ibogost Gamification Tweets
I’ll start this post as someone who has lived and worked in the game industry for a while now and then switch into a more “objective” register as I attempt to analyse this phenomenon from the perspective of an anthropologist and historian of game development coming from the perspective of the field of science and technology studies (STS).
Dear rest of the world now interested in games, serious games, educational, game development, gamification, or whatever other term you’re going to use to dismiss games as something akin to Nutella, which you can spread liberally on your dry toast, whether that is my inbox, US educational agendas, social networking, job hunting, or whatever you’ll thow up in the next couple of years: blow.
Its clear by now, most of you are not really interested in coming to the table and taking games and game development seriously. You’re here for the free food and don’t have a whole lot of interest in being part of a conversation that might very well convince you that games are art, educational, fun, sad, moving, motivating, frustrating, beautiful, ugly, or anything else that they clearly are, and have already been for years. I’m tired of you not taking seriously the incredibly complex creative work of an entire industry. The lame belief that by “adding points and stirring,” which is only a continuation of the previous generation of thought, “add technology and stir,” or, “add social networking and stir,” which has also clearly been done half-assedly and resulted in as much as one would expect from such feble approaches to topics so complex.
That bit of vitriol aside, from whence did it come? Continue reading »