WEBVTT - everything’s a game… even baptisms 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:12.960 You can get a high score on anything nowadays, Duel 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:17.040 lingo gives you a streak, fitness trackers give you health scores, 0:00:17.120 --> 0:00:20.000 and before you post that TikTok, you're probably thinking about 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:22.000 how far you can push up that number of likes 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:26.000 and follows. It seems like everything in life has become 0:00:26.000 --> 0:00:26.400 a game. 0:00:27.160 --> 0:00:31.640 The world is constantly scoring us, and the scoring systems 0:00:31.640 --> 0:00:34.680 in games and the scoring systems in the world are 0:00:34.720 --> 0:00:37.000 actually weirdly similar. 0:00:38.159 --> 0:00:41.080 Teenwin is an associate professor of philosophy at the University 0:00:41.080 --> 0:00:43.440 of Utah. He just wrote a book called The Score 0:00:43.600 --> 0:00:46.639 that's about why scoring systems work for games, but how 0:00:46.640 --> 0:00:48.960 they don't work when other things are gamified. 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.320 So the scoring system is some kind of official declaration of 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:54.280 how we're going to count things together and or how 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:56.960 we're going to count success together. The weird puzzle that 0:00:57.000 --> 0:01:00.720 got me writing this whole book was that I had 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:03.520 one story I'd built over a book and some papers 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.600 about solf scoring systems and games made it possible to 0:01:06.640 --> 0:01:10.039 play and be free and be fluid and explore. And 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:15.240 then that another story built in thinking about bureaucracies of 0:01:15.319 --> 0:01:19.280 how how scoring systems were pernicious trained the life out 0:01:19.319 --> 0:01:22.040 of communities, drained the joy out of things, and then 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:25.680 I was like, crap, wait, are these things opposite or 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:26.720 is there a bigger picture? 0:01:27.600 --> 0:01:30.200 You might have felt this yourself. Maybe it's a gamified 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:33.040 app that's supposed to motivate you to exercise or learn, 0:01:33.360 --> 0:01:35.840 but then you end up just hyper focusing on the numbers, 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:38.080 or you just get addicted to the app and the 0:01:38.160 --> 0:01:41.839 activity itself isn't even fun anymore. A lot of times 0:01:41.880 --> 0:01:45.720 gamification leads to you getting played. So in today's episode, 0:01:45.720 --> 0:01:49.080 we talk about when gamification works, when it doesn't, and 0:01:49.280 --> 0:01:51.320 also some of the weird things that can happen when 0:01:51.360 --> 0:01:59.400 a philosopher decides to study video games from Kaleidoscope and 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:05.440 IHEARTPI cast. This is kill switch. 0:02:06.720 --> 0:02:07.320 Discronized. 0:02:08.280 --> 0:02:09.160 I'm Dexter Thomas. 0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:50.239 I'm sorry, m m m M, I'm sorry, sorry, goodbye. 0:02:55.120 --> 0:02:57.040 Is there a point where you have noticed that we 0:02:57.320 --> 0:03:01.000 really started as a society started using the raise gamification 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:02.880 and really bringing that into everything else. 0:03:03.320 --> 0:03:06.320 Yeah, the I'm not sure when it started, but the 0:03:06.440 --> 0:03:10.000 moment it got really popular was Jane mcgonagall's book Reality 0:03:10.080 --> 0:03:12.840 Is Broken, which really pushed the idea that you know, 0:03:13.280 --> 0:03:16.640 games are fun, they're really engaging, and other parts of 0:03:16.639 --> 0:03:19.000 life are grinding and boring, and so if we apply 0:03:19.120 --> 0:03:22.280 those things, we can make things more fun. 0:03:22.639 --> 0:03:25.639 In twenty eleven, a game designer and researcher named Jane 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:29.000 McGonagall put out a book called Reality Is Broken. Why 0:03:29.080 --> 0:03:31.880 Games make Us Better and How they Can Change the World, 0:03:32.040 --> 0:03:34.040 And one of her main arguments was that we could 0:03:34.040 --> 0:03:36.160 apply game mechanics to various parts of. 0:03:36.080 --> 0:03:38.880 Our life and then we get all this positive feedback. 