage rated on them based on exam results and every year the government produces a league table for the entire country.

eg http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/7974661.stm

Also, I don’t think using gaming mechanics are inherently bad. I just think they will have unintended consequences, and dramatic ones if we don’t try to think them through. For example, you are correct that grades in school are already an achievement system. And Schell mentions an achievement system for grades that another professor has started using that he claims is doing great. However, that WAS for a game design course, for one, and for two who knows if it is truly the best mechanic of grading? Maybe those kids are doing better because they are more apt to cheat the system. Most likely, though, it is because they are all gamers and can relate to the scoring system. Not to go too off topic, but what I find saddening about school systems is not the way they grade students, but that they don’t have several different methods of grading since everyone learns in a different way. To me, this is a good case of someone creating a gaming mechanic and assuming it is right so it stays.

Your last comment is especially interesting. In every case we’ve touched upon the game mechanics added to a system have an effect… increased happiness. Or at least it is an intended effect. Is this something that is necessary? Do these mechanics only work if they show short term gain… even incremental gain to a larger goal? If I wanted to start a farm I would have to endure a lot of hardship before I could reap my reward… and plants don’t grow fast enough to see even daily incremental change. But in a game you do see these minute changes. You are immediately rewarded even for small steps to a larger goal. It would be interesting to see if a game like WoW would be successful if they only had level 1 and level 80.. no in between levels.