Gamification is Bullshit!

Far and away one the most popular articles on MikeJones.TV has been my provocative post ‘Transmedia Storytelling is Bullshit’. In this post (and a follow up entitled ‘Confusing Style with Story’) I staked out my disdain for much of the rhetoric and adversarial discourse espoused by so called ‘digital media gurus’, around Transmedia narrative. I argued that new mediums do not (and never have) changed what a story is - rather they simply use different grammar and style; and there is nothing new about this. Moreover, that the dominant discourse concerned with Transmedia, by focusing overtly on Revolution, puts artificial and unhelpful barriers between traditional media artists and new opportunities. In short, Transmedia is Evolution, NOT Revolution, and the endless diatribe about ‘unprecedented change’ and ‘whole new way to tell stories’ is, to put it bluntly but succinctly, BULLSHIT…!

The more subtle implication of my post is my concern that that creative screen media opportunities presented by new media are being endlessly hijacked but marketing and advertising companies. The currency of new media ideas is being squirreled away and diluted into more mindless buzzwords and bullshit bingo.

Well, i have now been very pleased to discover another eminent thinker in the digital space also raise the flag to call ‘bullshit’ when its warranted. Ian Borgost, one of the pre-eminent researchers and commentators on game culture has posted a delightful article entitled…

Gamification is Bullshit. 

At first I was bummed that someone had beat me to it as I had half a blog post in the works on this very topic and with this very title. But Ian’s post is so sharp and to the point that I can say nothing but “i couldn’t have said it better myself.”

Ian remarks that ‘gamification’ is:

“invented by consultants as a means to capture the wild, coveted beast that is videogames and to domesticate it for use in the grey, hopeless wasteland of big business, where bullshit already reigns anyway.

Bullshitters are many things, but they are not stupid. The rhetorical power of the word “gamification” is enormous, and it does precisely what the bullshitters want: it takes games—a mysterious, magical, powerful medium that has captured the attention of millions of people—and it makes them accessible in the context of contemporary business….

For the consultants and the startups, that means selling the same bullshit in book, workshop, platform, or API form over and over again, at limited incremental cost. It ticks a box. Social media strategy? Check. Games strategy? Check.”

Read Ian’s full article and inspiring thought-provoking blog at http://www.bogost.com/