Looking forward to playing two games on the 360 this week: Deus Ex: Human Revolution, which unfortunately was ordered last week for $10 more than it is this week, and Duels of the Planeswalkers 2012, for which the first expansion hits Wednesday.

We’re about 70% of the way through Ready Player One, and while Keisha is still eager to get back to Dresden, she’s dying to find out what happens next. I’m happy with that.

We also have to watch our last Netflix disc (Sweeney Todd) this week, since we just switched over to instant-only. Now just we need to switch to an internet service which actually works as advertised and the streaming thing will work. Hopefully it will still be worthwhile after losing Starz.

The A/C seems to be fixed now, just in time for… fall.

Anyway.

I still haven’t stopped running away from sitting down to write. But I’m enjoying reading to Keisha when she lets me (less often since I started reading Ready Player One to her… she’d prefer to get back to The Dresden Files).

After over a month, probably more than a dozen technician visits, installation of a new condenser unit, and replacement of the new unit’s compressor, wiring, and part of the suction line, our home A/C still doesn’t work adequately. Right now I feel so tired of the whole thing. Maybe the thermostat is a piece of crap (it is), and isn’t turning on the A/C when it should? I don’t know, I just want it to work.

We just got a new Wii, because our current one is on its last legs. One of the Wiimotes is already dead and the system itself will often freeze, refuse to read discs, or have any number of other strange issues. I’ve gone so long without calling tech support because I’m kind of dreading having to describe the issue; there isn’t one simple issue to describe, it just often doesn’t work.

Last night I got an SD card and started to transfer over the virtual console and WiiWare games we’ve bought, as well as save data, to the new Wii. Heh. Turns out, I’m allowed to put VC and WiiWare titles on the SD card but only allowed to run them on the Wii we purchased them on. Not only that, but many of the save files don’t even allow me to transfer them to the SD card. When we bought a new 360 I had to use the online tool to transfer the content licenses for all the XBLA games and DLC I’ve bought to the new console so other people in the house could use it without me being signed in. That was hassle enough. With the Wii there doesn’t seem to be any mechanism to even do that much: you have to either get your system repaired or buy it all again (and start over without your saves for VC and WiiWare games that have save data, or disc-based games that simply disallow the transfer of save files, like Animal Crossing).

The Wii doesn’t support loading save files from SD cards, so when you want to play them you have to make sure they’re transferred to system memory. That’s where another infuriating restriction of the Wii comes in. For the games that do let me move over save files, it won’t let me move them to the new Wii until that game has been played at least once on that system. What are they trying to prevent here? If I want to move a save file over for a game I don’t actually have, what does anyone gain by not letting me? So I won’t be able to use it. So what? This means I’m gonna have to go through every disc we have a save for, put it in, boot up the game, quit, go back to the data management screen and then copy over the save. This whole process is ridiculous and serves no purpose but to frustrate paying customers.

I’m finally going to call Nintendo today about this crap. May end up getting the old Wii repaired. We’ll see.

When facing a crisis of faith, I guess it could help to start with what you know and still believe, little though that may be.

I am.

That’s a start. I exist.

Most of the rest sort of changes or is uncertain. You know, who, what, where, when, why.

It seems a little odd that I would experience a crisis of faith when there weren’t really any events that conflicted with my worldview per se. The answer, the one I feel at the center of my being, is that none of the changing, uncertain things really matter. That is, I don’t actually need to know those answers.

My ego kind of fights that, as you might expect. I hope with my work to provide signposts pointing to enlightenment, and the idea that I could do that without personal experience of what that is doesn’t seem to compute.

I haven’t been writing lately.

I should.

Picked up “Kard Combat,” which is an badly-themed, badly-named version of Spectromancer. Spectromancer is fun, and this is it for $3, basically. So it’s fun.

Been keeping close track of news about the FT-86. It seems pretty cool.

Played the demo of Bastion, and it was cool. Not sure I want to pay $15 for it, though.

Upgraded to OS X Lion today. Seems snazzy. Still have to play Civ V on my wife’s iMac…

Played the demo for Catherine. What a weird game. I really like Persona 3 and 4, but I doubt I will pick up Catherine based on the demo…

An iPad entered our household yesterday, so I bought Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP. Haven’t started it yet.

So, yeah. Some stuff happened. I still don’t really feel like writing about it here.

