The Gamification of Society: Towards a Gaming Regime? [1 ed.] 178630645X, 9781786306456

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The Gamification of Society

Research, Innovative Theory and Methods in Social Sciences and Humanities Set coordinated by Albert Piette and Emmanuelle Savignac

Volume 2

The Gamification of Society

Edited by

Stéphane Le Lay Emmanuelle Savignac Pierre Lénel Jean Frances

First published 2021 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address: ISTE Ltd 27-37 St George’s Road London SW19 4EU UK

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 111 River Street Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA

www.iste.co.uk

www.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2021 The rights of Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances to be identified as the authors of this work have been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Library of Congress Control Number: 2020950513 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-78630-645-6

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Stéphane LE LAY, Emmanuelle SAVIGNAC, Jean FRANCES and Pierre LÉNEL Part 1. Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Examination of “Gamification” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 1. Paradoxes of Gamification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Gilles BROUGÈRE 1.1. Game and play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.2. Gamification as a deconstruction of the play . . . 1.3. Contents and play elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.4. Gamification: an old practice . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.5. Extension of the notion of gamification . . . . . . 1.6. Language or reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.7. What existence for play? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.8. Counter-example of flow or optimal experience . 1.9. Play and frame issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.10. Hybrids and hybridization processes . . . . . . . 1.11. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 2. Gamification and its Discontents: The Mechanics of the Game and the Question of the Game’s Operationality in Game Design Texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Emmanuelle SAVIGNAC 2.1. Research context and methodological discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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2.2. Game mechanics from the point of view of game design . 2.2.1. Convened references and models . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.2. Game mechanics and the approach to the game in game design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.2.3. System, control and player representation . . . . . . . 2.3. Game mechanics from the point of view of gamification and the question of the transposability of game logics in non-game contexts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.1. The centrality of the question of engagement in the reference texts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.3.2. The game mechanics approach by gamification . . . . 2.3.3. The question of transposability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5. Appendix: profile of the authors from the corpus . . . . . 2.5.1. Breakdown by discipline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.2. Extra-academic activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2.5.3. Geographical distribution of authors. . . . . . . . . . .

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Part 2. Socialization Through Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 3. The Origins of the Gamification Process: The case of Pre-industrial Societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Elisabeth BELMAS

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3.1. Beginnings of the gamification of learning . . . . . . . . 3.2. Gamification and the civilizing process . . . . . . . . . . 3.3. Play, mathematics and gamification: the scientification of modern societies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 4. Reward Chart for Using the Potty? Justifications and Criticisms of “Gamified” Child Rearing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Victoria CHANTSEVA

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4.1. Gamified devices of toilet training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.2. “Short-term winning”, “another failure”: resistance to gamification 4.3. “Stickers are only stickers”: “good parenting” to the rescue of gamification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

Part 3. Bodies and Subjectivities Involvement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 5. Digital Engagement Technologies? The Interplay of Datafication and Gamification in Quantified Self Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Éric DAGIRAL 5.1. The formats of gamification in self-tracking devices . . . . . . 5.1.1. Playing the gamification card: putting data traces into play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.2. Setting goals, notifying and focusing attention . . . . . . . 5.1.3. Rewarding to motivate: scores, badges and challenges of software systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.4. Making visible: comparing, sharing and chatting about self-tracking activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.1.5. Scripting practices, suggesting paths for exploration . . . . 5.2. Shaping engagement inside and through self-tracking devices. 5.2.1. Engagement technologies at the crossroads of behavioral psychology, cybernetics and the datafication of human . . . . . . 5.2.2. Engaging and maintaining the user in his or her sensors . . 5.2.3. To quantify oneself in order to play with oneself? . . . . . 5.3. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 6. The “Gamblification” of Life or the Extension of the Gambling Domain: Words from Passionate Gamblers in France and Belgium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Aymeric BRODY 6.1. Surveying gamblers and collecting their life stories . . . 6.2. Concept of gamblification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.3. For a broader definition of the concept. . . . . . . . . . . 6.4. Some limits to the broadening the scope of the concept. 6.5. An invasion of life through play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.6. Gambling development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.7. The case of amateur poker players . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6.8. The case of so-called compulsive gamblers . . . . . . . . 6.9. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Part 4. The Political and Social Extensions of Play Through Gamification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Chapter 7. Politics and Video Games: Presidential Elections and the Gamification of Partisan Mobilizations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Éric TREILLE 7.1. Activist gamification or political parties out of the game . . 7.1.1. Geek candidates in spite of themselves . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2. Targeting an economic sector and its employees through the gamer public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2. The gamification of activism or political management through gaming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.1. François Bayrou in 2011 or the mocked pioneer . . . . 7.2.2. Hillary Clinton in 2016 or the acceleration of political managerialization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3. A trompe-l’oeil Americanization of recreational applications in French political life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Chapter 8. Datagames: Questioning About the Unproductive Criterion of Play . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Julian ALVAREZ

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8.1. Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2. Serious games and gamification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.1. Serious game concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.2.2. Gamification concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3. Datagames: approach and contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.1. Datagame concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.2. Crowdsourcing concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.3. Datagames: a direct contribution for the player . . . . . . 8.3.4. Datagames: a redistribution of direct benefits to players . 8.3.5. Different types of datagames . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.6. Case of the game with data redistribution only . . . . . . 8.3.7. Active and passive collection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8.3.8. Inventory of the different types of datagames . . . . . . . 8.4. Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Contents

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References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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List of Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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Introduction: Gamified Capitalism

The most widely shared definition of gamification presents this process as the transposition of game elements into non-game contexts (Deterding et al. 2011). This definition, derived from “gameful studies”, is based on two streams of research: game theories produced by the humanities and social sciences (HSS) on the one hand, and applied design research on the other. The latter is mainly fueled by video games and establishes the structure of games as operational in terms of involvement, progress and creativity. If the first current feeds the reflections of the second, the HSS still explores, criticizes and analyzes far too little the practices related to gamification. However, the fields of application in regard to gamification are multiple and wide-ranging. Work1, education, health, the media, citizenship, emotional relations and the quantification of the individual are all concerned by gamified practices. As for the research conducted on gamification, it most often concerns technical objects or processes (digital or not) and does not address gamification as logic – whether it is a matter of “empowerment” or a manifestation of the “new spirit of capitalism”. Consequently, gamification as a “model” (structure) and “referent” (charged with social value) needs to be considered beyond its objects of application. Within the public space, initiatives in the areas of education through games, learning through games, raising public awareness through games, Introduction written by Stéphane LE LAY, Emmanuelle SAVIGNAC, Jean FRANCES and Pierre LÉNEL. 1 We will refer here to the previous work of various authors and contributors to this book in the context of the analysis of the “work of gamification” (Savignac et al. 2017).

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advanced computing for the benefit of science through games, managing one’s lifestyle through games and other initiatives based on the principle of playing games are rarely questioned. Any commentator who is a bit curious but also questioning, as are – ideally – social scientists, runs the risk of being seen as a sad character. However, this book proposes to bring together various studies (on early childhood, political action, quantified self, etc.) that question what games and their “mechanics” do to the social world. The contributions gathered here question the social meaning given to games and the mechanisms that have enabled them to become legitimate resources for action. More specifically, some of them show how, through gamification, several organizations try, and sometimes succeed, in transforming individuals and producing lasting effects on them – in terms of skills, capacities, understanding of their environment, etc. The positive attributes spontaneously lent to play (pleasure, social connection, relaxation, emulation, etc.) present it as a clever solution to make many of our not very playful activities more engaging. Driven by design, the challenge here is “broke reality” (McGonigal 2011), that is, to use play as a prism or mediation that, whatever the activity considered, would be capable of “making people feel the quality” of it, and would be able “to prevent suffering, and to create real, widespread happiness” (McGonigal 2011). Gamefully designed, this activity can be transferred to the game field which then extends far beyond its primary spheres of relaxation and leisure. That is how we become homo ludens (to twist Huizinga’s (1951) terminology somewhat), in the literal sense of a kind of homo who occurs or exists through play, even when he works, votes, eats, walks, etc. (McGonigal 2011). We are not, however, faced here with an extensive definition of play that exhausts its outlines. Playing games, here, is closer with the idea of the underlying structure of games than with the creativity of play. It coincides with the distinction that was made by Caillois (2001) between paidia and ludus, and it induces concrete effects on gamified actions and objects. As Deterding et al. point out: Whereas paidia (or “playing”) denotes a more freeform, expressive, improvisational, even “tumultuous” recombination of behaviors and meanings, ludus (or “gaming”) captures playing structured by rules and competitive strife toward goals. (2014, p. 6)

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This definition of a game has similarities with that favored by other central authors in the gamification literature, for whom “a game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome” (Salen and Zimmermann 2004, p. 93). This gamegamification connection will be remembered for the centrality of the aspects of structure, rules, goals and competition/conflict, as well as the centrality of objectification, as opposed to a more “subjective” play: The game is distinguished from play as the external of the internal, the objective of the subjective, the structure of the idea, the consequence of the principle, the thing of the act, the object of the mental attitude …. (Triclot 2011, p. 12, author’s translation) Moreover, following Belin (2001) or Brougère (2005, 2012; and in the present work), we will underline the permeability of the two aspects in the sense that: This matter of the game refers, more broadly, to the organization of the game space, which itself corresponds to the setting up of the framework of the experience [potential space]. (Belin 2001, p. 104, author’s translation) We can therefore understand this game/play semantic distinction as an intentional marker of the centrality or priority given to aspects of, on the one hand, structure for the game and, on the other hand, “playful attitude” with regard to play, to use Henriot’s terminology (1989). This tension between regulation – into a competitive backdrop – and the expression of the subject is obviously not insignificant today. Individual freedom with no limits other than those set by the individual himself is indeed posed as a fundamental value, even as an impassable mantra of the “consultants of happiness” (Cabanas and Illouz 2018, author’s translation) and other followers of “personal development” (Stevens 2011; Marquis 2016). Even though gamified devices are the results of complex social and economic processes that take place over a long period of time, most of their promoters – designers or users – emphasize the individualized use they make possible. While play is a modality of action in which individual and collective practices are intimately intertwined (Hamayon 2012; Le Lay 2020), gamification tends to erase the social traces of play in order to promote

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solipsistic aspects, for example through the aspect of the exaltation of competition or individual performance. This is particularly true in the case of quantified self devices (see Chapter 5 of the book, written by Éric Dagiral) where the progression of individual scoring connects with the intimate sphere. Other examples could easily be found in the economic field, where companies have long since articulated individualized performance evaluation (Dejours 2003) with gamified devices (Rolo and Le Lay 2015; Savignac 2017a). Such a distortion of playing games leads to the exploration of several avenues of research, which can be linked to the more general question of the constituents of the neoliberal program (Foucault 2008), particularly in its “late” Austro-American form (Brennetot 2013). According to this philosophical, economic and political conception of the world (Mirowski 2018), individuals must be understood as biological2 worlds that are inherently failing and that evolve within a market considered essential to social functioning, in its capacity as a processor of information (Davies 2018). But however deficient they may be, individuals must nevertheless be put in a position to improve themselves in order to reach the state of “human capital”, that is to say, to become an agent who is an “active economic subject” (Foucault 2008) – not the passive object that classical liberalism wanted to see in them. With their model of the individual as a bearer of individual “skills”, the proponents of neoliberalism have turned labor force into “capitalcompetence” to be exploited and made to bear fruit in the course of his socio-professional trajectory. This is supposed to comply with constantly updated arbitrations in the domestic, educational and professional spheres in the aim of determining the best possible use of “scarce resources”, whether innate or acquired. The classic figure of the “free individual” and its subjectivity succeeds that of the “entrepreneur of the self” (Foucault 2008, pp. 231–232), ready to confront other “entrepreneurial individuals” on the market.

2 The neoliberal individual is above all a biologizing “machine”. The subjective dimension – the body affected and worked by sexuality – is not taken into account in its depth, because this would mean having to develop a theory of the body, a theory of social relations and a theory of work that is too complex to model in mathematical form, and to reduce it to the sole “informational” aspect.

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Within this framework, anything that can contribute to absolute and relative self-improvement is welcome. Discovering one’s potential, increasing one’s performance and adapting to market requirements require the same use of tools, techniques and theories that are supposed to facilitate the constant renewal of the learning, necessary to distinguish oneself positively from one’s competitors. Gamified devices are part of these tools and are all the more powerful because gamification (ab)uses mechanisms that are specific to play – such as the pleasure of launching and immersing oneself in the game, perfectly aligned with neoliberal pre-suppositions: free and open competition, the search for superior performance compared to competitors in order to ensure victory or immediate profit. It seems then necessary to question precisely what is said about the gamified technical media that aim to measure in real-time physical constants during the effort, progress during learning, comparative scores of improvement of one’s performance in any field. Do they boil down to the simple technological translation of monitoring health or learning that is compatible with the necessities inherent in social relationships (at work, in leisure, etc.)? Or do they work, by encapsulating them in gamified forms, to the production of relational and behavioral norms acting in the definition of what physical, cognitive and social capital should be? And what about scoring and self-tracking tools that are supposed to “capture” the intensity and quality of an individual’s insertion into a professional or friendly network? Do they constitute the digital shaping of less visible, but nevertheless active, old practices in terms of social and symbolic capital? Can it be said that these different ways of counting, accumulating and appearing in the eyes of others are related to the transformation of subjectivities that some authors currently perceive? In this, it would be possible to return to the question of self-management, relative to an individual who has become a “project” (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999; Pharabod et al. 2013). Tools and practices thus lead us to question what “values” are attached to these quantifications and measurements: economic value, performance, involvement, etc. As we can see, the discussions are rich in potentialities, and a single book will not be enough to survey even superficially the research avenues that have been sketched out. However, the contributions gathered here, due in particular to their disciplinary diversity (sociology, anthropology, political science, education sciences, etc.), are intended to demonstrate the relevance of a controlled use of the notion of gamification. To this end, the approach can be divided into several lines of thought, making up the four parts of this book.

