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Games (the Fun Drug)

How it Starts

Boredom. A challenge. Your move. My move. Me vs you. Rewards.

What it Looks Like

Play. Fun. Board games. Cartoons. Video games. "Earn more points." Gambling. Roasts. Wild 'N Out. War games. Guerrilla warfare. Arms race. Gamesmanship. Zero-sum games. Brahms Hungarian Dance No.5. Sports. Google's offices. Pranks. HR performance policies. A battle of wits. Provocative conversations. Better. More. The next level. Promotion. Career ladder. Progress. Status games.

What’s Happening

The conventional idea of games is limited to children's games, video games and all the things that are labelled as games. Predictably, conventional thinking fails to appreciate how greatly human behaviour is geared towards playing games.

For instance, how many psychologists or thought leaders today would categorise games as a legitimate motivator in human behaviour?

But if you go outside this conventional 2D thinking then you end up with a totally different understanding. If you consult the subjects of philosophy, the social sciences and marketing then you will find there is a serious appreciation for how fundamental games are to human (and even animal) behaviour.

"Play is older than culture, for culture presupposed human society but animals have never waited for man to play." (Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens)

Indeed, marketers have turned gaming into a creative art-form to drive greater consumer demand in business. There is a specific concept in marketing called gamification which is when you take the principles and elements of game-design and apply them to non-game contexts, like selling more stuff in business. Gamification can be used as bait (like the McDonald's Monopoly Game) or as part of the structure of the transaction (like Starbucks Rewards). And consumers love it. Real conversions are undeniable.

Equally, this concept can be applied beyond marketing, in all facets of life, in:

 business and politics. Think "political cat and mouse", "strategic chess", "monopoly in business", "game theory".

 personal development. The expression "level up" says it all.

 human resources. Job promotions and performance reviews in the workplace use this concept.

 education. When learning is fun. Edutainment on mobile phones with Angry Birds. Didn't you like your "fun" teachers the most?

 personal motivation. You could make a game out of anything to motivate yourself: setting mini-goals, setting wagers, re-defining personal excellence.

 human relations. You could frame human relations as a game to leverage the innate desire to play in human interactions. Zero-sum games are frowned upon in diplomacy. But that doesn't stop people from covertly trying to keep playing zero-sum games, even when stop. So if you can't beat em, then maybe you will need to redesign the game instead.

A True Story on How to Turn Work into Games

When I began work as a litigator, the first task I got was disclosure on a piece of monster litigation. (Disclosure is going through all the documents in a legal case to figure out which ones are relevant. In the legal world, it's the "junior" work.)

Anyway, it was time-consuming work, 97% of the documents were irrelevant, and so the rest of the time I was looking for needles in haystacks. I was doing this for 12-15 hours a day for 3-4 months straight. (That's not to showboat good worker bee qualities. But my clever use of games is what I really want to share with you.)

I used the concept of gamification to inoculate my brain and protect me from burnout. I knew that if I could make the work into a game, then my brain would become addicted and I wouldn't even need to work hard - I'd actually want to play the game.

So I constructed a mental game:

 I set myself a target of reviewing 1,500 documents per day. That is 125 documents per hour; which is 2 documents per minute. (Bear in mind that this was critically reading each document; looking at each one as if it could be a smoking gun, constantly thinking about how it related to the bigger picture.)

 I immersed myself in the game like it was a story (which it was) and I was a detective trying to piece it all together. My partner had me working on other little collages and timelines which added to this engagement factor (like in video games how you have to collect pieces that open up new levels of the game).

 I rewarded myself for finding high-value documents (I'd imagine it was 1 point to review 1 document but 10 points to find a high-value document).

 I got so addicted to this game that on my days off I would log in from home to keep going.

 From memory, I reviewed 100,000+ documents in 3-4 months.

It was a lot of work but all I remember was playing a game like Call of Duty (only on a legal case on a different subject matter) and winning at it. After all, who wouldn't want to play a game?

If you're looking for other ways to use games, you might be interested to study RAP (short for Rhythm And Poetry) which can be infinitely better at using games IMHO. They use this same concept of gamification to entice the masses. Like, for instance watch Lilly Singh mix an English lesson with rap and games: "my chest two consonants, you're girl got double Ds ... say I'm a 10/10, my haters like silent letters cos I can't hear them". Or Prince EA play a nerd rapper who destroys bullies. Gangbusters.

Tips & Tools to Use

 In Practice: if you are finding engagement levels are low then you can turn any situation into a game to increase engagement, with progressive rewards, extra levels, avatars, creating and releasing tension to leverage the innate desire to play games.

Tools to Use

 The Emma Chamberlain Formula (see Attention-Grabbing Stimulation Hijack).

 The PSAK Tool 1 (Let Them Figure Things Out).

 See Part 3 (Transport of Experience), (Gamification), (Six Emotional Formulas).