0:03:38.920 --> 0:03:41.000 You guys have heard of leveling up and plus one's 0:03:41.000 --> 0:03:43.960 strength and plus once intelligence. We don't get that kind 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:45.840 of constant feedback in real life. When I get off 0:03:45.880 --> 0:03:48.200 the stage, I'm not going to have, you know, plus 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:53.360 one speaking and plus one crazy idea plus twenty crazy idea. 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:55.360 I don't get that feedback in real life. 0:03:55.560 --> 0:03:58.040 That's Jane McGonagall and her ted talk back in twenty ten, 0:03:58.320 --> 0:04:00.760 and her thesis back then about Game of Vacation was 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:03.920 really optimistic. She proposed that we could use the structure 0:04:03.960 --> 0:04:07.600 of games to solve real world problems like depression or obesity, 0:04:07.880 --> 0:04:10.760 even all the way up to global issues like climate change. 0:04:11.000 --> 0:04:11.680 When I look. 0:04:11.520 --> 0:04:13.760 Forward to the next decade, I know two things for 0:04:13.840 --> 0:04:17.640 sure that we can make any future we can imagine, 0:04:17.920 --> 0:04:20.800 and we can play any games we want. So I say, 0:04:20.880 --> 0:04:22.359 let the world changing games begin. 0:04:22.680 --> 0:04:23.000 Thank you. 0:04:24.680 --> 0:04:26.600 She was not the first person to start. But for me, 0:04:27.279 --> 0:04:29.240 this book is like the moment where it goes from 0:04:29.240 --> 0:04:31.680 a background thing to like something that is on the 0:04:31.680 --> 0:04:32.919 tip of everyone's tongue. 0:04:33.360 --> 0:04:36.840 And really, this gamification stuff was already everywhere. A few 0:04:36.880 --> 0:04:40.200 days before that Ted talk was posted online, Starbucks announced 0:04:40.240 --> 0:04:42.760 that if you checked into a Starbucks location five times, 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:45.679 you would get a barista badge on the four Square app. 0:04:45.960 --> 0:04:48.159 At that point, that was all you would get, just 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.720 a badge, not even a discount on a latte. They 0:04:50.760 --> 0:04:53.960 eventually did add those perks too, but for a while 0:04:54.080 --> 0:04:57.680 it was just gamification for gamification's sake. It's gotten more 0:04:57.680 --> 0:05:01.159 sophisticated since then, and gamification is in every part of 0:05:01.160 --> 0:05:05.640 our lives now, exercises, gamified household chores, of gamified man. 0:05:05.760 --> 0:05:07.760 I logged into my bank app today and it told 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:10.520 me that if I read their little article about password security, 0:05:10.760 --> 0:05:14.080 I could get a security scholar badge. And it kind 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:16.600 of makes sense. Games are fun. A lot of us 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:19.000 like playing games, so why can't we bring some of 0:05:19.040 --> 0:05:20.839 that fun into ordinary life. 0:05:21.080 --> 0:05:22.600 A lot of what I've been trying to figure out 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:26.480 is why that doesn't work. This is probably a familiar 0:05:26.520 --> 0:05:28.039 story for a lot of people. Like I wanted to 0:05:28.040 --> 0:05:31.000 get healthier. I started exercising a little bit, I started 0:05:31.040 --> 0:05:33.520 watching my nutrition a bit. I got better. Then I 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:36.520 got an app that tracked my nutrition, and I started 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:39.719 losing weight. And then I just became obsessed with losing 0:05:39.760 --> 0:05:45.880 weight and maximizing my whatever, like my macro count, and 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.800 it made me miserable. I stopped having any joy in 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:51.360 eating or like like, I just became obsessed with this 0:05:51.640 --> 0:05:57.400 dry app tracking weight loss thing, and I don't think 0:05:57.440 --> 0:06:02.760 I got particularly healthier. I just made my weight numbers 0:06:02.800 --> 0:06:04.440 go down and got miserable. 