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First of all, the book aims to provide a critical framework for the term “gamification”, through its theoretical discussion (Chapter 1, Gilles Brougère) and empirical examination, from perspectives defended by gameful designers (Chapter 2, Emmanuelle Savignac). From there, three main topics will then be deployed. The first will deal with socialization through play, with two contributions: the importance and long-standing construction of the legitimacy of play, from a historical perspective, particularly in the educational practices of children, but also those dedicated to the elite (Chapter 3, Elisabeth Belmas); the study of a gamified system of toilet training by young children and the questions that this raises with regard to what is learning, how the body is considered and a certain vision of childhood and parenthood (Chapter 4, Victoria Chantseva). The second axis not only discusses the developments in the use of gamified devices, but also in the field of gambling and what they produce in regard to individuals. Both bodies and subjectivities are invested in by gamification mechanisms that borrow various sociotechnical devices such as applications and connected objects (Chapter 5, Éric Dagiral). We are talking here about the “gamification” of self-quantification processes (data, objectives, attention, etc.) and about the production of involvement of the users of these programs. A second contribution investigates the influence of gambling in the social space. It questions the effects of the “gamblification” of society through the dual prism of expanding gambling law and gambling addiction (Chapter 6, Aymeric Brody). Both of these texts analyze involvement and its levers, as well as the resistance or, to a lesser extent, the accommodations that individuals put up against it. Finally, in the last axis of the book, the political and social extensions of play will be investigated through two contributions: the progressive gamification – which the author re-historicizes – of political campaigns underlines the development of a new relationship with political speech and action (Chapter 7, Éric Treille); then the study of the question of crowdsourcing through data games. The chapter not only questions the system of promises linked to the sharing of “benefits” but also the redistribution that proceeds together (Chapter 8, Julian Alvarez). Both these texts are about the public’s willingness to practice the action in a gamified manner: for one, militant – sometimes in its most narrow interpretation, and for the other, contributory – because of a crowdsourcing process. Campaigning and collective work are here

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not only geared toward gain (success or capitalization) but also contribute to the trivialization of the “game shape” and its extension in the public space. While the controlled use of the notion of gamification makes it necessary not to mobilize it on all sides, its capacity to shed new light on a wide spectrum of social spaces and phenomena, subject to intense sociotechnical reconfigurations, is no longer in doubt. This book aims to demonstrate this.

PART 1

Theoretical Discussion and Empirical Examination of “Gamification”

The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

1 Paradoxes of Gamification

Writing about gamification is a paradox which is not only related to the term but also to considering that such a term can be used as if it was a concept; the uses of the term are in no way stabilized. The question is intensified for me by the fact that, in French (my mother tongue), the term gamification has imposed itself without being translated, and none of the proposed translations having met with great success1. We may wonder about its rapid revival by the academic world. Is it a fear of missing out on the en vogue concept? The academic world has been criticized for its reaction time in the face of new phenomena, as was the case with video games, and one wonders if this is not going too fast now. Admittedly, this revival can be critical and, in accordance with ambient fashions, it is often a matter of deconstructing the notion of gamification; the problem is that this deconstruction took place even before the concept was constructed. Perhaps this is a beautiful metaphor for our (post)modernity, where one would have all the less stability of thought, the more destruction would precede construction. Gamification is not, for me, a concept but a phenomenon, a practice (partly linguistic) to be studied and not to be deconstructed because the uses of the notion are very varied and there is nothing truly constructed that can be deconstructed. And one quickly arrives at a set of paradoxes that I will try to highlight before proposing alternatives for thinking about this question. Chapter written by Gilles BROUGÈRE. 1 This chapter is an adapted English version of a text which is based in part on the analysis of the use of the term “gamification” in the French-speaking context.

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The Gamification of Society

1.1. Game and play Let us begin with the definition often taken from Deterding et al. (2011): “Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts”. This seems to be the most frequently cited definition, as Seaborn and Fels (2015) attest in their meta-analysis of academic articles on gamification. I will try to draw the complex and paradoxical consequences for thinking about gamification using this definition before asking whether it captures all the uses of the term gamification today. The term is in connection with the difference between game and play. It is said that it is unknown to the French who could not grasp it. This is not the case. Indeed, if French, alongside other languages, has only one term, jeu, to designate something that is distinguished in English, this does not mean that there is confusion, as language develops a polysemic logic, which means that from similarities, from family resemblance to speak like Wittgenstein ([1953] 2001) and from all kinds of associations, each term in the French language will designate different things without making the language unusable. This is how language works, which is more economical than multiplying new words ad infinitum. A certain principle of economy (which does not, however, overlap according to languages, since the economy is not located in the same place) organizes the use of a language. To take a slightly different example, in French like in English one plays the guitar and plays chess (jouer de la guitare and jouer aux échecs), while in Spanish it is tocar or jugar. But who would argue that in French or English the two actions are confused? It is the same for the word jeu as “object” or “system” (game) and jeu as “action” (play). In general, the context allows us to distinguish the two. Nonetheless, I claim that it is an advantage of the French language, as Henriot’s work (1969, 1989) shows, to have a single term; this makes it possible not to conceal the fact that behind the jeu (game) there is play in English as well as in French, but perhaps it can be forgotten in English. While game (and therefore gamification) is on the side of the device, it is indeed a device intended for play, a term which underlines that there can be playful activity without a specific device; but in the other direction, even if a game can remain on a shelf or if the mediocrity of its design results in that no one plays it, it has nevertheless been designed to play. In their text, Deterding et al. (2011) refer to the game as the ludus, as defined by Caillois: “ludus (or ‘gaming’) captures playing structuring by rules and competitive strife towards goals”. This is to emphasize that the game only makes sense in relation to play or playing, even if it is one extreme of play, the one that supposes rules and

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structuring – on the other hand, but we will not develop this here, or find the toy that refers to another extreme of play, the one that Caillois calls paidia. The game is not the opposite of play, it is a device that makes possible certain forms of play, those that require media to develop, from board games to video games, through games of skill or construction sets. We could consider that the game is original, seizing elements of nature to structure itself – we think of the traditional games known among others under the term awalé and which use seeds – before being reified in media, devices that are increasingly complex not only from a technical point of view but also in terms of their playful principles. If the game is not play, it is closely related to play, and this can be meant by the idea of the game itself (but this is also true of the toy) as reification of play. This should be understood as a historical and cultural process that leads to inserting traces of experiences (here, play) into objects (here, games). We cannot separate the game from play, there is only a game in relation to a play horizon, which is what the French says using one word jeu, that gives the advantage of avoiding separating the two. This is all the more true since the definition of gamification (Deterding et al. 2011) refers to game design, i.e. design with a view to the use that is related to playing. Designing a game is indeed aiming for a playful use, otherwise it is not a game that must be designed, but a cartoon or a simulation (rather than a video game, if it is not about playing but about living a fiction or practicing). Neither cartoons nor simulation are games, but the game can use animated images and simulations. These are elements of game or game design. There are two implications when talking about games: we are aiming at play that requires a medium (and we do not deal with play without a medium), but the medium is there to make play possible (if not inevitable); we use the device to reach play, which can lead to focus on the object and its material characteristics, forgetting what is actually done with it. This sometimes gives the feeling that one is making games without really taking into account what they are playing for. 1.2. Gamification as a deconstruction of the play But if we follow the proposed definition (Deterding et al. 2011), then another paradox of the term gamification appears. It is a question of integrating elements from games (game and game-design) into devices that

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The Gamification of Society

have an objective other than play and entertainment. Gamification is not about making a game – if so what would we need the term for? Making a game, even a serious one, is not gamification – it is about bringing game elements to a different reality, and this at the device side. That is probably the entire problem: what is the point of bringing game elements without making a game? It smacks of the trickery that Erasmus practiced and stated about games to teach children, especially Latin, for it was difficult to “motivate” them, we would say today (Brougère 1995). It was a question of giving the “finery” or “appearance of the game” (Erasmus 1529), of giving the impression of a game, but above all not playing a game, especially since the term at the time evoked gambling and could not therefore be valued in education. Erasmus did not talk about motivation, but it is the most common term used to justify gamification, as Seaborn and Fels (2015) show, while at the same time emphasizing a rather loose use of motivational theories, which leads me to think that behind this modern notion lies a strategy of trickery or attractiveness to capture the user (Cochoy 2004). The paradox is that gamification is in fact a degamification: it is a question of using a game (a video game at the origin of the concept), of taking elements and characteristics to implant them in an activity whose aims do not refer to leisure or entertainment games. If there is indeed deconstruction, it is the deconstruction that gamification operates in regard to the game, broken down into elements that are considered to have a play value in themselves, independently of the set to which they belong. It is therefore very clear that it is a question of degamifying a game. It is to undo the game, to escape from the game and to somehow transform a game into something other than a game (not even into a serious game that falls under another logic, that of producing a game). It is therefore paradoxical that a degamification process is called gamification; that we make people believe that we are transforming work or any other aspect of society into a game when we are using elements for an activity that asserts itself as something other than play and that we think would allow the attractiveness that we find in it. If it is not a matter of getting people to play, but rather engaging in an activity (e.g. shopping) and motivating them to do so, elements that would be supposed to capture costumers (such as points or badges) may suffice. We find here the origin of the concept related to marketing (whose purpose is to attract and capture customers), which may refer to the intention to motivate for objectives other than purely commercial ones, for example educational.

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Following Bogost (2015), we can also wonder about the question of the elements that are transferred from the game to the gamified device. Indeed, many of these elements (competition, teams, rankings by level, emblems or badges, real-time feedback, clearly defined objectives, etc.) are not specific to the game, but are found in many practices because the game takes on characteristics from the world outside it. By taking over elements of the game, we can therefore take over elements, from outside of the game, which feed into the content of the game, without making the activity play. Counting points is an activity that is very present in some games, but just as much in everyday life, starting with school. 1.3. Contents and play elements To understand the error of this vision, we must come to the essential characteristics of the game. According to Reynold, quoted by Bruner: The playfulness of an act does not pertain to what is done but to the way it is done (4-6) … Play possesses no instrumental activity of its own. It derives its behaviour patterns from other affective-behavioural systems. (12) In play, behaviour, while functioning normally, is uncoupled (and buffered) from its normal consequences … Therein lies both the flexibility of play and its frivolity. (7) (Reynolds 1972; quoted by Bruner 1975, p. 11) What the game does is to make these characteristics possible, which can be considered, following Goffman (1974), as a transformation (a modalization, he writes, favoring a musical metaphor) of the frame of ordinary experience for a new frame that constitutes play, with reference to this primary activity, but without all its consequences. A game is a device that makes it possible to produce a playful experience without always succeeding in doing so. As for the elements of the game, they are both elements taken from the primary frame (and the points belong to this frame) and elements that allow the playful framing, such as the fictional elements that set up the “pretend”. If you take elements of the game, you do not take play; play is not about the content, the elements, but about how you produce a frame. The game

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The Gamification of Society

takes up the elements of the world; by taking up the elements of the game, we can only take up the elements of the world. Henriot (1969) evoked this to explain the success of the playful metaphor: since the game is a metaphor for the world, the world can in turn be interpreted as a game without the strictly playful dimension being present. Gamifying is therefore neither producing a game (we are only limiting ourselves to elements and these elements do not constitute the game), nor necessarily producing a play experience that depends on the use that will be made of the device, on the meaning that will be given to it. Under these conditions, the gamified device may very well produce play, whether or not it is faithful to the expectations of its designer, but only the empirical analysis of games can show this. It is possible that the presence of elements that one has the habit of finding in the game is sufficient for some to produce a playful frame. 1.4. Gamification: an old practice However, novelty should be put into perspective. What is new is undoubtedly a new place for play, both in social experience and in thought, and this is linked to the importance taken by video games, as a mass leisure activity, but also as a new object that encourages reflection on game and play. Thus, what structures the reflection on gamification seems to me quite close to what I had highlighted in Jeu et éducation [play and education] (Brougère 1995). Gamification could thus be a new notion for an already old practice that consists of giving the appearance or certain aspects of play to use Erasmus’s expression again (1529) to an activity that is not a game, and this by relying on devices that take up elements of the game or that resemble the game. The old methods consisted of using cubes or a lotto to propose an exercise that was presented as a game. Today, these are applications that take up certain aspects of video games. Of course, such a phenomenon is no longer confined to the field of education, which perhaps gives it more visibility. But it is indeed in the field of education that we have seen in the past this phenomenon of gamification, in the sense that it is not a question of proposing games (which could have been done in other contexts such as the Fröbelian kindergarten), but of giving the appearance of a game to attract the student while avoiding making a game, because learning is serious. The

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discourse of the time (beginning of the 20th Century for the French pre-school) evoked the idea of promoting games and not the play always suspected. Another dimension of gamification then appeared, distance from play, to the benefit of devices that were supposed to be playful (because they were gamified) but that kept the idea of an activity that one could control from the game or the ludus, that did not go out of control or into an uncontrollable fancy – that is paidia according to Caillois, evoked by Deterding et al. (2011). Gamification could only be a trick, a way to make people believe – “bullshit” according to Bogost (2015). It would not be a question of making people play, but of motivating them to do something by giving the feeling that they are playing in the very controlled frame of a game, or rather a device that takes up aspects of the game itself. 1.5. Extension of the notion of gamification What makes it difficult to think about this notion of gamification is that, as Seaborn and Fels (2015) point out, its meaning is not limited, even in academic articles, to the meaning given by Deterding et al. (2011): Gamification has been used to describe two additional concepts: (1) the creation or use of a game for any non-entertainment context and/or goal, and (2) the transformation of an existing system into a game […] In education, the term “gamification” has been used to refer to digital-based learning (DGBL) and serious games generally. (Seaborn and Fels 2015, pp. 17–18) The success of the term means that it refers to various realities: beyond the devices themselves, some evoke situations that are meant to be gamified or rather playified, ludified. But the success of the term gamification can lead to erasing these differences. The creation of a serious game becomes gamification and soon we will talk about the gamified life of children to mean that they play! It seems to me that the use of the term is free of any rigor and that is why it can be an object of research – on the condition that its use is analyzed – in no way a concept; or if it is a notion, only the approach of Deterding et al. (2011) allows us to establish a minimum consensus for this.