Got a game called 7 Wonders recently, and I’m looking forward to playing it. Needs at least three players, so we have to wait until tomorrow. It’s a card-drafting civilization-building game. Seems like it will be really fun.

Civ World (on Facebook) is in open beta. It’s interesting, but not exactly a Civ game. Picked up Civ 5 this week and unfortunately it doesn’t run very well on my Late ’08 MacBook Pro. Seeing it run smoothly on my wife’s new iMac makes it seem completely unplayable on my computer. But she said I could maybe play it on hers when she’s not using it. I think I will…

Been playing a lot of 2-player Thunderstone and Small World recently with my wife. That’s been fun.

Just migrated to a new host and domain registrar, so the site was down for a bit. But now it’s not. Sweet.

Everyone who thinks there’s no science showing any problems with genetically modified crops should watch this.

I’m reading this right now. Haven’t gotten far yet, but it strikes me that operant conditioning techniques are right at home in organizations which value obedience in their members above all else.

…just finished it. It’s also interesting that Bartle’s player types were mentioned in passing. Probably got edited in because “killer” sounds so sinister. As I read on Twitter, Bartle pointed out recently (at Digital Shoreditch Festival 2011) that badges, points, etc. mostly apply only to achievers and not the other types.

This week I…

…finished Persona 3. Started playing “The Answer,” the follow-up in the FES version which I have. I also recently got Persona 4, which I will play at some point after finishing “The Answer.” I really like Persona 3. The social game aspect seems like it could be a game on its own if done well. Of course there are Japanese dating sims but most don’t reach the US and I doubt there are very many which are any good. They seem¹ to follow the same patterns, with a slew of potential female partners, one each for seemingly the same categories in every one. I guess there are some that aren’t like this but I think with Persona 3/4 it’s really cool that the sim encompasses more types of relationships than just dating. I’d like to create a game with this aspect some day (I mentioned it here before, it’s called This Celestial Life).

…tried to get an achievement on Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes but encountered a bug where whenever I start up a game my achievements, gamer score, and profile pic are no longer visible, and no new achievements are awarded while playing. This lasts even if I exit to the dashboard, until either I restart the system or log out and back in (as long as Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is not running), and happens on both 360s at my house. I don’t think it happens with other games. Not sure if anyone else has encountered this, since I haven’t really done a lot of research on it, but it is annoying.

…finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I really enjoyed it, and from the time I finished have felt more calm, aware, and clear-minded. I had previously considered quality to be only a personal (subjective) judgment, but the idea of Quality as absolute reality, before subjects and objects, is intriguing. The term “quality” would have three meanings:

1. Quality – absolute reality; Tao; God; Love; Nirvana; Zen. Consciousness?
2. quality – the degree to which an action or object resonates with Quality.
3. quality – an attribute of an object, of which definition 2 is one example.

I’m not sure whether this is how it all really works, but I have a sense that I don’t really need to be sure. The world works whether I’m sure of it or not.

…read The List by Joe (J.A.) Konrath. In my opinion it wasn’t good.

…wrote a teeny tiny bit of my book. Mostly just figured out what’s going to happen in the next scene, but then didn’t actually write out much of the scene itself.

I just finished reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Thoughts are coalescing… or actually, really, I’m drifting. I’m not sure what to say yet, but that it is excellent and fascinating.

I just watched Freakonomics on Netflix Instant Watch. There was some really interesting stuff there, like the theory about Roe v. Wade being responsible for most of the 90s’ drop in crime rate. But having read Punished by Rewards, the stuff about incentives was depressing.

The last section of the film documents an experiment where financial incentives are used to attempt to get more kids to pass 9th grade. And exactly as Kohn described for these sorts of studies, it was a short-term one which drew all the wrong conclusions.

In fact, there are telltale signs throughout the film of the failings of extrinsic motivators (about cheating in Sumo, 9th grade, and elsewhere, and even an anecdote from Stephen D. Levitt himself about his attempt to use M&Ms as incentives to potty train his daughter). Levitt says in the film that if there’s a worldview to their book Freakonomics, it’s that “incentives matter,” and he talks proudly about how much he uses them with his kids: “I can get anything I want at home for fifty cents.” Then they go on to conclude that with their work they hope to inspire people to challenge the traditional ways of looking at things.

Am I the only one who sees the irony here?