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:08.920 This phenomenon is what teen Winging calls value capture. 0:06:09.240 --> 0:06:11.840 Value capture is the term I came up with while 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:15.400 trying to understand why I was so uncomfortable with gamifications, 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:18.560 even though I love games. So value capture is any 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:22.800 case where your values are rich and subtle and dynamic 0:06:22.960 --> 0:06:25.240 or developing that way, and then you get parked in 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:28.960 a social setting or an institution that gives you a simplified, 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:33.479 typically quantified version of your values, and then the simplified 0:06:33.520 --> 0:06:38.320 version takes over. Right. You start exercising for health and joy, 0:06:38.400 --> 0:06:40.719 and you come out obsessed with either your weight or 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:43.760 your step count or your vo two max. Right. You 0:06:43.800 --> 0:06:46.560 go into academia like me, for the love of philosophy, 0:06:46.600 --> 0:06:48.800 and you come out obsessed with your citation rate and 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:51.839 your publication rate. Right. So it's something where it seems 0:06:51.839 --> 0:06:57.840 like your values collapse around a very simplified external target. 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:02.840 And value capture can hit everything and everyone. 0:07:03.480 --> 0:07:06.560 I was talking to a pastor and he was like, yeah, 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:10.360 you know, like his church had developed an internal leaderboard 0:07:10.360 --> 0:07:17.360 of who is getting more baptisms and he had found yes. Right. 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:20.720 He said that he had started realizing he stopped tuning 0:07:20.760 --> 0:07:23.720 his sermons for spiritual growth and started tuning them for 0:07:23.800 --> 0:07:26.680 popularity so we could go up the baptism leaderboard. 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:32.320 Yo, we have algorithmatized Jesus Like, come on, man, are 0:07:32.320 --> 0:07:37.840 you surprised? No, I'm not. I'm not, but yo, yo, 0:07:38.000 --> 0:07:40.200 gamify baptisms is wild. 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:43.240 Okay, I'm gonna give you one of my favorite examples 0:07:43.360 --> 0:07:46.760 that actually has gotten cut from the book because there 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:49.800 was dissent about whether it was too gross or not. 0:07:49.880 --> 0:07:51.640 But I think I have to I was doing, I 0:07:51.680 --> 0:07:54.280 need to talk to it. So the thing we're really 0:07:54.320 --> 0:07:56.560 interested in is the way that the invasion of scoring 0:07:56.640 --> 0:07:59.280 system changes our targets and undermines what we were actually 0:07:59.320 --> 0:08:01.880 trying to do. And one place where this becomes incredibly 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:06.000 obvious is pick up artists, because pick up artists are 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:08.480 I mean, it's even in the language, like what do 0:08:08.560 --> 0:08:10.440 people talk about when they're competing in this way? They 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:13.760 talk about scoring, right, that's even the term we use, 0:08:13.880 --> 0:08:18.120 yes or people use. So really interestingly, I found that 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:21.040 there's a little literature of sociologists and anthropologists so it 0:08:21.120 --> 0:08:25.600 studied pick up artists, and it's depressing because what I 0:08:25.640 --> 0:08:29.200 found out was that pick up artists typically compete for 0:08:29.560 --> 0:08:31.760 romantic success in some way. So some of the things 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:34.080 that are typically competed for are like number of phone numbers, 0:08:34.440 --> 0:08:39.080 number of sexual act, speed for meeting someone to having 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:41.720 a sexual act, like, they compete for all kinds of things, 0:08:42.520 --> 0:08:45.480 and things they don't compete for. This is the important thing. 