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The Gamification of Society

Thus, in this delirium on the words game and play, freed from any relation to a reflection on what it is, we can find the idea of gamifying a game2. I will stop here to say that at this level it is no longer possible to intervene; perhaps it is a fake language in the era of fake news (which would be the equivalent of gamification, the gamification of information and politics). It seems to me that the complexity of the situation points to the underlying idea that it is not play and yet it is play. A parallel can be drawn with the use of the term ludique in French, meaning playful (Brougère 2015). Indeed, for a long time, the term ludique remained the academic term it was when it was first coined, with the aim of compensating for the absence of an adjective linked to jeu. Its meaning was “relative to play”, i.e. play in adjectival form. It was by passing gradually into ordinary language that its meaning evolved in a curious way to mean two contradictory things. The term often evokes a situation that would be close to play without actually meaning the term itself. C’est ludique (it is playful) being understood as not quite playful, but sounding like it, c’est un exercice ludique (it is a playful exercise). One would like to say it is gamified. This use of the term playful is very close to gamification: making an activity playful without it becoming a game. But what makes the use of the term today more complex is that, when faced with serious or educational games, the adjective ludique is used to reinforce the dimension of “properly playful” as opposed to games that are not quite playful; we can find this surprising expression of jeu ludique (e.g. in De Grandmont 1999), jeu jeu (a play game) could be said to be playful, as if a game could not be playful. But beyond the criticism that can be made of it, does not this reflect such a wide use of play, playfulness (and gamification) that we no longer know what these terms mean? Is it a question of transforming into a game, of resembling the game, of being fun (or amusing). A plurality of meanings appears under a notion that therefore tells us nothing. As playful which means, depending on the context, to be really a game or not to be a game at all, the term gamification today refers to producing games in fields other than pure entertainment or producing devices that borrow elements from the game without really being games. It is a term that should be used with care without assuming a priori that under the supposedly gamified object there is the game.

2 Expression present in the abstract of a paper proposed for a conference on the gamification of society.

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1.6. Language or reality Is it a gamification of reality or language? They say it is a game, but is it enough to make games? Is the application of the idea of a game enough to define society or a company as playful, as gamified, all the more so since some people refer to gamification as the idea of a gamified society, of an omnipresence of play (or of what looks like it)? In the 1980s, a rather similar feeling appeared in some authors’ work: the playful metaphor (La métaphore ludique) for Henriot (1989) and the playful society (La société ludique) for Cotta (1983) whose book is sub-titled The Life Invaded by Play (La vie envahie par le jeu). But using the game to speak about society, or to say that society would be playful in depth, is different. Cotta (1993) showed the growing economic importance of play, game and gambling, even if it means classifying heterogeneous activities under the play banner. There is always a tension between considering play to be ubiquitous (which would not be legitimate) and considering activities to become game or play (using a rather loose and vague notions of game and play). This very cowardly vision of a gamification of society is the subject of a criticism that poses two problems: a notion that is not very explicit (gamification) and an absence of proof that is all the more difficult because we do not know whether we are talking about game, play, playful in a cowardly sense or something even vaguer. The more diluted the use of the notion of play becomes, the easier it is to find it everywhere. Refering to Henriot (1989), to say that everything is play is to say that nothing is play, because the notion is no longer useful. Panludism is the destruction of play. Nothing is more difficult than thinking of play as a frame for experience, without reifying the frame. Therefore, let us not get the target wrong: let us not criticize the fact that we have made the world playful – it is not true – but let us criticize the fact that we make it seem playful, that we may say that black is white. It is very difficult to prove under these conditions that the world would be more playful than it was. We can certainly note the importance of certain leisure activities linked to play (video games), but it is precisely this that has led to an increase or a new success of the playful metaphor, digital interaction being quickly baptized “game” or “play” because it resembles a game,

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The Gamification of Society

whereas reality is the opposite: the game uses elements of the world, the possibilities of relationship with the digital machine to achieve its objectives. Is it a more playful world or a different kind of playful world, a world that resorts to trickery by putting play everywhere? But is it still play? Is there really a “gameful world”? Do not we use the terms “game” and “playful” extensively (as the equivalent of fun or because of the presence of certain second characteristics of games)? In the absence of a real extension of the playful experience, it is the extension of the term(s) relating to game and play. More than the development of the game, would not we be faced with the development of a rhetoric of the game, of the playful world? Deterding (2015) classifies these rhetorics, including those that are critical. Far from being a reality, the idea of the gamification of society, of the production of a playful world, would be pure discourse far from any testing, which is impossible because of the ambiguity of the notion – an ambiguity that SuttonSmith (1997), from whom Deterding borrows the notion of rhetoric, had highlighted (see on this question Brougère 2005; Savignac 2017a). What characterizes these rhetorics, like Sutton-Smith’s, is that far from relying on a precise analysis of the phenomenon, it isolates a type of play or an aspect of it and then considers it to be omnipresent and significant of the development (positive or negative depending on the rhetoric) of our society. In the 18th Century, the importance of play and gambling, but also the development of calculus of chance (probabilities in our vocabulary), which emerged during the previous century from the analysis of games of chance and was applied to insurance (particularly maritime) or vaccination (or rather variolization), gave the feeling of a society where play was omnipresent. This feeling seemed to combine the development of new forms of play (nowadays video games), of which it is difficult to say whether they extended play or replaced other forms of it (and leisure), and the interpretation of reality from the idea of play (to take up Henriot’s analyzes of the playful metaphor). By retaining only one aspect of play, we end up seeing it everywhere and then developing a discourse of exaltation or criticism based on this feeling. 1.7. What existence for play? There is still one dimension that is not taken into account and which seems essential to me. More than a reality of the world, play is a category for

Paradoxes of Gamification

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thinking about the world, or rather the experience one has of it. It refers rather to play or playing, but let us not forget that the game is, at least in part, a reified play experience. Play is not an objective reality of the world that we can agree on (as a tree or a chair is), but a way of designating objects, activities according to the idea (Henriot 1969) or the experience we have of them. Play refers to the meaning (the frame) of the activity and not directly to its content, as Reynold’s quotation above suggests; it cannot therefore be attributed effects or effectiveness, other than that of the frame or modalization, to use Goffman’s terms (1974). While play is part of an experiential frame, a modality marked by the possibility of making decisions in a non-literal world (Brougère 2005), the questions to be asked are: – for whom is it a playful frame (the actors, all of them, some of them only, observers including the researcher)? – can we consider that the playful frame has effects beyond the minimization of consequences or frivolity (which precisely leads to the reduction of potential effects)? We need to ask the question, who says “play”, who experiences “play”, and to consider that it is a reality dependent of these conditions of perception. Martin (2017) shows that the same training, based on the simulation of a fictitious reality for the participants (another field than their own, although very real), is experienced by one (a rather confident man with a broad play culture) as a game and by the other (a less confident and less playful woman) as an exercise which she fears that it will have an impact on her career. Independently of whether the device is rather a serious simulation with an educational objective (which seems to me to be the case from the outside) or a game, the actors can relate to it as a game or rather live an experience that corresponds to what they understand, from their playful culture, by the game. Behind the question of gamification lies the question of knowing what is perceived and experienced: for whom is the use of the gamified object a game and why? For whom it is not? This takes into account their positions: designer, organizer (if the case arises), actor, observer, researcher. There is

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The Gamification of Society

no gamification in the absolute, but always a situated gamification, in the sense that the device’s design, which consists of taking up supposed elements of play, can be experienced more or less as a game. 1.8. Counter-example of flow or optimal experience To think differently about these questions, I propose a detour through the question of optimal experience, a concept far more solid than gamification. Csikszentmihalyi constructed the notion (flow, optimal experience) from the game, from an analysis of its characteristics (Csikszentmihalyi and Bennett 1971). For Csikszentmihalyi the game appears as: A socially or individually structured form to constitute the experience of the flow. It is a framework, a device through which you can have this experience that is voluntary, selfdirected and detached from “real life”. (Csikszentmihalyi 1979, p. 268) He thus considers that the game allows for a particular experience, that of flow (see Brougère 2005 for a more in-depth presentation of the concept), which is not true for all games and all players. In fact, he discovers in the game an experience that he will investigate its existence in other human activities. He is careful not to find play everywhere, but rather a type of experience that can be developed elsewhere, in leisure (which has points in common with play) and in work (Nakamura and Csikszentmihalyi 2002). Transforming an activity so that it can become an optimal experience and carrying out analyzes in this sense have two advantages over the process of gamification, which sometimes refers to the same questions: to distinguish play from the experience it can generate or, more broadly, not to consider that what can produce this type of experience is necessarily play, not to see play everywhere; to approach the question in terms of experience, since devices are of interest only in so far as they generate an experience. The problem of gamification is to believe that play is in all the game elements (and of video games in particular) and to limit the question to that of devices without taking into account the experiences produced (beyond the question of motivation). Are there players in a so-called “gamified” world?

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1.9. Play and frame issues It seems to me that, far from being a development of thinking linked to play, the issue of gamification most often refers to confusion about what play is. Can we leave it at that? It is not, however, a question of enhancing the term serious game, which Bogost (2015) does, which poses problems of a different nature, but which we must deal with here because the notion of gamification extends, as we mentioned above, to a serious game. We speak of an oxymoron to evoke this notion, stressing that adding serious to game means saying both “it is a game” and “it is not quite a game”. We could, by taking up the Goffmanian concept, speak of modalization (which appears in the need to add the term serious which modalizes the game) because the game is already the result of modalization, of counter-modalization or overmodalization. If we refer to the frame theory mentioned above, we can distinguish the primary frame of ordinary life from the modalized or secondary frame; the latter refers to the primary frame while modifying the meaning of the targeted action, such as a pretend fight and all forms of play. What then of a serious game, gamification, a pedagogical game, which seem to me to be the result of a new modality: play as now a primary frame is transformed to have effects. This produces a new frame that is no longer marked by the entertainment, or even frivolity, of the playful frame. Is this modalization a return to the primary frame (a deludicization, degamification), a deconstruction of the game, of what constitutes play in the game? In fact, modalization would be a way to return to the primary frame or to produce a new primary frame. Is it a maintenance of the playful frame, a shift in meaning within the same frame? Is it a new frame by adding a new modalization that modifies the playful one without making it disappear, just as the secondary frame did in regard to the primary one? But let us recall that if the central aspect of this frame is the disappearance or reduction of the effects, this new modalization would re-introduce effects that are not those of the primary frame, while distancing itself from the playful frame. Serious games and gamified activity would then be neither a primary nor a secondary playful frame, but a new, tertiary frame, by modalizing the playful frame. The game would remain a reference but transformed by re-introducing effects. We may, however, wonder whether this new frame is not often the object of fabrication or falsification; we refer here to Goffman’s (1974) frame analysis of spies and

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The Gamification of Society

espionage, which leads to the production of a secondary frame whose traces are erased so that it can be interpreted as a primary frame (the crook is a policeman, the American spy is a German). Here, does one not erase by the fact that it is no longer a game, that a new frame has been constructed but that in a logic of trickery that we will call efficiency, motivation, it is a question of making the actor believe that he or she is a player? There is no answer other than a reflection on the frames of the experience nourished by empirical data, articulating observation (point of view of an external observer or participating observer) and the words of the actors to grasp the meaning they give to the experience in order to deduce the frame produced: a return to the primary frame, maintenance of a playful frame, creation of a new frame that is difficult to think about but interesting insofar as it would make it possible to highlight a complex reality that is both playful and not quite playful anymore. Let us recall that one could be in the second frame without interpreting it as such, and thus find oneself in a primary frame (or believe it). If we take the tertiary frame of modalized play as something else (serious games, gamification), it is possible that one does not understand this modalization. Thus, depending on the situation, games may be used as a non-overmodalized secondary frame, or it may be used in the primary frame, or even in a complex tertiary frame; one is then both in the game and in a logic of effects, for example in terms of learning. We can also look at the content side and evoke the hybrid notion. 1.10. Hybrids and hybridization processes Indeed, what characterizes these different devices (Alvarez and Djaouti 2010) or practices (serious gaming, serious playing, gamification) is that they combine aspects that come from play (and which in some cases remain, are experienced and perceived as such) with other elements that are not. It is probably necessary to accept that this is the production of hybrids, products or practices resulting from hybridizations between play and other dimensions. The main one is the one that refers to educational logics and devices; however, they have in common with play to resort, if not always, at least often, at the non-literality, to simulation, to exercise in the sense that to exercise is to do without really doing. One produces hybrids that will be experienced as games by some but not by others, and this, for many reasons, playful culture being

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one of the main reasons. If we define playful culture as the result of play experiences, it is indeed from this culture that a new experience will be perceived then eventually enjoyed. This playful experience does not always go in the same direction. Depending on the situation, it can allow one to appropriate a simulation as a game (Martin 2017) or, on the contrary, to perceive the distance to the game as one practices it in the context of a leisure activity (Lavigne 2016). Hybrids combine elements that come from what is considered a game, and others that refer to realities (work, education) that can be thought of as antinomic to play. This produces objects or practices that are neither play nor non-play, that can be perceived as play or not, experienced by the actors as play or not. The criteria that I developed (Brougère 2005, 2012) allow us to understand the use of the terms “game” and “play” in the face of complex realities. They can allow us to see what, in these hybrids, tends toward play and/or limits this dimension. Is it still a matter of non-literality, of frivolity or consequence management? Who decides and under what conditions, without giving too much importance to the initial decision but taking into account the course of the game? What are the mechanisms that organize this decision? Are they related to play with the presence of rules or other processes that do not refer to it? Is uncertainty maintained or reduced? Ultimately, what is the level of hybridization of the game? 1.11. Conclusion So the challenge seems to me not to deconstruct the term “gamification”, but rather to show that it has never been constructed, except through commercial opportunities, as a slogan. We should not take slogans for reality. The world is not gameful, or playful, and the reality of what is at stake leads us to think that it is likely to be less and less so if it ever was. A world in which perhaps we play more – we already find this idea in the 18th Century with the importance taken by gambling – is not a world that has become a game. A world in which some people claim that everything is play or a game, or that everything can, even must, become so, is not a world turned into a game if we show that the so-called gamification is not a transformation of the world into a game, at most a new trick using play and game as bait, in the words of Erasmus. The goal of motivation – to motivate people to do something rather than to invite them to play – is indeed very close to a logic of

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trickery. Play is not aimed for its own sake but for what it would achieve from a potential player. Beyond this logic that can be questioned, related devices and practices are proposed and must be analyzed by avoiding considering them a priori as games or play (and the question would be for whom and why). We have proposed two avenues of analysis that are not mutually exclusive and that allow us to escape the unproductive dilemma “game/play or no game/play”, suggesting moreover that there is somewhere a created frontier, whereas frontiers are constructed through collective practices (especially language). On the one hand, it is a question of considering these objects as hybrids and grasping how different dimensions (playful or not) are combined and the effects they have on practice. There is no serious game; there are hybrids between a game and other reality (pedagogical device, for example). There is no gamification but a hybridization based on the implementation of elements from games, especially video games. On the other hand, if we think of play as a frame, we need to question the effects of the devices on the frame that this can produce. Are we still in the non-literality of the playful frame? Is it a return to the primary frame or the production of a new, tertiary frame that modulates the playful frame and that would need to be explored?