Levitt’s worldview and even, it seems, his entire sense of self is deeply rooted in a traditional way of looking at things (pop behaviorism, to use Alfie Kohn’s term) which is sorely in need of being challenged and discarded. I have strong doubts that at this point he would be able to fully consider the possibility that extrinsic motivators don’t work or are ethically objectionable. Of course I don’t know him at all, so I emailed him to ask whether he had read Punished by Rewards, hoping to (if he has) find out  what his response to it is or (if he hasn’t) convince him to and then get his response. If I ever get a response I will ask for permission to post it here.

Meanwhile, if you have read or intend to read any Freakonomics book, please also read Punished by Rewards. And if you don’t, you should read Punished by Rewards anyway.

Watched the original Tron this weekend. It was hilarious. I can’t remember a single technological assertion in there which had anything remotely to do with reality. Fun stuff. Tron: Legacy is up next from Netflix later this week.

I was going to get Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes for the DS but decided to wait for the XBLA version. It’s finally out now on XBLA, and it’s fun.

A while back I started reading John Scalzi’s blog, which has some cool info for writers. I don’t usually read sci-fi, so I hadn’t actually read any of his stuff. Then I read his April Fools’ prologue to the first book of his non-existent fantasy trilogy The Shadow War of the Night Dragons.

I was extremely impressed with his writing; I wish he would really write that trilogy, because I’d love to read it. But it made me interested to read more of his stuff, so over the second half of last week, I read his sci-fi trilogy that begins with Old Man’s War, and wow.

The creativity and attention to detail here is incredible, and Scalzi’s writing really is masterful. I think the first book is the best, followed by the third (The Last Colony) and then the second (The Ghost Brigades). The only thing I noticed in Scalzi’s writing style that some might call a flaw is his tendency to “infodump” alternately every few pages: he’ll go into a detailed explanation of something that will ultimately turn out to be somewhat related to the story. Don’t get me wrong, these segments are just as well done as the rest, sometimes presenting some of the cleverest parts of the whole book, but they do break up the pace a bit.

I like Old Man’s War the best partially because of this: those segments are less cumbersome with some specific features to help them out. I didn’t actually notice it at all in Old Man’s War until looking back after reading The Ghost Brigades, because first person point of view helps. Since the protagonist is there through these segments as a frame of reference, it is easier to get into and through them, which helps keep the pace going. This was the case for Old Man’s War and The Last Colony, but The Ghost Brigades was written in third person for the obvious reason that its protagonist didn’t appear until about a quarter of the way through the story. Unfortunately that means many of the “infodump” segments didn’t really have a frame of reference to help keep the pacing (something that seemed to slow down the first part of the book before the protagonist appeared, as well). The tendency shows in The Shadow War of the Night Dragons also, but there the humor keeps it going as it does for Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams.

Overall, though, wow. Scalzi is an excellent writer whose stuff you should read.

I picked up Zoe’s Tale as many people did: not realizing that it is the same story as The Last Colony but from a different character’s perspective. I will read it, but after a break, since The Last Colony is still a little too fresh on my mind.

Slab leak fixed. With a lot of help from a friend (thanks!), I dug the “pilot hole” for the plumber to tunnel under the house to fix it without destroying the tile in the kitchen. This saved us a few hundred dollars. Then it rained, so yesterday I had to get most of the water out of the hole with a bucket, rope, and a heavy rock. Then I replaced some of the dirt (they replaced most of it), which saved some more money. So that’s more physical exertion in the past three days than I’ve done in many years.

I’ve been tired all week; didn’t get enough sleep this past weekend. We have a hot water slab leak under our kitchen. Insurance is covering some of it and warranty covered detection, but we will still have to pony up for the deductible.

This morning (yesterday morning now; I’ve been working on this post all day) I followed a link shared on Twitter by Jamie Madigan and Brenda Brathwaite to read an article entitled “I Don’t Want to be a Superhero.” Having read through almost all of Alfie Kohn’s Punished by Rewards by now, it got me thinking about the whole “gamification” thing and I feel like I have something to say about it that isn’t really being said by most of the people I’ve read discussing it. A lot to say, actually; this is gonna be a long one. Buckle up. Disclaimer: I haven’t read Reality is Broken.