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:47.840 Things pick up artists never compete for are number of 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:51.839 healthy relationships. They don't compete for like romance, and they 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:53.679 don't even and this is something that I found out 0:08:53.720 --> 0:08:57.280 from an anthropologist named Eric Hendrix, who embedded with pick 0:08:57.360 --> 0:09:00.200 up artists royile they don't compete for how much they 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:04.880 enjoyed a sexual encounter. In fact, a general theme, he says, 0:09:05.160 --> 0:09:07.440 of pick up artists culture is the need to cleanse 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:10.440 yourself of any like being willing to suffer and work 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:14.320 hard and stop having to think about pleasure or enjoyment 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:18.000 in order to win, to win? What exactly? Okay? And 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:20.959 so I mean? I had thought when I started reading 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:22.960 this stuff that it would turn out that pick up 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:27.840 artists were evil, but at least enjoying themselves. And what 0:09:27.920 --> 0:09:32.120 I found was so much worse, Like even enjoyment and 0:09:32.200 --> 0:09:35.440 pleasure has been sacrificed on the alter of number go up. 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:39.440 My worry is that in some way we are all 0:09:39.480 --> 0:09:44.000 pick up artists. We have all sacrificed what matters on 0:09:44.120 --> 0:09:47.520 the altar of going up in a publicly accountable, agreed 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:48.120 upon way. 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:52.800 So why is it that games can be fun and rewarding, 0:09:53.120 --> 0:09:56.520 but gamification of real world activity can screw up your 0:09:56.559 --> 0:10:10.040 internal value system? We'll get into that after the The 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:12.920 thing that games and game of five metrics have in 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:16.559 common is that they've both created a measurable goal and 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:19.120 a way to get there. In other words, a scoring 0:10:19.160 --> 0:10:21.960 system in basketball that can look like putting the ball 0:10:22.000 --> 0:10:24.560 through the hoop more than the other team. Of Twitter, 0:10:24.679 --> 0:10:26.839 that can look like getting a certain number of likes 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:27.680 and retweets. 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:31.640 There's something really pleasing and clarifying about having that scoring system. 0:10:31.760 --> 0:10:34.240 There is a pleasure to knowing like, oh shit, my 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:37.480 tweet went viral and I can tell you very clearly 0:10:37.520 --> 0:10:39.800 that this is like ten times more popular. But I 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:42.760 think there's a deep difference between them. So one of 0:10:42.800 --> 0:10:45.560 my favorite game designers, Ryan or Knittia, who's this incredible 0:10:45.720 --> 0:10:48.800 German board game designer. He says the most important part 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:52.640 in his game designer toolkit is the scoring system because 0:10:52.640 --> 0:10:56.120 it sets the player's motivations. But what a game designer 0:10:56.160 --> 0:10:58.760 does is they screw around with the score. 0:10:58.520 --> 0:11:01.640 To get the effect they want. What Team means by 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:04.160 this is that a game designer will tweak a scoring 0:11:04.200 --> 0:11:06.880 system to get you, the player, to have the kind 0:11:06.920 --> 0:11:09.680 of experience that they want you to have. One of 0:11:09.679 --> 0:11:11.520 the examples that he lays on his book is the 0:11:11.559 --> 0:11:14.680 difference between dungeons and dragons and this other variant called 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:18.080 Lady Blackbird. So one of the problems that some people 0:11:18.120 --> 0:11:20.840 have with Dungeons and Dragons is that some people just 0:11:20.960 --> 0:11:23.079 don't get into the story all that much. They just 0:11:23.120 --> 0:11:26.000 spin the whole game killing stuff. You're incentivized to do 0:11:26.040 --> 0:11:29.319 that because that's how you get points. So someone made 0:11:29.320 --> 0:11:32.040 this game called Lady Blackbird where you get points for 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.640 acting in character and for getting in trouble with other characters. 