2 Gamification and its Discontents1: The Mechanics of the Game and the Question of the Game’s Operationality in Game Design Texts

We made computers to work for us, but video games have come to demand that we work for them. Nick Yee (2014) While we continue to argue about capitalism and socialism, for the first time a third option is really possible. Right now, we have an opportunity to make things more equitable, more sustainable, more intimate, and also more beautiful and fun. When incentives match up better with our deep human desires, life becomes more enjoyable, adventurous and fulfilling. Jane McGonigal (2011)

What does the term “gamification” mean for those who use it? A term which “originated in the digital media industry” (Deterding et al. 2011) in the early 2010s, it now mobilizes the writings of game designers, experts and researchers in human–computer interactions (HCI), and also, for some of them, researchers in information and communication sciences (ICS); all working on gamification and on the methods of production of gamified

Chapter written by Emmanuelle SAVIGNAC. 1 This title is a nod to Freud’s famous work “Civilization and its Discontents”.

The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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solutions applicable in the fields of education, marketing, HR, health, etc. Research and the production of texts on gamification are for the most part the result of applied research that is quite far removed from the humanities and social sciences, even if major “founding” texts in the humanities are regularly cited (such as Huizinga (1951) and Caillois (2001)). Many of the authors writing on the recent notion of gamification2 and simultaneously on this (gamifying) activity participate in the development and marketing of these applications3. One of the most widely used definitions of gamification is the now wellknown definition by Deterding et al. (2011, p. 2), which states “‘gamification’ is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts”4 (Deterding et al. 2011, p. 2). Two key ideas reside in this definition, which we propose to develop and question in this chapter: the idea of game elements, which can be isolated in some way like an element of an organism, correlated with the other idea that these elements are seized for the purpose of transfer (hybridization?) within another organism or system (work, education, citizenship, etc.). This question of transfer and the questions inherent in such an activity (is what would work for playing games thus decontextualizable?), with regard to the question of the elements of games and the question of changing context, will therefore be central to this work. “Gamification” is an operation linked, as Deterding et al. (2011) put it, to gameful design, i.e. the design activity aimed at producing a characteristic they call gamefulness (the experiential and behavioral dimension of gamification) and also gameful interaction(s) (“artifacts affording that [experiential and behavioral] quality” – Deterding et al. (2014)). Gameful design therefore works on aspects that take the name of “dynamics” (the player’s relationship with the system at his or her disposal) and “mechanics” (game actions allowed by the system). The mechanics refer to the product and the gamified device, and in particular to the actions and behaviors implemented by it. The dynamics refer to the appropriation and then, as game designers say, to the “style” of the stimulated player, because he or she 2 The first occurrence of the term appears at the turn of the 2010s. 3 See section 2.5 (Appendix) for a profile of the authors. 4 This definition of gamification, centered on the “game”, was further clarified by Deterding et al. (2011): “While paidia (or ‘playing’) denotes more free-form, expressive, improvisational, even more ‘tumultuous’ recombination of behaviors and meanings, ludus (or ‘gaming’) captures playing structured by rules and competitive strife toward goals”.

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has the mechanics to play. These two aspects – dynamics and mechanics – are meant to be thought of in relation to what is specific to gaming on the one hand, and to the motivation of the player and the question of what engages him or her in gaming on the other. All of this produces the so-called “aesthetic” (or emotional) experience of gaming5. It is the “mechanical” aspect of playing games that this chapter proposes to focus on. For game designers, what would these elements be that would have playability power (whether or not they would be taken over afterward), that is to say the power of excitability or stimulation of the potential appetites for play for those who are led to the action? The purpose of this study is therefore not to observe gaming devices but to describe and understand the concept of “game mechanics”, which is central to thinking about the performativity and effectiveness of playing games (and its economic potential for the sectors that mobilize it: training, work, marketing in particular). The gameful design field of research is the bearer of norms relating to the injunction linked to gamification, which is to be productive and to the effects produced: engagement, motivation, performance, etc. Therefore, we invite the reader of this chapter to dive into the thinking of the gameful design actors, applied to gamification. Before dealing with the mechanics of games expressed from a gamification point of view, we will observe them in the discourses of game designers, conceived from a game perspective (here, commonly video games), and will try to identify the transformations from one activity to another: conceive/think of a game versus conceive/think of a gamified device. 2.1. Research context and methodological discussion This research finds its source in an ethnographical study of the contemporary management and organization of fun work environments previously observed in digital media companies (nascent consumer Internet start-ups and video game companies) and the ways in which playing is imported into the workplace and for work purposes. This research led me to analyze the playing practices implemented by management as well as the thought of a game that would be operational for those who play and to analyze the terms: what would be the aspects of the game that would be 5 In the following pages, we will come back to this “MDA” model frequently used in game design (see, for the initial reference to the model, Hunicke et al. 2004).

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supposed to produce the “effects” expected by management within a non-game context, such as that of work? This question of an operative game from an engagement perspective (in learning, performance, etc.) is at the heart of problems dealt with by gamification authors. For these authors, far from play theories, the effectiveness of a game structure seems to be accepted as a postulate. This is especially the case for those engaged in commercial activities, but also authors in game studies who work on the techniques of player engagement. The debate between game designers confronts, on the one hand, what an autonomous game structure could be where the game is thought out independently of the player (we will refer here to the writings of Björk and Juul (2012), for example) and, on the other hand, a “player centric” approach, i.e. reintroducing the player as the central actor and component of the game experience. Many of the statements in these texts concern the impoverishment, or even perversion, of gaming (Bogost 2013), the behaviorist dimension of gamification (Raczkowski 2013), the manipulative, and therefore ethical, dimension of playing if the player is lost sight of (Deterding 2015). Many debates are therefore organized around the question of the independence of the game (structure and mechanics of the game) with respect to the player; this makes the game a structure that could be endowed per se with an operative potential. We have gathered our corpus of design research texts on gamification first using a wide selection on three documentary spaces: the CHI conferences, Google scholar and Academia.edu with the keywords “game mechanics”, “game design” and “mechanics”. The second phase of exploration of the different texts allowed us to identify the writings and works that are referenced in the field – including the production of models – because they are very regularly cited, which is then confirmed by the citation indicators on Google scholar6. The third approach was to identify texts operating a meta-analysis of current research on gamification. A corpus of 33 texts (specialized books and scientific articles) was thus analyzed qualitatively as material for this chapter.

6 We will indicate in the footnote the number of citations coupled with the different references at the time of our consultation.

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What can be observed when approaching this corpus is the discussion for the purpose of stabilizing terms between several authors who are very active in the field, which is then taken up (and sometimes debated) more widely. Our corpus therefore reflects the “small world” of the authors who are referred to as pioneers of studies whose title – gamification – is recent, even if the activity as such of importing playing into non-game activities – as some of the authors of this book point out – is much older. 2.2. Game mechanics from the point of view of game design 2.2.1. Convened references and models A model on which many texts setting up game analysis devices are based is the so-called MDA (mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics) model by Hunicke et al. (2004)7 mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. In this text, posed as constituting any game are: the elements made available by the game designers (mechanics), the interactions with the game system through the mediation of these elements (dynamics) and the emotional dimension, called “aesthetics”, of the game8. These three constituents are expressed by the authors as “rules” for mechanics (which will then be a source of debate and clarification for the texts referring to the model), the “system” of play for dynamics and “fun” for aesthetics. According to Hunicke et al. (2004), the three dimensions make the game object more than just a medium because, they say, its real content is behavior: Fundamental to this framework is the idea that games are more like artifacts than media. By this we mean that the content of a game is its behavior – not the media that streams out of it towards the player. Thinking about games as designed artifacts helps frame them as systems that build behavior via interaction. (Hunicke et al. 2004, p. 2) This idea of an object that provides and induces behavior is a recurring theme in game design. A large part of the discussions on mechanics will 7 Cited 1,835 times (Google scholar comparative analysis). 8 The authors divide this “aesthetic” into eight categories: sensation (sense-pleasure), fantasy (make-believe), narrative (drama), challenge, fellowship (social framework), discovery (un-charted territory), expression (self-discovery) and submission (pastime).

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indeed focus on the types of actions made possible for the player and what this involves in terms of interactions with the system and in terms of the type(s) of game experiences proposed. Another model regularly used in game design and then gameful design texts – presenting some similarities with the MDA model – is that of Salen et al. (2004), which presents the game design approach according to the triple dimension “rules, play, culture”. “Rules” refers to the “organization of the designed system”, “play” to the “human experience of this system” and “culture” to the “larger contexts engaged with and inhabited by the system” (Salen et al. 2004, p. 5). In these elements, we will recognize the mechanics and dynamics inherent to the game. For the authors, it is the articulation of the three terms rules, play and culture that will produce meaningful play: “Meaningful play emerges from the interaction between players and the system of the game, as well as from the context in which the game is played” (Salen et al. 2004, p. 49). The criterion of interaction, in the first instance, refers here to interaction with the game system. Human interactions are understood to be part of the system insofar as they are authorized by the system. In fact, these interactions integrate game mechanics in this sense. The interaction is stated as being at the heart of what constitutes the game and takes the form of “decision” and choice (one will thus find in the language of game design the expression of choice architecture). This choice is articulated with the choice to play or not to play, an idea that is linked to the characteristic of freedom or decision in game and play theories (Caillois 2001; Brougère 2005): [Players] are deciding how to move their pieces, how to move their bodies, what cards to play, what options to select, what strategies to take, how to interact with other players. They even have to make the choice whether or not to play! (Salen et al. 2004, p. 49) Systemic analysis is at the heart of this approach to gaming which is thought of as a system made up of interlocking systems (the three registers – rules, play and culture), with variable opening characteristics. If the level of rules, expressed as a formal level, is presented as closed, the level of play – experiential – is presented as semi-open (because it is open to the player and to his or her style of play, i.e. what he or she will decide to do with the game and how he or she wishes to mobilize it). As for culture (also expressed through

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the terminology context), it is presented as open and interfering with the meaning given to gaming. 2.2.2. Game mechanics and the approach to the game in game design Starting from these triadic approaches to the game, some authors will propose a more thorough reflection on the question of elements and, in particular, rules/mechanics by discussing the assimilation of the notion of mechanics to that of rules and by refuting it. This is the case of Sicart (2008)9 and Järvinen (2008)10, regularly cited on the question of game mechanics11. Järvinen and Sicart converge on the idea that game mechanics can be thought of as verbs12 and, as such, dissociate themselves from rules that are assimilated to other game elements. For Sicart, game mechanics describe interactions between players and rules – the latter being thought of as structural and not dynamic – and with “more formal properties of a game”. The difference between game mechanics and rules lies in the fact that the rules, structural and normative elements of the game, “constrain” the game mechanics – “performative” elements – by what is possible or not (as interaction) in the game. Sicart (2008, p. 5) proposes as a definition of game mechanics: “game mechanics are methods invoked by agents, designed for interaction with the game state”, a definition that he explains as follows: “A game mechanic, then, is the action invoked by an agent to interact with the game world, as constrained by the game rules”. We will make two remarks regarding this definition proposed by Sicart on the basis of his study of previous work and aimed at stabilizing the acceptance of game mechanics:

9 Cited 502 times, especially in later articles dealing with game mechanics. 10 Cited, 284 times. 11 These two authors also summarize other authors on the concepts studied. 12 Järvinen established a list of these game mechanics in the form of verbs: “Accelerating/ decelerating, aiming and shooting, allocating, arranging, attacking/defending, bidding, browsing, building, buying/selling, catching, choosing, composing, conquering, contracting, controlling, conversing, discarding, enclosing, expressing, herding, information seeking, jumping, manoeuvring, motion, moving, operating, performing, placing, point to point movement, powering, sequencing, sprinting/slowing, storytelling, submitting, substituting, taking, trading, transforming, upgrading/downgrading, voting” (Järvinen 2008, pp. 273–274).

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– In this definition, it appears that the term “agent” includes a real-life player as well as an artificial intelligence or any other “agent” (hence the term) that can interact with the system. This thinking of the game, where what interacts with the system is more the responsibility of an agent than of a player, will be at the heart of the debates on whether or not a player-centric approach is needed13. – The dimensions present in the definition of a constant mediation by the game for the action of the player and of control (limitation of potentialities and rules) do not seem to be the subject of debate, because the game is thought as a system of constraints because of its structure and the choices of game design made in it. It therefore combines the characteristics of rigorous configuration and stimulation of actions and behaviors within its framework, which is regularly called the “magic circle” by the authors of the field. That being said, the author specifies, taking up Salen et al. (2004) that if designers can think about the interaction logics, nothing bodes well for how the game will ultimately be played. In this, he breaks with Järvinen, whose “deterministic” slope he criticizes. Indeed, for Järvinen, it is game mechanics that establish a “causal relationship” between game elements and game states (Järvinen 2008, p. 73). 2.2.3. System, control and player representation Like Sicart, Järvinen helps to define a game that has aspects of a frame of possibilities and modalities of action in order to maintain the “magic circle” of the game. Järvinen writes as follows: “The game system [...] dictates whether and how input is accepted into the system” (Järvinen 2008, p. 262). In this perspective, he posits that: Game mechanics are essential elements in that they are always about doing something significant in the game, because they relate directly or via an instrumental relation to a goal in the game. (Järvinen 2008, p. 73)

13 One of the most emblematic texts of what can be assimilated to a polemic is that of Juul (2012), with the explicit title: “Zero-player games or: what we talk about when we talk about players”.

