Gamification and multigamification in the workplace: Expanding the ludic dimensions of work and challenging the work/play dichotomy

Abstract

Gamification approaches in the workplace are encountering strong and passionate critics as well as dedicated proponents as the very notions of games, play, and work are being reconsidered and reframed. Workplaces are incorporating increasing varieties of concurrent and emerging games; some of these games are directly linked to how employees are projected to produce value for an organization and are paid and promoted, while others can be recreational, educational, or even medical (involving health diagnosis or treatment). In effect, many workplace settings have become the platforms for multiple, sometimes interlocking sets of rules, enforcement mechanisms, and related gaming structures. “Multigamification” approaches explicitly recognize game-related complexities and interactions, and provide means for mitigating cognitive overload, character conflicts, and other concerns. Participants can be immersed in technology-enhanced games that infuse social, medical, and economic themes either as a part of strategic initiatives in gamification (and multigamification, as described in this paper) or through emergent and less-tightly structured efforts. The overall wellbeings of organizational participants may relate in some way in how they engage in specific games as well as to how they deal with multiple games either in sequence or simultaneously; one or more games can be designated as “work” and others as “play,” sometimes reflecting traditional narratives that contrast labor deemed as “productive” with recreation. Developers can become active in exploring and tailoring games for specific workplace contexts, addressing issues of intergame compatibility, theme interaction, and synergy as well as participant overload. Multigamification can involve forms of competition among the games themselves as they compete for the limited attention of participants. This paper also addresses the challenging policy and design issues related to workplace games’ effects on participant wellbeing. Emergence of nested and overlapping gaming spheres can increase the complexity of organizational life as well as expand its ludic dimensions.

Web of deceit: Relationships between the dark triad, perceived ability to deceive and cyberloafing

“…For example, in cyber-assisted social interactions, where the majority of the exchange is not work-related, but some work-related issues are addressed (Hislop & Axtell, 2011). Similarly, workplace gamification may also lead to a rise in non-work related use of technology in the office; changing the way we look at 'work' and 'play' (Oravec, 2015). Finally, short breaks from work to access the Internet for personal use can improve productivity (Page, 2015).…”

Playing at Control: Writing Surveillance in/for Gamified Society

“…Definitions and value judgements of gamification are many and various. While the specifics of the term tend to differ based on whether the writers work in systems design (Deterding et al 2011), psychology (Oravec 2015), game design and games studies (Bogost 2015), or any number of other fields, all focus on extracting some (never all) aspects of digital games and applying them to other areas to increase participation and data collection. It is this partiality that forms the basis of a critical view of gamification by games scholars such as Bogost for its extrinsic reward system and appropriation of play for market gain.…”

“…By abstracting social standing to trackable and controllable metrics, it simply displaces the complexity of human social life into small and clearly defined models. Even multigamification (Oravec 2015) can be seen simply as a game between these different games, measured by number of participants. The difficulty instead lies in imagining alternatives to such compulsive scorekeeping.…”

Loaded dice: games playing and the gendered barriers of the academy

“…The competitive nature of academia is subject to both the elements of overt standards, usually framed in terms of written policy and key performance indicators, as well as more ambiguous markers of success. Policy and practice form part of the ludic construction of the workplace relating to the creation of rules of the game and the enforcement of these, which are designed to increase competitiveness and productivity between workers (Oravec 2015). The artificiality of rules in diverse human contexts that become normatively established as existing ontologies, is a notion explored in more detail by Shields (2015).…”

“…Morley (2013) comments on the central issue of how gender is thereby constituted in the academy. In this study those 'othered', as being unlike self, were viewed by participants in gendered terms as normally men, but could include other women actors, interacting and manoeuvring for advantage in the competitive, masculinist workplace context (Oravec 2015). Gender was interpreted by participants as contingent upon perceived external ontologies (biological sex being an obvious example) (Butler 1999); but also in terms of gendered practices, which might include men taking on feminised identities or roles as well (Author's Own 2014b).…”