0:11:36.040 --> 0:11:38.920 So instead of focusing on your kill rate, you focus 0:11:38.960 --> 0:11:42.079 on telling an interesting story along with everyone else. 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:45.440 For the game designer, the scoring system is part of 0:11:45.440 --> 0:11:50.000 their artistic medium right. Their medium is agency. They are 0:11:50.120 --> 0:11:52.960 changing what you can do and what you're trying to do, 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:58.520 but not because of the outcome necessarily, but to build 0:11:58.559 --> 0:12:00.400 some like really interesting activity. 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:03.360 And this also applies to Game of five metrics too. 0:12:03.720 --> 0:12:06.600 The designers of Dual Lingo are using the artistic medium 0:12:06.679 --> 0:12:09.160 of a scoring system by giving you a goal and 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:11.679 kind of nudging you toward that goal with certain behavior, 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:14.800 just like the designer of Lady Blackbird is. Lady Blackbird 0:12:14.840 --> 0:12:16.720 wants you to have fun with your friends by telling 0:12:16.720 --> 0:12:19.520 a wild story, and at least on the surface, Dual 0:12:19.559 --> 0:12:22.040 Lingo wants you to learn language by keeping up a 0:12:22.080 --> 0:12:24.079 consistent streak of days on their app. 0:12:25.200 --> 0:12:27.160 First thing it's clear is that game designers are pushing 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:31.200 things around for you, and most bureaucratic systems are not. 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:35.480 Amazon is not tweaking its leaderboard for the sake of 0:12:35.520 --> 0:12:38.560 the joy of its warehouse workers, right, It's tweaking it 0:12:38.600 --> 0:12:42.199 for some other purpose, for its own, for corporate efficiency. 0:12:43.800 --> 0:12:46.360 So this is where things start to break down. A 0:12:46.360 --> 0:12:48.760 scoring system in a game gives you an objective to 0:12:48.800 --> 0:12:51.800 work towards. It can make a game fun and rewarding. 0:12:52.280 --> 0:12:56.520 But when the gamification's objective is not fun but instead 0:12:56.520 --> 0:13:00.200 its engagement or efficiency, it can start to get manipult 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:01.800 or even exploitative. 0:13:02.600 --> 0:13:03.360 So, going back to. 0:13:03.320 --> 0:13:05.760 Duo Lingo, a few years ago, they changed the way 0:13:05.760 --> 0:13:09.199 that their streak counter worked. Du Lingo has a daily goal, 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:11.760 which is usually made up of a handful of lessons, 0:13:11.880 --> 0:13:15.320 maybe speaking, reading, and so on, and to keep that 0:13:15.320 --> 0:13:17.920 streak going, you had to do all those lessons to 0:13:17.960 --> 0:13:20.920 fulfill the daily goal. But then they changed it so 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:23.240 that you don't have to hit that daily goal. You 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:25.960 could just complete one single lesson and the streak would 0:13:26.080 --> 0:13:29.079 keep going. This leads to more people using the app 0:13:29.120 --> 0:13:32.040 every day, which is great for dual Lingo But on 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:35.160 the other hand, less people were actually reaching their daily 0:13:35.240 --> 0:13:38.640 goals after that change. If the point of using duo 0:13:38.720 --> 0:13:41.600 Lingo is to learn a language, then not pushing you 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:45.240 towards hitting those daily goals seems counterproductive. I mean, you 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:47.959 could very easily do just one short lesson a day 0:13:48.240 --> 0:13:50.920 and you're not really moving any closer to being able 0:13:50.960 --> 0:13:53.760 to speak French or Japanese. But what if the point 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.960 of dual Lingo isn't actually to teach you that language. 