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Järvinen follows Salen et al., for whom: Meaningful play occurs when the relationships between actions and outcomes in a game are both discernible and integrated into the larger context of the game. (Salen et al. 2004, p. 52) Game mechanics, characterized by action, is also defined by its exclusive orientation toward the objectives of the game. In this sense, within the play space, it has consequences: “learning to play, i.e. mastering the execution of game mechanics in a particular game, is largely about realising the mechanics’ affordances and learning their consequences” (Järvinen 2008, p. 258); or, as formulated by Salen et al. (2004, p. 51): “This means that an action a player takes not only has an immediate significance in the game but also affects the play experience at a later point in the game.” To close this section on the notion of game mechanics in game design texts and in relation to the question of control, we will observe that, unlike Sicart and Juul, the player holds an important place in Järvinen’s texts14 as well as in those of Salen et al. (2004). This consideration of the player takes two main forms: – He or she is an actor of the choices and style of play within the limits of what the elements and the structure of the game make possible. Salen et al. (2004, p. 82) put it this way: “The space of possibility of a game is the space of all possible actions and meanings that can emerge in the course of the game. This concept ties together meaning, design, systems, and interactivity.” Play is then understood as a component of the game and not as a goal if we refer to the game designer’s point of view: “The experience of play is but one of many ways of looking at and understanding games. Within the larger phenomenon of games, then, the play of the game represents one aspect of games. Although play is a crucial element of the larger concept of games, ‘play’ is in fact a subset of ‘game’” (Salen et al. 2004, p. 84). This conception of playing in relation to the game is formulated in terms of degree in the texts read: if attention is focused on play and the player’s role, it will be player-centric design. If play is subordinated as a simple element of a game, so well designed that it is (almost) self-sufficient, we find the exchanges (and a logic pushed to the limit) around a game as an object, without any 14 He takes up the reflections of Hunicke et al. (whom he quotes) on the aesthetic experience by the player to create techniques that promote “enjoyment and flow” (Järvinen 2008, p. 179).

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necessary consideration of the player before it is played (Björk and Juul 2012). – The player is subject to motivations that game design must take into account in order to stimulate the game experience. Järvinen refers to work on human goals in psychology. He cites in particular those of Schank and Abelson (1977), which posit various human goals, expressed exclusively in terms of “needs” – and not desires – including, among others: biological needs, the need for enjoyment and relaxation, the need for fulfillment, the need to preserve one’s position, status and possessions, the need to know how to respond to an urgent crisis, or the need to master instruments to achieve one’s goals. For Sicart – and this is actually going to be a constant in texts on gamification – there is a great porosity between our frameworks of existence and the framework of play: the “objectives” that are ours in our daily life are thus transferred to the game, where they would be operational as in “real life”. In addition, the organizing elements of the game spread outside and beyond it, thus producing effects of socialization through games. Thus, in their texts, Salen et al. (2004) take up (with some alteration) Huizinga’s theory that culture has its origin in play. According to them, the transposability or transfer of the game to other activities is thought to be much more widely thought of. It is by and through the game that culture is transformed: […] games have the potential to transform culture. These cultural transformations emerge from the game, to take on a life of their own outside the framework of game play. This ability of games to affect the contexts in which they are played represents a cultural instance of transformative play. (Salen et al. 2004, p. 497) The authors thus speak of “game as culture”, because at the same time the game reflects culture and transforms it. They point out, however, that this transformative game power is not the property of all games. In the following section, we will come back to the game mechanics aspects in more detail, but this time from a gamification and gameful design perspective. In this perspective, we will take up again the questions of performativity and transferability from one game framework to another, while questioning the way in which the individual is taken into account and what place is given to the individual in relation to these systems.

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2.3. Game mechanics from the point of view of gamification and the question of the transposability of game logics in non-game contexts We can see how the characteristics of games described above are of direct interest to areas other than play, and in particular to certain actors involved in work or education: engagement, readability of consequences in taking action, control of processes, framework of the field of possible meanings and behaviors also mastered. As such, and as Deterding et al. (2011) point out, the transposition of game elements into non-playing contexts is not new. The mobilization of the know-how of the video game industries in the service of simulations, for example military simulations, existed long before the emergence of the term “gamification” and a whole section of educational sciences has shown and debated these relationships between playing games and learning (we will refer here to Brougère (2005) or to Berry (2011)). In terms of work, we know about the experiments in mobilizing play for production purposes carried out under Lenin and then Stalin by the engineer Maria Birshtein or the trading houses of the Swiss Galliker at the beginning of the 20th Century. Games and work seem to present a flexible similarity which is seized upon by some authors, such as Suits (1990, p. 34). They present play as an effort to overcome obstacles: “Playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles”. McGonigal (2011, p. 485), who likens a game to “hard work”, takes this to heart: “Games make us happy because they are hard work that we choose for ourselves, and it turns out that almost nothing makes us happier than good, hard work”, a statement that came be repeated regularly in subsequent gamification literature. 2.3.1. The centrality of the question of engagement in the reference texts It is in the field of marketing that the first writings emerged on gamification. We will refer here to the regularly cited work by Zichermann and Cunningham (2011)15, which defines gamification as follows: For our purposes, we will define the term gamification as follows: the process of game-thinking and game mechanics to 15 Cited 2,522 times.

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engage users and solve problems. (Zichermann and Cunningham 2011, p. xiv) Gamification is expressed with a dual purpose: engagement and problem solving, an idea in which the hard work and the obstacles to be overcome that would be inherent in games are found. This idea is similar to that, which is quite widespread, of a definition of a game that is in some way linked to the agonistic register through the form of competition or “challenge”, in a very “Huizingian” filiation of the approach to play. Unlike, however, writings positing the unproductive dimension of play (Caillois in particular) and its strictly autotelic orientation, the object of gamification has a doubly productive aim, both in terms of behavior (engagement or what will become the expression of motivation) and action (hard work, problem solving and, underlying this idea, performance in its ability to do so). The behavioral dimension is central in the writings of these authors: both in the aim of gamification, i.e. to orient the behavior of gamified device users, and also as a knowledge issue for the development and production of effective devices (for the orientation of behaviors and also for the engagement and motivation of the target persons). Engagement/motivation is a central term for understanding gamification, with recurrent reference to the work of Ryan and Deci (2000) on the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations of individuals. Seaborn and Fels (2015), in their review of texts16 on gamification, underline the omnipresence of the theme: In the literature reviewed, gamification is consistently positioned as a tool that may be used to facilitate extrinsic and intrinsic motivation to accomplish specific tasks through the selective use of game elements. (Seaborn and Fels 2015, p. 20) In order to understand what Zichermann and Cunningham (2011) mean by “engagement”, it is necessary to place oneself in a quantification perspective – a perspective that is present in the majority of reference texts on play. Significant in their definition of games are the “quantifiable outcomes”. In this respect, it is worth noting the almost exclusive use of quantitative analyzes when it comes to studying the validity or effectiveness of this or that aspect of play. It is from this perspective of objectification by numbers that Zichermann and Cunnigham propose to use an “engagement 16 On the basis of 31 texts studied.

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score” on the basis of indicators (metrics) such as: recency, frequency, duration, virality and ratings. These indicators are supposed to vary according to the type of product promoted: For example, a café might care more about frequency and recency, but less about duration; whereas a dating site may live or die by the duration of each interaction. (Zichermann and Cunningham 2011, p. xvi) Engagement in this sense means a good level of “connection” with the service or product offered: The term “engagement”, in a business sense, indicates the connection between a consumer and a product or service. Unsurprisingly, the term is also used to name the period in a romantic couple’s relationship during which they are preparing and planning to spend the rest of their lives together. Engagement is the period of time at which we have a great deal of connection with a person, place, thing, or idea. […] Page views and unique viewers don’t quite answer the question of who is engaging with our products, services, ideas, websites, and businesses as a whole. (Zichermann and Cunningham 2011, p. xvi) This centrality of the relationship with the service to be promoted or the thing to be sold explains, on the one hand, the recurrent interest in the literature on gamification for “human needs” supposed to be vectors of engagement because they push every individual to satisfy them and, on the other hand, the interest in game mediation which is supposed to have properties that are, we could say, engaging. This engagement, which for Zichermann and Cunningham (2011) means being satisfactorily connected to the thing being promoted, is expressed in another category of games potentiality: their escapist power17. For McGonigal (2011), another author who is even more widely cited in the field, a game is “a purposeful escape, a thoughtful and active escape, and most importantly an extremely helpful escape” (McGonigal, 2011, p. 6). McGonigal thus

17 Cited 4,008 times.

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includes Herodotus’ account of the Lydians who, affected by the famine, devised a solution to overcome this ordeal at the beginning of her book: […] the Lydians devised a strange remedy for their problem. The plan adopted against the famine was to engage in games one day so entirely so as not to feel any craving for food... and the next day to eat and abstain from games. (McGonigal 2011, p. 6) The engagement with games in this story has the power to distract from the living environment provided that as long as the game environment is engaging (and the living environment burdensome). McGonigal’s proposition is to “break reality” to make a game out of hardship and use the hard work that is play (because it is assiduous, committed and even passionate) to carry out and make people carry out more disheartening activities while forgetting the harshness of it (such as the fields of application of gamification: work, sport, etc.). A second aspect of McGonigal’s engagement through play is that it would be somehow “empowering”, to be accompanied by the gamified device (the author thus advocates giving a reward for failure, taking the principle that failure now prepares the success of tomorrow). She places feedback at the heart of the system, particularly in the form of progress indicators. The reason a game is so engaging is that it is supposed to respond to psychological needs and human desires. For Zichermann and Cunningham (2011), the definition of “human motivation” is as follows: From Greek mythology to daytime soaps, it is clear that sex – or the drive to have it – will make a person do almost anything. Paris’ abduction of the lovely Helen of Troy led King Menelaus to begin the Trojan War. So, like games, sex has the unusual ability to make people do things that are not necessarily in their best long-term interest. However, unlike games, sexual attraction is hard to predict and control, making it a less useful tool in engagement… (Zichermann and Cunningham 2011, p. 15)

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The advantage of a game is that it combines the register of desire with that of predictability, and also that of consent and duration, which cannot be guaranteed, for example, by a means of pressure such as violence: Similarly, violence can yield unparalleled coercive results. Putting a gun to a person’s head will likely get him to accomplish any task you request. However, chances are he won’t enjoy a second of it, and he certainly won’t come back for more [...] Games, however, hit the sweet spot. They marry the desire-drive of sex with the predictability of duress – except without force and, when successful, driven entirely by enjoyment. (Zichermann and Cunningham 2011, p. 16) Further on in their book, this question of engagement takes center stage18. The authors first try to figure out what motivation consists of and then to think, from a design point of view, how to design engaging devices by considering them according to the typology of players developed by Bartle (1996), also a reference for the authors of the field19. Part of their reflections focuses on reinforcement, based on the theories of Pavlov and Skinner and reflecting on the question of gratification, its nature, its volume and its rhythm (with an imperative, they say, of variability) in order to maintain engagement, which underlie their reflections on game mechanics. For McGonigal (2011), it is also a question of satisfaction. Like Zichermann and Cuningham (2011), the author cites Csíkszentmihalyi and his flow20 concept (optimal experience). The three authors place it between boredom and anxiety, which calls for a regulation of game design so that it is neither too little nor too demanding in terms of tests so as not to bore or discourage. For McGonigal, the game is able to achieve three objectives: framing the user experience, maintaining performance and satisfying the user: “A GOOD GAME is a unique way of structuring experience and provoking positive emotion. It is an extremely powerful tool for inspiring participation and motivating hard work” (McGonigal 2011). Play has the power to 18 In this volume, this question represents three chapters, or a third of the total pages of the book: Chapter 2, “Player motivation”, Chapter 3, “Designing for engagement (part I)” and Chapter 4, “Designing for engagement (part II)”. 19 Cited 2,412 times. 20 For the relationship between flow and play in Csíkszentmihalyi, read (Brougère 2005) who analyzes it.