Definition

Gamification, according to Wikipedia,

is the use of game play mechanics^[1] for non-game applications (also known as “funware“),^[2] particularly consumer-oriented web and mobile sites, in order to encourage people to adopt the applications. It also strives to encourage users to engage in desired behaviors in connection with the applications.^[3] Gamification works by making technology more engaging,^[4] and by encouraging desired behaviors, taking advantage of humans’ psychological predisposition to engage in gaming. The technique can encourage people to perform chores that they ordinarily consider boring, such as completing surveys, shopping, or reading web sites.^[4]

Furthermore, Wikipedia goes on to list techniques which are commonly used:

• achievement “badges”
• achievement levels
• “leader boards”
• a progress bar or other visual meter to indicate how close people are to completing a task a company is trying to encourage, such as completing a social networking profile or earning a frequent shopper loyalty award.^[6]
• virtual currency
• systems for awarding, redeeming, trading, gifting, and otherwise exchanging points
• challenges between users
• embedding small casual games within other activities.^[4]

So for the most part, it is the addition of operant conditioning techniques lifted from game design to change people’s behavior. It is a new buzzword for what Alfie Kohn calls “pop behaviorism:”

The idea is that the best way to get something done is to provide a reward to people when they act the way we may want them to. Scholars have debated the meaning and traced the development of the intellectual tradition known as behaviorism. What interests me, though, is the popular (or pop) incarnation of this doctrine, the version that lives in our collective consciousness and affects what we do every day.

The core of pop behaviorism is “Do this and you’ll get that.” The wisdom of this technique is very rarely held up for inspection; all that is open to question is what exactly people will receive and under what circumstances it will be promised and delivered. We take for granted that this is the logical way to raise children, teach students, manage employees. We promise bubble gum to a five-year-old if he keeps quiet in the supermarket. We dangle an A before a teenager to get her to study harder. We hold out the possibility of a Hawaiian vacation for a salesman who sells enough of the company’s product.

We use achievement levels and badges, competitions (leaderboards and challenges between users), token economies (virtual currency and points exchange/redemption systems), and progress bars to get people to buy into our brands and visit our stores, give us their personal information, send our links to their friends, and use our software the way we want them to.

“New”

The first problem with gamification is the assumption that it doesn’t already exist, or at least that it didn’t exist twenty or a hundred years ago (since some people recognize that elements of it exist already). But our entire society is built on it: grades and praise, merit bonuses and raises, financial incentive plans, and the like are all already here. Even if we look at gamification as more than just operant conditioning, which for the most part it isn’t, it’s still nothing new. Economics is a game. Business is a game. Politics is a game. Game design is a game. Law and policy making is game design, which is a game (just one with high-noise, high-latency feedback loops). Money is points, our resumés are (fanciful?) lists of badges and achievements, and leaderboards are printed regularly by the The New York Times, Fortune, People, Time, and any number of other publications. Phil Shenk pointed out that games have been used in business for a long time, but they really are everywhere.

“Effective”

The second problem is that as Kohn saw with pop behaviorism, everyone seems to be taking for granted that this is a good idea. Phil Shenk in the link above says in his conclusion:

There’s no doubt that rewards, incentives, feedback, cooperation and competition are all very useful in any industry, but clever people and businesses already use these techniques, and have probably been using them since the dawn of civilization.

And when Michael Sinanian writes on Venture Beat that gamification could be the answer to healthcare, he concludes:

Regardless of how healthcare reform takes shape in America, one thing is certain: gamifying certain aspects of our lives effectively appeals to our psychology in ways that are beneficial for both the individual and society at large.

Uwe Hook writes (emphasis mine):

Seriously, wouldn’t you study that much harder if a class valedictorian was called “White Knight Paladin Level 20″? Of course you would. At least that’s what Seth Priebatch, the founder and Chief Ninja (You can’t make that stuff up.) of SCVNGR told the world at his South by Southwest keynote in Austin.

…

Gamification or Game Mechanics work because it makes technology more engaging/entertaining by encouraging desired behavior and taps into the human desire to play a game. It can help to perform tasks that are normally considered boring or arduous.

…

Gamification is an important tactic to help change human behavior. It can make life more entertaining and more pleasurable. It will make arduous tasks more enjoyable. It can be used to change bad habits and transform into more positive actions.

Companies are springing up left, right, and center to take advantage of the “gamification” craze. But where is the evidence that it is even effective?

Punished by Rewards cites numerous studies indicating that rewards are not effective at what they attempt to accomplish. So even assuming it could possibly be ethical to manipulate people like this (pretend a perfect, angelic being is at the helm of the system picking exactly the right things to reward), it wouldn’t achieve the desired effect. Oh, it would (and will in the real world) “work,” in the sense that people will push the buttons to get the pellets and the metrics being used to see how well it “works” will report improvement. But at what cost?