0:13:57.160 --> 0:13:59.160 What if it's just to keep you using their app 0:13:59.200 --> 0:14:02.319 every day so they can make money. In that case, 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:05.920 that change would be a big success. And okay, maybe 0:14:05.960 --> 0:14:09.000 dual Lingo's use of gamification is pretty harmless. I mean, 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:12.120 maybe you can't order baguettes like a native Parisian or 0:14:12.160 --> 0:14:16.040 you gotta watch dubbed anime. But there are more insidious 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:19.720 versions of this, like, as Tina went mentioned, the Amazon 0:14:19.800 --> 0:14:21.320 leader board, How's it damn. 0:14:23.760 --> 0:14:24.080 Okay? 0:14:24.160 --> 0:14:26.080 So, for those of y'all listening to the audio version 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:29.040 of the podcast, that was a TikTok video from twenty 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.520 twenty one that showed a leaderboard of one of Amazon's warehouses, 0:14:32.920 --> 0:14:35.280 and according to the video, some of the achievements that 0:14:35.320 --> 0:14:39.360 you could strive for were punctual picking up Speed or 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.520 the big one, make History, and in order to get 0:14:42.560 --> 0:14:45.680 that one, you had to pick up one million products. 0:14:46.200 --> 0:14:50.560 Amazon calls US leaderboard programs FC games for fulfillment centered games, 0:14:50.600 --> 0:14:53.480 and it started testing it back in twenty seventeen, and 0:14:53.520 --> 0:14:56.280 by twenty twenty one, it had expanded these games to 0:14:56.280 --> 0:15:00.360 fulfillment centers in at least twenty states. If gamifying work 0:15:00.480 --> 0:15:02.720 sounds weird to you, well yeah, it sounds weird to 0:15:02.800 --> 0:15:06.240 me too, So to be fair, an Amazon spokesperson told 0:15:06.280 --> 0:15:10.040 the magazine The Independent that quote, employees have told us 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:13.560 they enjoy having the option to join in these workstation games, 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:16.920 which are completely optional. They can switch in or out 0:15:16.920 --> 0:15:20.080 of different games depending on their preference, can play anonymously, 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:23.680 or not play at all. The choice is theirs end quote. 0:15:24.760 --> 0:15:28.400 So yeah, if my employer put a leaderboard up on 0:15:28.440 --> 0:15:30.560 the wall, I'm not sure if I would feel like 0:15:30.600 --> 0:15:32.760 it was actually completely optional. 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:36.440 The right spirit to play games, and that makes them 0:15:36.560 --> 0:15:40.800 deeply fun instead of merely addictive, is a spirit of playfulness, 0:15:41.200 --> 0:15:43.640 and that's the spirit that you might try on a 0:15:43.680 --> 0:15:46.080 party game with your friend. But it sure isn't the 0:15:46.080 --> 0:15:49.640 spirit of what happened. When you force your students or 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:52.320 workers under a leader board that they have no control 0:15:52.360 --> 0:15:54.480 over and tell them that they're going to lose their 0:15:54.560 --> 0:15:57.720 jobs or get promotions based on how they do on 0:15:57.760 --> 0:15:59.760 this leaderboard, that is the opposite of the spirit of 0:15:59.760 --> 0:16:00.480 play lifeless. 0:16:00.720 --> 0:16:02.720 But that thing you said, I think that's really important, though, 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:05.040 that's a distinction that almost is really hard to make 0:16:05.120 --> 0:16:11.400 because addictiveness looks like fun at first, because at first, 0:16:11.680 --> 0:16:14.480 when you start, I mean, shoot, yeah, let's look at 0:16:14.480 --> 0:16:16.680 one of those leader boards at you know, the factory 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:20.440 or whatever. Who moved the most boxes? It's kind of 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:24.200 fun to try to go up the leaderboard, right, And 0:16:24.240 --> 0:16:27.600 there is a certain kind of person who single mindedly 0:16:27.680 --> 0:16:31.880 will dedicate their entire life to moving up that leaderboard 0:16:31.920 --> 0:16:34.400 for who moved