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provoke in the individual “the satisfying, exhilarating feeling of creative accomplishment and heightened functioning”. The author poses four fundamental human desires that can be: – a satisfying job, which she defines as follows: “for everyone it means being immersed in clearly defined, demanding activities that allow us to see the direct impact of our efforts”; – the hope of succeeding in what is undertaken there (and of showing others that one is performing well, she says); – being connected to others (what she calls “social connection”); – participating in something greater than oneself, which in terms of meaning goes beyond an individual activity. We can note the proximity of this typology – related to what the author refers to as our “biological capability to create our own happiness through hard work” – with the self-determination theory (SDT) model developed by Ryan and Deci (2000). These authors are cited with great regularity in the field. They talk about three factors related to intrinsic motivation: the feeling of having the necessary skills for what one has to do, the feeling of being in control of the situation and engagement with others (Deci and Ryan 1985; Ryan and Deci 2000). From this model in game design research, a whole debate on the typology of players according to their motivation in the game (Yee’s model built on Bartle) emerged: “achievers” (motivated by skill), “free spirits” (by autonomy), “killers” (by winning over other players) and “socializers” (by relationships). Mediation between self-realization and task realization coinciding with the new spirit of capitalism (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999), the gamified device must bring together the mechanics of game to ensure that it is gameful. 2.3.2. The game mechanics approach by gamification The objective of quantifying engagement and reflections on reinforcement lead Zichermann and Cunningham (2011) to think of game mechanics no longer in terms of actions linked to the game, but in a perspective very oriented toward an evaluation principle for most of them

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and especially toward a control of the user’s21 development process in the device: As the designer, it is imperative that you value and track every move your players make – even if those scores are only visible to you in your management console and not to them. In this way, you can see how your players are interacting with your system, design for outcomes, and make appropriate adjustments. (Zichermann and Cunningham 2011, p. 36) Thus, they list several game mechanics, all oriented toward feedback and reward operations: points, levels, leaderboards, badges, challenges/quests, onboarding and engagement loops. They also commit to developing elaborate point systems (with experience points, redeemable points, skill points, karma points and reputation points as a “sample”) with the possibility of making the perishable assets in order to maintain the user’s engagement and always following their recommendation of variability (that one can earn less after earning more, then more, etc.). This thought is shared by McGonigal (2011) for whom: We need realtime data to understand our performance: are we getting better or worse? And we can use quantified benchmarks – specific, numerical goals we want to achieve – to focus our efforts and motivate us to try harder. For Zichermann and Cunningham (2011), if they think (in this case for the rats but also for the workers22) that a regular reward system is not very engaging, and can quickly dry up in terms of interest, what they pose at the heart of game mechanics linked to points and levels is not the accumulation of (fake) gains but the question of the social status acquired within the system: 21 Although the authors of the texts studied use the terminology of “gamers”, we will opt here for the terminology of users (of gamified devices). 22 “This structure is similar in form to many Industrial Era jobs. A worker gets a paycheck every two weeks. What happens in the interval between paychecks is completely aligned with that end result. In other words, the worker will only do exactly and only what is required of her during the days in between to ensure that she will get her biweekly direct deposit. No more, no less. This is called fixed-interval reinforcement” (Zichermann and Cunningham 2011, p. 18).

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University levels are similarly stamped with a clear ranking, both within the confines of the institutions and for the population at large. The degrees bachelor’s, master’s and Ph.D. (doctorate) clearly indicate which level has been reached. The military and the Boy Scouts have arguably two of the most perfected levelling systems of any institution. From badges and medals, to titles like General and Eagle Scout, even the uniforms indicate who resides where in the levels of the “game”. (Zichermann and Cunningham 2011, p. 48) This lever of social pressure makes it imperative to make everyone’s actions and scores visible for comparison and competition purposes – a competition that is thought out at the source of the game playing activity. The articulation between competition and quantification seems to draw the normative system proposed by these gameful designers. The principle of showing others that one is at the level, or even excellent, is recurrent in the literature. McGonigal (2011) writes as follows: “We want to feel powerful in our own lives and show off others what we’re good at.” The social dimension, which is also excluded from the consideration of what an individual is (only approached from a psychological and in particular a motivational perspective), is expressed by the authors from the perspective of a demonstration of his or her performance (or even a narcissistic arena23) and logically implies, if all individuals are motivated by this demonstration, that everyone competes with everyone else. When, in the case of the novice user, there is no point in activating the comparison lever, other engagement techniques are proposed by the authors: At the tutorial level (level zero), there should be no choices. A player should be offered an action at which he cannot fail. Then, he should be rewarded for successfully completing that action. (Even a “Well done!” or a hearty, “I agree,” places your player squarely in a very seductive positive-reinforcement loop.) This model, pioneered by social and casual games, has 23 McGonigal (2011) writes: “Similarly, any pair or group of people who consistently play a game together, online or face-to-face, will have increased opportunities to express admiration for each other, to devote themselves to a common goal, to express sympathy for others’ losses and even to fall in love.”

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powerful implications for any kind of business, especially a gamified one. (Zichermann and Cunnigham 2011, p. 62) In the texts on game mechanics, engagement turns out to be both an objective and a lever for the action to be carried out in the gamified device. It is regularly presented in articles consulted in the form of a postulate, in that it is consubstantial with the game. Authors regularly cited in the field, such as Marczewski and Nacke, assert that: Several empirical studies have shown that gameful interventions can increase engagement and generate desired behavioral outcomes in HCI applications. (Tondello et al. 2019) In the articles that reviewed the literature, the elements of play that are considered mechanics by gamification authors are both motivational and behavioral in nature. If we consider the review by Seaborn and Fels (2015, p. 27), out of 31 systems we have: – on the one hand, the motivational elements already seen in (McGonigal 2011; Zicherman and Cunningham 2011): points (18), badges (15), rewards (11), leaderboards (11), challenges (6), status (5), progression (3), achievements (3), time pressure (1) and feedback (1), otherwise denounced by Bogost (2013) and Robertson (2010) or Raczkowski (2014) as “pointification”; – on the other hand, more fictional and/or playful but less proportional elements such as avatars (3), mini games (2), roles (2), narrative (fiction: 1). Arnab et al. (2015) also list game mechanics in a summative text, based on the study of several surveys devoted to serious games. These mechanics, listed in a text on learning but with a general aim on game mechanics, are classified according to six “competence skills” (aptitudes and know-how) formulated as follows: creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, understanding and retention and are organized in Table 2.1. We find here the “verb” dimension that Sicart and Järvinen emphasized in game studies. But these verbs no longer designate play actions such as “to accelerate”, “to sell” or “to conquer” as in the typology established by Järvinen. From the game and its principle of simulation (selling or conquering, for example, or fighting against the clock), we move on to a

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register of hard work, to use McGonigal’s expression. In the gamified device, one analyzes, applies, understands and produces.

Table 2.1. Game mechanics (Arnab et al. 2015)

These results seem to be verified by a third meta-analysis, carried out by Hamari et al. (2014). In the empirical devices they analyze, relating to the effectiveness of gamification24, the elements of pointification also prove to be very present. The texts evaluating the performance of gaming are mainly concerned with: points (9 studies), leaderboards (10), achievements/badges 24 Hamari et al. (2014) have seized for their article 24 studies that they pose as scientifically valid (peer reviewed, methodology explained, empirical), all aiming to study the efficiency of gamified devices.

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(9), levels (6), story/theme (6), clear goals (4), feedback (6), rewards (4), progress (4) and challenge (7). This priority given to the evaluation of “pointing” elements can be seen as a response to the denunciations of behavorism (suggesting the fact that “points work”) and as significant of the material of which the gamified devices are made up (being evaluated, progressing, having clear feedback elements, comparing and competing, and achieving status). Hamari et al. (2014, p. 2) show that studies are mainly concerned with three aspects: “(1) the implementation of motivational opportunities, (2) the psychological outcomes that result, and (3) subsequent behavioural outcomes”. Two major game rhetorics appear to be predominant: that of competition and progress, and then, to a lesser extent, that of the imaginary25. 2.3.3. The question of transposability Rare are the texts that nuance this question of engagement by taking into account the question of contexts. As we have seen, if the psychological perspective predominates as to the motivations of an individual in the game, the contexts of non-play seem to be excluded and the social and cultural determinants just as much (once simply evoked in the MDA models presented above). Hamari et al. (2014), however, report – and this is a notable exception – on this variability by mentioning in their meta-analysis that it appears that the results are variable (in terms of the effectiveness of gamification) depending on the social contexts and the “quality” of the players. In doing so, they note that the most positive outcomes of play occur in the field of education where its effects can be demonstrated: “in terms of increased motivation and engagement in the learning tasks, as well as enjoyment over them” (Hamari et al. 2014, p. 4). They then ask why: In certain environments or only with certain users, gamification had significant effects. As previous works on play motivation suggest, people in fact interact with game-like systems in different manners and for different reasons. Thus, the

25 This appears in the analysis of gamification rhetorics by Deterding (2015), taking up the categories identified before him by Sutton-Smith (1997) (see Savignac 2017b).

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experiences created by the gamifying motivational affordances are also likely to vary. (Hamari et al. 2014, p. 6) What might seem to be a postulate for any sociologist or anthropologist thus becomes a conclusion aimed at opening up avenues for future research26. This question of transposability therefore concerns the omission of the interference of the non-play framework – the context of the use of the gamified device – with the device: what happens to the typologies established regarding the motivations of Massively Multiplayer Online RolePlaying Game (MMORPG) players, for example, in a gamified device within a professional context? Not only the translation from one framework to another, but also the translation of the individual’s quality in relation to the system (player vs. employee), raises a whole range of questions, that we observe, do not penetrate these theories. We understand that the term “mechanics” refers to the thought of the effectiveness of play motivations or what would constitute games’ playability. However, on reading the corpus, we note that the question of transposability is posed in speculative terms as to the playability of certain elements or motivational characteristics independently of the consideration of the context of non-play. What is transposed, effectively this time, is rather a matter of mechanics such as numerical control, choice architecture, quantification, progress indicators and social visibility of the results which, if they participate in video games, also participate in non-play devices such as management in particular. McGonigal (2011) writes as follows: Games also require us to coordinate attention and participation resources. Gamers must show up at the same time, in the same mind-set, to play together. They actively focus their attention on the game, and they agree to ignore everything else for as long as they’re playing. They practice shared concentration and synchronized engagement.

26 Some authors referring to this question posed by Hamari et al. (2014) then set up research devices including the question of age, gender or language spoken. They remain rare and although they report quantified results, they do not produce a sociological analysis of the data. This is the case in our corpus of Tondello et al. (2017, 2019).

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What is speculated here is that, from play to non-play, concentration, participation, cooperation and synchronization are maintained. The transformation from a play regime to a gamification regime therefore involves several questions that have been left open in the literature and which we can summarize in a few points: – There is a paradigm shift between the “verbs” covering the mechanics of game design and those of gamification. From a lexicon of in-game actions, we move to a lexicon of out-of-game actions (creating, evaluating, analyzing, applying, etc.). What are the consequences in terms of “playability” and consequently of the pleasure of playing, considering that it is a source of motivation for everyone? – There is a shift in the motivational registrations of players (Bartle 1996; Yee 2012) toward those of individuals in non-game contexts. To refer to our field – the gamification of work, we have to consider the following questions: are employees, in a system related to their work, comparable to the achievers, killers, socializers and explorers of the model? – In this translation operation, can a shape or a design substitute for a substance? When McGonigal (2011) writes: “we crave satisfying work, every single day. The exact nature of this ‘satisfying work’ is different from person to person, but for everyone it means being immersed in clearly defined, demanding activities that allow us to see the direct impact of our efforts. […] We want to feel powerful in our own lives and show off to others what we’re good at” she says, referring to a system of evaluation, progress, feedback and visibility of the activity. What is postulated is that a form extracted from a video game process can generate this satisfaction per se, about its entire work, without referring either to the social context or to the very content of the work (its sustainability, its meaning, etc.). The question arises, based on this example of the work, of taking into account the object of gamification, in addition to the consideration of the social and cultural contexts, which we have already underlined. In this interpretation, the question is whether the work would be somehow without substance. As a process which, if its structures were to be changed, would in itself become satisfactory.

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– In the research methodologies adopted for empirical studies of gamified devices, quantification is based on systems of questionnaires inducing a kind of structure of answers to be chosen. For example, Zichermann and Cunningham (2011) propose the exercise of choosing the five preferred actions in a game from a list of proposed actions: advocate, argue, comment, compare, compete, curate, explore, express, flirt, give, greet, harass, help, join, like, poke, rate, read, recommend, share, show off, taunt, view and vote27. The authors do not question the effects on the survey of the proposed lexicons, which nevertheless draw an oriented representation of what would be playing games. 2.4. Conclusion The postulate by the gamification of devices that would be mechanically equivalent to games and would cause, just as mechanically, effects of games from a game context to a non-game context provokes, we have tried to demonstrate this, a series of twisting changes (in a methodological point of view) about the way in which the changes are approached in issues such as motivation, status, evaluation, competition, context, fun as well as playing games. Beyond the question of what gamification does to the player and the more theoretical question of what gamification does to the game, there is the question of the performativity of gamified devices at the heart of the literature on game mechanics. As we have seen, these are about action, orientation of behaviors according to a structure, evaluation, but also objectives aimed at evaluating levers of engagement and progress. This very behavioral perspective, supported by the use of texts in behavioral psychology, is articulated with projects presented as virtuous in the transformation of non-play realities such as work or learning. These perspectives make us lose sight of the game device as, in fact, a vehicle of satisfactions, representations, knowledge, skills, co-operation, relationships, etc., being its own. At last, these perspectives pose it as a medium among others for experiencing others, data, values or norms which constitute the game device. 27 The most frequently chosen actions would be: (1) compare, (2) explore, (3) show off, (4) compete and (5) rate (Zichermann and Cunningham 2011).

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Beyond a moral discourse on its aims, which would aim to discuss the virtuous or non-virtuous applications of gamification28, it is a critical analysis of the belief system – or “trade in promises”, as Giraud (2000) would say – that we have attempted to undertake in this study. Gamification, more than being the “symptom of a cultural trend: the vindication of play as a legitimate way of living, creating and expressing” (Sicart 2015, p. 239), seems to us to question today’s twisting of leisure, pleasure, engagement and relationships, which, in the end, is not new. These texts call out for a vision of the human being that they convey: a human being, as we have seen, without social attributes, without history and without the situated cultural practices of play. A human being interpreted in terms of needs and not of aspirations or desires, not thought as being able to upset the logic of the aforementioned needs in view of the situations that are his or her. A human being without context, without discernment of contexts, without critical sense, without creativity and without variability. A human being capable of responding to stimuli in the right way in order to produce adequate results within the dedicated margins. A mechanical ideal, born from the ideology of progress, in which the machine man of Friedmann’s “optimistic engineers” (1935) is heard again. A human being who generates some discontents … in his or her gamification. 2.5. Appendix: profile of the authors from the corpus Seventy-two authors are listed in the corpus. Among them, only three are without academic registration (are not professors, associate professors, researchers, have PhDs, etc.). 2.5.1. Breakdown by discipline Some academic registrations combine two disciplines (e.g. HCI and psychology, media and game studies, HCI and game design, etc.). We have chosen here to list the main registration.