Kohn explores the question of whether rewards are effective, and after combing through the experimental evidence explains why they aren’t. He found that while rewards often result in the desired behavior, they are most effective when the subject is already dependent on the person or organization giving the rewards, that they are only effective as long as the rewards last, that despite producing “desired” behaviors they actually reduce the quality of what is produced, and that they are especially ineffective at teaching values like honesty, generosity, and responsibility. He explains five reasons for this:

• Rewards punish – inherently rewards punish those who do not receive the rewards, as well as subtly punishing those who do receive them, as they are consciously or unconsciously aware that they are being controlled.
• Rewards rupture relationships – whether between the rewarder and rewardee or between peers (or groups of peers) competing for rewards, they are extremely counterproductive to the relationships that are an integral ingredient of improved performance.
• Rewards ignore reasons – they gloss over underlying reasons why people weren’t acting in the desired way to begin with.
• Rewards discourage risk-taking – since the focus is on rewards rather than the inherent value of the task being performed, participants will choose the path of least resistance to get the rewards.
• And most importantly, rewards destroy intrinsic motivation, which is the single most significant determining factor in how well someone will do at a given task. Whether because the focus is moved from the task itself and its inherent value to the rewards or because anything that seems to be a prerequisite for a goal is implicitly made to seem less compelling than the goal itself, the effect is well-documented and researched: things you would enjoy doing as a hobby often become unpalatable if you are rewarded for them.

Which is why the suggestions in this video are scary:

Everybody is passionate about something, whether it’s good coffee or Radiohead or whatever and so in a sense we don’t have scores for those. But if you were to add scores, think about sort of, um, you know the loyalty you could engender with different brands. Or more to the point, you’re rewarding people for being good or knowledgeable at something that they like to do already. So that’s the part that gets really exciting.

Gamification is the avenue for pop behaviorism to escape its previous confines of school, work, and parenting and invade every other part of life where passion hasn’t yet been destroyed. The future suggested toward the end of this video is positively horrifying:

What is described would be a world without passion. It would be closer to a zombie apocalypse than a golden age. It’s certainly not “technology bringing us back to nature.” Schell seems to have more the manner of a comedian than a scholar (his delivery reminds me of Mitch Hedberg), and it seems unlikely that people would sign up to live that way, but it’s an eerily believable slippery slope.

Watching that video, it seems like she has a set condition in mind she is setting out to prove, and seeks out evidence to reinforce it. The numeric comparisons and conclusions she makes don’t make a lot of sense. And I don’t think a majority of players actually feel the way she describes or acts in the best way possible when playing games. Certainly frustration is not something that “doesn’t exist” when playing games, although most current ones attempt to reduce or eliminate it as much as possible.

Anyway, contrary to what Jane McGonigal might believe, extrinsic motivators won’t save the world.¹ In the same way that paying kids when they get good grades doesn’t make them better students, applying more rewards and operant conditioning techniques under the guise of a new buzzword will not fix problems which were in large part created (and certainly never fixed) by the existing systems of rewards. We don’t need a better carrot and stick, we need Summerhill School.

“Fun”

The third problem, which Sebastian Deterding pointed out in his presentation for Playful 2010 in London is a fundamental misunderstanding of what is inherently compelling about games. Many proponents of gamification assume games are compelling because of extrinsic motivators. These have become a staple of games but I would guess that in many cases they do as much harm as good, and that their overuse may have ruined many gamers’ enjoyment of games they might otherwise have liked.

Based on what I have seen and experienced and read, there is one thing that really promotes intrinsic motivation and is the biggest factor in how happy a person is from day to day. I believe it is why most people play games, or spend time on any number of other hobbies. What is it? Freedom. Not free license to interfere with others, but control over one’s own life. Choices, even if it just means choosing to indulge in a specific chosen hobby.

For games that means the freedom to act in ways that wouldn’t be possible in the real world, to have experiences outside of the norm of everyday life, and above all to have some control over those experiences, possibly as a contrast to real life where at times control of one’s circumstances can be difficult to come by.

If gamification was defined as adding more choice and control to otherwise mundane tasks, or promoting the collaborative discovery of and experimentation with creative ideas through cleverly designed scenarios, it could be a force for positive change in the world. But that is not the way things are going. Jonathan Blow gets it.

Reality is broken. But “gamification” is not the solution, it’s part of the problem.