the most boxes. But for the most 0:16:34.440 --> 0:16:37.640 of us, it's something that you're kind of it kind 0:16:37.640 --> 0:16:39.080 of feels like you're being tricked into doing it. 0:16:39.600 --> 0:16:42.520 Yeah. One of the starting points for me trying to 0:16:42.680 --> 0:16:46.320 figure all the stuff out was losing months of my 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:51.680 life to the computer game Civilization m CIF gruelingly addictive, Yeah, 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:54.320 and thinking I had fun, telling myself I had fun 0:16:54.400 --> 0:16:55.800 until and I think a lot of people out of 0:16:55.840 --> 0:16:58.840 this experience. You walk out and you're like, I've just 0:16:58.960 --> 0:17:00.760 lost months of my life and I can't remember it, 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:02.200 and I feel bad. 0:17:03.640 --> 0:17:05.600 So this kind of thing can happen in games too. 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:09.119 There's this hit of dopamine that becomes addictive, and it 0:17:09.200 --> 0:17:12.919 manipulates you into continuing to play or to engage, and 0:17:12.960 --> 0:17:15.680 it makes you start to believe that you really do 0:17:15.760 --> 0:17:17.920 want whatever it is of the game or the app 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:20.720 or the leader board is making you work for that. 0:17:20.880 --> 0:17:24.040 Right there, That is value capture and action. 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:26.600 So I actually end up thinking that the way to 0:17:26.600 --> 0:17:29.560 think about it is that you are outsourcing your values 0:17:30.240 --> 0:17:33.320 instead of deciding for yourself. You're letting like Mark Zuckerberg 0:17:33.800 --> 0:17:35.040 set your values for you. 0:17:35.800 --> 0:17:38.400 Even if you've managed to stay away from scrolling endlessly 0:17:38.480 --> 0:17:41.080 on your phone, you've definitely been a victim of what, 0:17:41.240 --> 0:17:44.600 for me, is probably one of the most insidious examples 0:17:44.640 --> 0:17:49.120 of value capture the school system, or more specifically grades. 0:17:50.800 --> 0:17:53.119 So there is a great paper called Making the Grade, 0:17:53.200 --> 0:17:56.679 The History of the A to F marking scheme in 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:59.560 American Education that points out that we have plenty of 0:17:59.600 --> 0:18:03.640 research that clear grades are not good for education. They 0:18:03.720 --> 0:18:08.600 narrow students curiosity. They make students competitive instead of open minded. 0:18:08.920 --> 0:18:11.359 They kind of like kill students interest in anything but 0:18:11.480 --> 0:18:13.439 doing well in the test. We actually have known this 0:18:13.520 --> 0:18:17.520 since the eighteen hundreds. The United States actually went off 0:18:17.800 --> 0:18:20.440 numerical grading in the eighteen hundreds. This article will teach 0:18:20.440 --> 0:18:23.840 you really, yes, okay, for these reasons, we knew we 0:18:23.920 --> 0:18:28.199 had ample evidence that it didn't work for education. The 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:31.760 reason it came back was employer interest in having clear 0:18:31.840 --> 0:18:34.040 certificates that would prove that someone could do the work, 0:18:34.240 --> 0:18:36.480 so they could quickly hire someone that would be capable 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:39.600 of doing the work. So the grading system is a 0:18:39.680 --> 0:18:45.160 system that embodies the interests of employers, not of students. 0:18:45.359 --> 0:18:48.960 So my worry is if you become captured by GPA, 0:18:50.080 --> 0:18:53.520 then you will be guiding yourself by a value system 0:18:53.560 --> 0:18:56.960 that wasn't made by you for you, for your own 0:18:56.960 --> 0:18:59.000 health and well being. But you'll be captured by an 0:18:59.000 --> 0:19:02.080 evaluative system that was engineered from the ground up to 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:06.119 serve the purpose of employers who want to quickly hire 0:19:06.160 --> 0:19:10.040 and fire people replaceably. 0:19:10.320 --> 0:19:12.960 It's so interesting to say that because when I teach 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:16.200 college classes, basically every time I do it, I will 0:19:16.200 --> 0:19:19.639 go up in the beginning of the session, I will say, listen, 0:19:19.880 --> 0:19:22.240 I don't do grades. At the end of the semestery 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:23.600 tell me what you want. I'll give it to you. 