28 As Bogost (2015) or Deterding (2015) are debating today on what would be ethical gamification and what would not.

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Figure 2.1. Author disciplines. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/lelay/gamification.zip

2.5.2. Extra-academic activity

Figure 2.2. Share of authors’ extra-academic activity. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/lelay/gamification.zip

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Only extra-academic activities of an economic nature have been accounted for here. The participation in research projects initiated within the institutions to which they belong (projects of an industrial and/or economic type) does not integrate this scheme but concerns a large number of the authors listed. 2.5.3. Geographical distribution of authors

Figure 2.3. Geographic origin of authors. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/lelay/gamification.zip

PART 2

Socialization Through Play

The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

3 The Origins of the Gamification Process: The case of Pre-industrial Societies

When Stéphane Le Lay asked me to take part in a book about the gamification of society, I hesitated for a long time. What could a modernist historian, that is to say, a specialist of the pre-industrial period, from the 16th Century to the beginning of the 19th Century, have to say on the subject? At first glance, the neologism “gamification” refers to the very contemporary world of video games and, more specifically, to the presentation by Jesse Schell, game video designer and professor at Carnegie Mellon University, at the DICE 2010 Conference (Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertainment). He announced a future in which all daily activities would be subject to a points and rewards system. At this stage of exploration of the concept, I found on the Internet some definitions that could justify my participation in the book: the concept of gamification applies to the use of gaming mechanisms in non-play areas, namely, learning situations, work or social networks. A definition insists on the motivation of these practices: the practice of making activities more like games in order to make them more interesting or enjoyable1.

Chapter written by Elisabeth BELMAS. 1 Gamification. In Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus [Online]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Available at: https://dictionary.cambridge.org> dictionary>gamification.

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Thus, as Silva (2013) points out, the playful paradigm is extended to areas from which it is supposed to be excluded – work, health, education – although it is mainly used today in marketing and in the video game sector. Gamification would not be an end in itself, but rather a set of processes to motivate a team, to push it to reach or even exceed its objectives, to increase the efficiency of projects as well as to improve daily life. From then on, the prophetic title of Jacques Henriot’s beautiful study, Sous couleur de jouer: la métaphore ludique (1989), comes to mind. He wrote: The novelty does not lie [...] in the fact that we play more, but more deeply, more radically, in the fact that the very idea of play is taken as a theoretical model, as an explanatory principle that makes it possible to conceive and interpret a certain number of situations, to understand their meaning, and perhaps to dominate them. (Henriot 1989, p. 32, author’s translation) Further on, Henriot observes that there is no intrinsically playful material or structure, and that only the playful attitude allows us to affirm the existence of the game: The only “thing” that needs to be defined when talking about play is the thought form, the mental attitude, the singular consciousness that discovers in this material and structure opportunities or means to play. (Henriot 1989, p. 123, author’s translation) Following Henriot, Genvo (2013) and Sanchez et al. (2015) prefer to use the term ludicisation in French, meaning playfulness, for learning contexts because the suffix icisation refers to the idea that it is possible to transform a situation into a game, while the suffix fication refers to the idea that it is possible to “play the game”. It is the intention that makes the game and not the materiality of the objects. The game is defined by the meaning the player would give to the situation more than by the action he or she is led to perform. This set of reflections led me to consider the modern centuries from the angle of gamification. I detected signs of gamification in several sectors of activity and also of a playfulness of the way of thinking. Today, it is believed

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that the Internet and social networks have contributed to accelerating and propagating the gamification phenomenon. However, during modern centuries, the number of existing games happened to grow and diversify, and becomes more accessible to the general public. At the same time, the conceptual status of play has changed. Until then, play was considered as a simple relaxation activity, Aristotle’s eutrapelia, invented to “recreate the weary spirit of serious things”, argued the Spanish humanist Juan-Luis Vivès in 1539 (Vivès 1539; translated by Fontaine (1993), author’s translation). Condemned to work since he had been driven out of the earthly paradise, man needed to regain his strength, and that was precisely the function of play, according to the Calvinist theologian and jurist Lambert Daneau in 1578 (Daneau 1591). With the exception of games of chance and money, they were not punishable, even if the circumstances of time, place and person in which games took place might jeopardize their legality. It was from the 15th to the 16th Centuries onwards that the conceptual status of play was reassessed, first under the influence of humanists who saw it as a pedagogical instrument, then thanks to the writers and philosophers of the 17th and 18th Centuries – Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Friedrich von Schiller – and finally by the work of modern mathematicians. All of them regarded playing as a fruitful activity for the human mind. This paradigm shift paved the way for gamification and playfulness. Play could now move out of the state of eutrapelia in which it was confined and become the model, medium and tool for other human activities. The historian cannot carry out investigations limited to the short-term. He or she must always replace the objects of his or her study in their context, seek its most distant origins and consider their evolution over a long period of time. In the playful field, as in any other field, history has been inspired by the methods and works of structural anthropology. Beyond ephemeral forms, we find an ancient background of meta-playful, constitutive and normative in most current games and contemporary playful procedures. Likewise, games belong to the symbolic world; the most apparently insignificant ones often bring us back to the universe of “deep games”, as anthropologist Clifford Geertz (1984, 2012) calls them. Such a chronological rootedness allows the historian to detect behaviors and situations in pre-industrial societies, pre-figuring those of contemporary societies.

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These methodological premises having been established, three forms of gamification of modern activities seem to emerge from the analysis of the French, Italian, English and German examples, which have been studied at length by game historians: First, the introduction of playful instruments and mechanisms into learning; second, the influence of the so-called “physical exercise” games on the process of “civilization of morals”, theorized by the sociologist Norbert Elias (1973), a process that contributed to reshaping social behavior in Western Europe between the 16th and 19th Centuries; finally, the interest of play to “mathematical humanism”, according to the expression of André Chastel (1959,1965, 1969), an interest which became a conceptual tool for rationalizing thought and action in the West from the end of the 15th Century. 3.1. Beginnings of the gamification of learning The application of the mechanisms of play to teaching with the intention of awakening or reawakening the desire and strength to study in students, and also to instill structuring principles in them, began very early on. It was a well-known phenomenon; it is still relevant today and one of the reasons for the existence of educational sciences that develop “pedagogical play” devices for all ages and levels. It is considered that the gamification of learning began in the Renaissance, with the humanist movement. Didier Erasmus, Juan-Luis Vivès, François Rabelais, Girolamo Mercuriale and Victorin de Feltre, among many others, undertook to define an agogé model giving an equal share to intellectual knowledge and body exercises. They used to profess that education went beyond instruction, professing that it contributed to the formation of the whole being; it had to provide intellectual, moral and physical education, to arouse the desire to surpass oneself and to learn to behave everywhere with maestria and elegance. These maxims found a practical application when Vittorino da Feltre, a professor at the University of Padua, was commissioned in 1425 to raise the sons of Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, Lord of Mantua. He opened the Casa giocosa, a school for the children of the local nobility, which became one of the great pedagogical centers of Europe, along with the English colleges of Winchester (1382) and Eton (1440) and the illustrious Athenaeum of Deventer in the Netherlands (1630). The program created by Victorin de Feltre closely linked intellectual and physical exercises, adapting them to the ages of his students. He used collective games – balls in particular – to instill

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respect for the rules, sharpen the spirit of decision and teach how to accept defeat (Turcot 2016, pp. 285–286). The noble academies, which multiplied in France around 1550, also integrated physical exercises, for the most part inherited from chivalric learning, into the range of knowledge and know-how to be cultivated by gentlemen. Thus, sports games, known at the time as “exercise games”, helped to prepare the noble students for their futures as soldier and courtesans that awaited them. A revolution in education was beginning all around Europe. The years 1500–1570 saw the publication of several major pedagogical works that extolled the merits of these exercise games to educate the body and the mind. As early as 1528, Count Baldassare Castiglione, who was a courtesan before embarking on an ecclesiastical career, listed in Il Libro del Cortegiano exercises that conferred the ease and elegance prized by nobility, two talents that also made it possible to clear one’s path to the Court (Castiglione 1528). A few years later, François Rabelais, physician, ecclesiastic and writer, defended similar ideas in the educational program imagined for the young Gargantua (Rabelais 1534), as did Girolamo Mercuriale, physician and diplomat, an avid reader of Hippocrates and Galen, in his De Arte Gymnastica, published in 1569 (Mercuriale [1569] 2006): both advocated the taste of the open air, the measured practice of varied physical exercises such as fencing, horse-riding, dancing, gymnastics, swimming, walking without forgetting laughter, shouting and … food temperance! De Arte Gymnastica, considered as the first physical education manual for public use, influenced humanistic Europe and its teaching continued well beyond the 16th Century. These pedagogical innovations guided the education of the future magistrate and essayist Michel de Montaigne, who, according to his father’s wishes, had learned dance, wrestling, court tennis, swimming, fencing, acrobatics and jumping (de Montaigne [1580] 1891, p. 63). While the Renaissance very quickly used exercise games for educational purposes, the creation of pedagogical games was later; it began at the beginning of the 17th Century, with the work of German and Czech pedagogs that Cardinal de Richelieu admired. It was at this time that playing instruments were diverted from their initial recreational function to teach various disciplines. The game of goose and playing cards are two notable examples of the process, and their fortunes lasted until the 19th Century. The game of goose appeared at the turn of the 16th and 17th Centuries (1580) and was of Florentine origin. It quickly conquered Spain, Austria and

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England (Poirier 1950, pp. 33–35)2. The rules were formalized for the first time in France in the Academic House of de la Marinière, a collection of fashionable games, which dates from 1654. It is played with two dices, on a spiral course, which wind from the outside to the inside, in an anti-clockwise direction; it is divided into 63 squares, which go from the start to the gate of paradise. Some boxes have vignettes, some beneficial, others evil. It is a game full of symbols, which probably contributed to its success among the aristocratic and bourgeois elites: some people have seen it as a game of understanding, just like The Tales of Mother Goose, published in 1640, which are tales of understanding3. The spiral of the game of the goose has also been likened to the spiral of the ear, the discovery of which, published in 1601 in Ferrara, was contemporary to the first games of the goose. At the same date another spiral related to hearing was born, that of the treble clef. Finally, the goose is a representation of the vicissitudes of life’s journey, which leads from nothingness to paradise and which is only ruled by chance. Very quickly, the game was transformed into a pedagogical and ideological medium. At the beginning, only the squares bearing the geese and the accidents were illustrated with vignettes; the squares were soon provided with an iconography diffusing a message. Thus, from the middle of the 17th Century, the goose helped to profess heraldry in the Jeu du Blason of Nicolas de Fer in 1655, history with the Jeu royal et historique de la France of 1662, religious morality with the Jeu du point au point pour la fuite des vices et pour la pratique des vertus, or political current events with the Jeu des François et des Espagnols pour la paix of 1660 (Grand-Carteret 1896, pp. 263–276). Playing cards were similarly rerouted. Originating in the Middle and Far East, they were first introduced in Italy, then in Spain, before entering France in the mid-14th Century, across the Provençal and Flemish borders, and through merchant circles and princely courts (Mehl 1990, pp. 153–159). They already bore the characteristics – signs and attributes – that have hardly changed since; three honors – christened in France with the names of legendary heroes, Hector, Alexander, Caesar, David, Ogier, La Hire or 2 Game of the goose (le jeu de l’oie) was introduced in France by Queen Marie de Medici. The first known mention is in the Journal d’Héroard, the physician of the future Louis XIII, where he noted in 1612 that “the royal child likes to play goose” (Foisil 1989, p. 2011, author’s translation). 3 The word goose in French (oye) derives here from the verb ouïr, meaning to hear and transmit orally: in the tales, the mother Goose, who is a “heard” person, holds the knowledge. For the symbolic deciphering of the game of the goose (see Lhôte 1994, pp. 256–257).

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Pallas, Judith, Argine – that led to a sequence of 10 point cards; signs where abstraction dominated – diamonds, spades, clubs and hearts – which had long been used in heraldry and became widespread at the end of the 15th Century (Lhôte 1994, pp. 203–207). The cards spread rapidly throughout Europe, first as trick-taking games4 – Rabelais’ famous nomenclature already included 35 … all of them tricktaking (Mehl 1990, pp. 493–495)5! It was during the 16th and early 17th Centuries that more complex games were created, resulting, according to Lhôte (1994, pp. 288–292), from a matrix of 16 ancient games, mostly coming from the Italian-French-Spanish melting pot, even if the German or Dutch influence was not negligible. In France, the first educational card decks – the work of the writer Jean Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin and the Florentine engraver Stefano Della Bella – were published in the years 1644–1648. At the request of Cardinal Mazarin, Jean Desmarets, former tutor of a greatnephew of Cardinal de Richelieu, combined several card decks in order to teach, while having fun, history, geography and fables to the young Louis XIV: the Cartes de Rois de France, the Jeu des Reines renommées, the Jeu des fables and the Jeu de la Géographie dedicated to the queen, Anne of Austria became the “school for princes”, where without tiring they could “draw useful knowledge from the kings and queens of whom [sic] spoke; without taking on the memory of the curious research of the geniuses”, said Desmarets (1698, author’s translation). The idea was taken up again by two Jesuits, Claude Oronce Finé de Brianville and Claude Ménestrier, who adapted it to the teaching of heraldry (Palasi 2000). It is possible to see the direct forerunners of serious games, which henceforth put playful objects and motivations at the service of teaching, and also of an ideology or propaganda. 3.2. Gamification and the civilizing process Today we can better measure the role of the so-called exercise games in the “civilizing process”, according to the concept forged by Norbert Elias, a

4 The “trick” card decks are based on two parameters: suit and value. Players take turns placing a card on the playing surface; this card must be the same color as the first card played. The highest card of the requested suit wins. 5 Among the card games, no real divination game was found until the end of the 18th Century.