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:27.440 I don't care. And you would think that students would 0:19:27.480 --> 0:19:30.080 love this, And everybody I tell this too, says, oh, well, 0:19:30.119 --> 0:19:34.640 they probably just ask for A's right. Everybody gets extra nervous. 0:19:35.480 --> 0:19:38.000 And the more elite institutions that I teach at, the 0:19:38.040 --> 0:19:43.760 more nervous they get about it, because it's like, wait, huh. 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:43.080 What do you mean. 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:44.439 I can just have an a like I don't really 0:19:44.520 --> 0:19:46.920 understand what we're doing here. The thing that I'm trying 0:19:46.960 --> 0:19:49.119 to do is say, hey, I want to take that 0:19:49.240 --> 0:19:54.320 pressure off. But that actually it's not as successful as 0:19:54.359 --> 0:19:55.000 you would think it is. 0:19:55.480 --> 0:20:00.440 Yeah. So I have been trying to ungrade forever. And 0:20:01.119 --> 0:20:03.840 I mean I actually literally teach in my intro ethics 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:06.879 class a unit called is grading Bullshit? We read a 0:20:06.880 --> 0:20:09.880 famous philosophy favor from Harry Frankfurt called what is Bullshit? 0:20:10.440 --> 0:20:12.160 And then I teach them this making the great stuff? 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:14.919 And I'm like, Okay, he's grading bullshit and they have 0:20:14.920 --> 0:20:18.000 a lot to say about that. But I think one 0:20:18.040 --> 0:20:20.960 thing that as educators we have to confront is the 0:20:21.040 --> 0:20:22.960 fact that it would be one thing to have an 0:20:23.000 --> 0:20:26.480 ungraded world and the other to ungrade your classroom where 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:29.199 the rest of the world wants grades and students have 0:20:29.240 --> 0:20:30.560 been brought up to expect them. 0:20:31.600 --> 0:20:35.560 This is another fundamental difference between a gamified system and 0:20:35.720 --> 0:20:39.000 an actual game. In a game, you can choose and 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:41.960 tweak the game you're playing. Like I played a version 0:20:42.000 --> 0:20:44.240 of soccer where nobody gets to use their hands, even 0:20:44.280 --> 0:20:46.879 the goalies. It's more challenging and it's kind of fun. 0:20:47.280 --> 0:20:50.840 In an actual game, players can come together and agree 0:20:50.840 --> 0:20:54.280 to change something, but in real life that choice isn't 0:20:54.320 --> 0:20:54.959 always up to you. 0:20:55.680 --> 0:20:59.280 So the anthropologist Johann Husinga, who is one of the 0:20:59.320 --> 0:21:03.200 early games, he has this book Homolludence not Homosopians, Homolludens. 0:21:03.240 --> 0:21:06.359 We are the playing creature. He says that what games 0:21:06.359 --> 0:21:08.320 are and what play is is something that occurs in 0:21:08.359 --> 0:21:12.280 a magic circle. A magic circle is an isolated domain 0:21:12.320 --> 0:21:15.280 of meaning where you enter into it, and the meanings 0:21:15.320 --> 0:21:18.280 and reasons you do things change what he means, It's like, 0:21:18.320 --> 0:21:20.640 you know, we might hate each other, but we're from 0:21:20.680 --> 0:21:23.240 the same team with basketball. Suddenly it doesn't matter that 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:25.600 we hate each other. We're going to co operate, and 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:27.720 it doesn't matter if I love my spouse. If she's 0:21:27.720 --> 0:21:30.040 on the opposite team, I'm going to block the pass. 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:34.479 But more importantly, they're disconnected from each other. So an 0:21:34.520 --> 0:21:38.359 important thing about say, like a metric like GPA, you 0:21:38.400 --> 0:21:40.040 don't have a lot of freedom. If I try to 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:43.119 take my class off of the GPA standard and like 0:21:43.240 --> 0:21:46.560 not give letter grades, my students are screwed. Right. That 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:49.840 system is designed so that it's the point is that 0:21:49.880 --> 0:21:54.960 everything is locked together. For games, there's no lock. It 0:21:55.000 --> 0:21:57.360