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process of reshaping social behavior that has marked modern Europe6. Among the numerous sports games in favor at the time, it was a ball game, la paume (court tennis), which constituted the best example of the “civilizing” function of a sports game. Court tennis – the forerunner of tennis – was a huge success in France, Piedmont and Northern Italy as well as in England. In many ways, it was different from other modern ball games: played indoors, in a space specially organized for its practice and involving a series of constraints, it used an instrument – the beater or racket – to throw and return the ball, or the pelota, and followed complex rules, written in 1555 by the Italian Antonio Scaino (Scaino 1555), and then in 1592 by the French master of court tennis Jean Forbert l’aisné, in L’utilité qui provient du jeu de la paume (Forbert l’aisné 1623). The number of players could vary from two to four: one against one, one against two and two against two. Each game consisted of six or eight sets, depending on the decision made by the partners at the beginning of the game. Each set scored 60 points and each shot was worth 15 points. In the event of a 45-all tie, two shots running were required to win the set. The serve was started as in modern tennis, but the ball was thrown toward the canopy of a gallery that ran the length of one side of the room, and had to be hit or rolled over it before hitting the ground. The ball also had to fall back into a square space, determined on one side by the line of the raie du dernier ouvert (the last open line) – the opening of the gallery furthest from the rope that separated the two sides – and on the other, by the raie de la passe (line of the pass), a longitudinal line, close to the wall and drawn on the floor. Before taking the ball back, the player had to calculate whether it was “good” or “foul”. However, the ball could rebound a second time within the boundaries of the field without a foul; this was called a chasse (chase) and the point was replayed on the next shot. Games were usually played in four sets and were watched closely by the audience as spectators bet on the players and shots, while a marqueur (scorer) officiated as a referee. The scorekeeper would announce the win or loss, chalk up the results on the floor tiles, and make sure the balls were picked up when they piled up on the court7.

6 On this point, see the major works of Georges Vigarello and Robert Muchembled, as well as the forthcoming volumes of A Cultural History of Sport, Bloomsbury Publishing, London, (2021). 7 For more details (see Belmas 2006, pp. 128–129).

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Figure 3.1. An inside game of court tennis, frontispiece by Forbert l’aisné (1623)

As an exercise game that required skill and endurance, court tennis was adapted to the military training of the nobility. The authors of modern game treatises have praised its organic and moral benefits: “this exercise is the paragon of all the others”, wrote Jean Forbert, claiming to Galien, “not only to work the body but also to delight and recreate the mind” (Forbert l’aisné 1623, p. 6, author’s translation). Court tennis taught man “to defend what he has acquired, to repair a sudden hazard or to foresee the intention and advice of his enemy”; less rough than wrestling or bars, it did not brutalize the body, which was then massaged “softly with oil” (Forbert l’aisné 1623, p. 10, author’s translation). It “warms the body and the limbs”, adds de la Marinière, author of a famous treatise on games in 1654, and purges “superfluous and strange moods by making them evaporate, brightens and rejuvenates the mind” (de la Marinière 1654, p. 126, author’s translation). It is not a useless pastime, “resumed the master court tennis player François de Garsault in the middle of the 18th Century”, but an art, which with few instruments “becomes a very salutary exercise by means of which youth can acquire robust health

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and agility if necessary in the course of life” (de Garsault 1766, p. 6, author’s translation). Court tennis was part of the pedagogical program that Pantagruel had prepared for his son Gargantua. It figured in the education of sovereigns and gentlemen. The monarchs of modern times were all initiated to it and until the mid-17th Century, almost all of them were passionate about this art, both as players and spectators. When Louis XIII stayed in Orléans in 1619, he was in a hurry to play against the Knight of Souvre in the gambling dens of L’Échiquier, La Guerche and Descures8. The royal residences were equipped with cages, the name given to the private halls: in Paris at the Louvre, in Amboise, in Fontainebleau, in Villers-Cotterêts, royal property until 1630, in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, in Compiègne, in Vincennes, built by Louis XIII, who had the first court tennis hall of Versailles built. The nobility also fitted out cages in its castles while public court tennis halls, called tripots (gambling dens), were opened in the cities of the kingdom. At the end of the 16th Century, there were more than 250 such games in Paris, and Orléans had about 40, because court tennis also attracted the bourgeoisie, students and artisans of the cities (de Luze 1933, pp. 130–192). Originally the game of the elite, court tennis began to exceed their narrow circle; it appeared as “a fully constituted social object”, said MarieMadeleine Fontaine. Highly structured, constituting a spectacle in itself, without ritual connotations, it was, for contemporaries, representative of their society (Fontaine 1987). The Middle Ages and then the Renaissance saw it as an analogical model of human activities, for moral behavior, political confrontation or oral communication. Pedagogs very quickly understood the possibilities of instilling the civilizing principles into their students: “you will bear to lose with equal humor”, Juan-Luis Vivès recommended when he set out the rules of the game: without contracting your facial features, without flooding your face with sadness, without spreading invective and curses against your playmate or any of the spectators. But if you win, do not mock your companion in isolation; be frankly kind, cheerful, facetious and joyful throughout the game, without jest or effrontery; do not give any sign of cunning, baseness or greed; do not show yourself to be relentless in the struggle, and 8 Bibliothèque nationale, Ms 808 coll. Clairambault, Comptes des menus de la Chambre du Roy: “Menuz plaisirs, affaires et necessitez du Roy pour l’année finie, le dernier décembre 1619”, f. 230 v°.

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especially not ready to swear against everything … so that the game is a pleasure, and then, to train a young man, it is a naturally good education. (Vivès 1539, translated by Fontaine 1993, author’s translation) At its scale, court tennis worked on the process of changing behaviors characteristic of modern centuries. As a highly codified game following a complex set of rules, court tennis took place in a closed environment, designed for its practice, which induced a certain type of behavior by the constraints it imposed on the player; the properties of the motor space, observed Pierre Parlebas, pre-determined the motor conduct of the players, sometimes even in their most technical manifestations. In an environment without surprises, the player followed “in complete peace of mind the motor automatisms pre-elaborated during training in a repetitive way” (Parlebas 1982, p. 203, author’s translation). On the other hand, in an environment that concealed the unexpected, he had to inform himself while acting, and his choices were decisive. Court tennis is a good illustration of the latter paradigm. The asymmetrical arrangement of the cages, which subjected the player to a different game, depending on whether he had pulled in – on the serving side – or out – on the receiving side, as well as the existence of openings and galleries, favored the variety of shots. The player needed a great deal of composure to anticipate the opponent’s shots and prepare the response: “it is by quickly judging the successive effects of a ball that one is able to position oneself to return it”, noted the 18th Century court tennis master Mannevieux, for whom a rapid and exact appreciation of situations was “the basis of all the player’s science”9. He also needed great gestural control to co-ordinate his reactions. The use of an instrument in place of the hand meant that each posture had to be controlled. The player had to hold the bat or racket a little to one side, so that he could easily hit the ball, either forehand or backhand; the turn of the wrist had a direct effect on the play and the reach of the ball, especially on serve. For each type of serve – rolled, hammered or pitted, turned, given against the large roof wall – there was a corresponding position for the racket, wrist and arm, as well as a degree of intensity of the strike. The constraints of court tennis contributed to the development of a new habitus, i.e. socially 9 M. de Mannevieux (1783). Traité sur la connaissance du royal jeu de paume et des principes qui sont relatifs aux différentes parties qu’on y joue; dans lequel on établit les moyens les plus prompts. Neuchastel, p. 39.

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acquired habits and attitudes that underlie the behavior of every individual. One of the essential features of the habitus in gestation from the 16th to the 18th Centuries was self-constraint, self-control, which Mauss ([1569] 1999, author’s translation) defines as “resistance to invading emotion”, i.e. learning a fundamental inhibition in social and mental life. However, observing the other, analyzing his or her strategy, and defining a tactic in return were indispensable to making war or living at court. The internal logic of this so popular sporting game was inherent to the values promoted by the social context. In this sense, court tennis participated in the edification of the civilizing process. Nevertheless, the immense favor enjoyed by court tennis continued to decline during the 17th Century, as it no longer corresponded exactly to the habitus of the emerging court society, which advocated different models of distinction. Progressively, the exercise seemed excessive to the social elites, the clothes they wore to play – pants, shirt and cap – seemed untidy to them. Court tennis had transformed the rough warriors of previous centuries into agile and supple gentlemen, but this era was over by 1650. Other exercise games, supposed to teach grace and dignity, were now better suited to the “system of symbolic assemblies”, prized by the court society. 3.3. Play, mathematics and gamification: the scientification of modern societies Recent studies have shown that a mathematical culture of play as a form and norm of social life developed as early as the 15th and 16th Centuries. It is Francesca Aceto’s research on the work of the Tuscan mathematician Luca Pacioli (1445–1517), particularly on his last work, De Viribus Quantitatis, a treatise on mathematical games and riddles written between 1496 and 1508, which had the function of awakening the faculties of reasoning and designing rational models of thought and action for use by the elite. Luca Pacioli intended to oppose the disorder of the world with an order based on mathematics. In this perspective, the question of chance and its control by reason became essential. Thus, alea games were used to understand the rules of chance, which the scholars of the different European countries took it in turns to define. The Italians Luca Pacioli – already mentioned – Niccolo Fontana Tartaglia, Lorenzo Forestani, Jerome Cardan and Galileo Galilei were the first to study the “party rule” and the mathematical expectation of a possible benefit to the game of passe-dix. From the 17th

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Century onward, the French took over, with Pierre de Fermat, Gilles Personne de Roberval and Blaise Pascal, then Pierre Rémond de Montmort, while in the Netherlands Christian Huyghens published De rationiciis in ludo alea (in 1657), and in Switzerland Jean and Jacques Bernouilli – the author of Ars conjectandi (written from 1684 to 1689), like Leibnitz in Germany, were passionate about the mechanics of the alea (Duflo 1997, pp. 26–28). These brilliant mathematicians discovered in games of chance – gambling for most of them – then in full expansion – hoca, pharaon, bassette, lotteries – a breeding ground for their analyses, which led to the theory of probability. By thus attracting the attention of the greatest scientists of the time, gambling acquired a form of dignity that contributed to its intellectual and social revaluation, even if, moreover, the figure of the gambler continued to arouse mistrust and/or reprobation. Beyond this redevelopment, they set in motion a scientification process of Western society, contributing to the affirmation of a mathematical vision of human thought and activities. Pascal’s work was a decisive step in the mathematization of chance. We can follow its progress thanks to the correspondence he exchanged on the subject with Fermat, in 1654. It was a question of solving two problems posed by his friend the knight de Méré, a relentless player, author of a treatise on the game of hombre in 1674. The knight asked in how many goes he could hope to “ring” – to pull out a double six – with two dices, that is to say, what was the average value of the number of trials to be attempted for a double six to occur. Pascal’s answer, deduced from the evaluation of the number of favorable cases in relation to the total number of moves, was that there was a disadvantage in trying to make a double six in 24 goes because the chances of loss outweighed the chances of winning, whereas in 25 goes it was the opposite (Pascal [1654] 1954a, pp. 77–90)10. The second problem raised by de Méré, more complex, which Cardan, Tartaglia and Forestani had stumbled upon, is known as the “party rule”, which means, in the literal sense of the term, to make a division: if two players interrupt, of their own free will and before the end, a game of chance consisting of several rounds, how can one operate between them a fair distribution of the starting stake, according to the probability that each of them had of winning? The problem, debated between Pascal and Fermat – who arrived at an identical result by another method – is exposed in detail in the Traité du Triangle arithmétique (Pascal [1654] 1954b, pp. 97–134; Thirouin 1991, pp. 114–115). Pascal established that the division of the stakes deposited at the beginning of the game – by 10 For details of this demonstration (see Belmas 2006, pp. 77–78).

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virtue of the play contract – should be proportional to the chances that each partner had of winning at the end of the game, before the interruption of the game. The situation was akin to the beginning of a new game in which the players’ chances would be unequal. This is why, if three games had been played, one of the partners having won two and the other only one, the odds being equal and the victory going to the one who would win the first three games, on a stake of 16 pistols, 12 would go to the first player and four to the second (Pascal [1654] 1954a, pp. 77–78). By demonstrating that there could exist a fair division – governed by mathematical laws – at the end of an alea game, and that fate gave equitable rights, Pascal radically transformed the representation of chance, which, henceforth, was no longer synonymous with divine providence or ignorance (Duflo 1997, pp. 34–37). Following Pascal, by systematically using the game(s) both as a medium and as an illustration of their analyses, the scientists of the 17th and 18th Centuries began to impose a mathematical vision of the world. In 1657, Huyghens published the first treatise on probability calculus. The mathematical conceptualization of chance continued with the work of Leibnitz, Abraham de Moivre and Montmort, who continued the research of Jacques Bernouilli after his death in 1705. Jacques Bernouilli formulated the first elements of the law of great numbers through the example of the pharaon. Leibnitz based his reasoning on two games of chance – one of dice, the quinquenove, the other of cards, the bassette – and also on games of skill such as chess and weiqi, a forerunner of go, or solitaire, of which he imagined variants. Montmort, in the Essay d’analyse des jeux de hasard, experimented with probability theory on different card games, pure alea such as pharaon, bassette, lansquenet and treize, or mixed games such as hombre, piquet, impériale and trelan. He wondered about the chance of dice in quinquenove, jeu des trois dés, jeu du hazard or jeu de l’espérance, rafle, rafle comptée, trictrac and even in jeu des noyaux, “very much in use among the wise of Canada”, because it was “useful for men to know that chance has rules that can be known” (Rémond de Montmort 1708, p. vii, author’s translation). In contrast to moralists who saw alea games as an individual and collective trap, mathematicians of the time saw them as a reduced model of universal chance. “The analysis of chance” – the name they gave to probabilities – also constituted an excellent means of exercising human intelligence: “The strength and correctness of mind that one acquires in the search for abstract truths also extends to sensitive and practical truths, so to speak” (Rémond de Montmort 1708, p. xviii, author’s translation). At the end of the Great Century, mathematical surety had so well influenced

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theological and juridical reflection on chance that the moral treatises of the years 1680–1700 judged chance to be indifferent per se, since it was governed by “physical laws”. From then on, the observation of the alea games did not cease to feed mathematical reflection as illustrated by the calculation of moral hope and then the controversy of Saint-Petersburg which fascinated the Europe of scientists, in the years 1730–1740. Instead of considering that a possible profit had an intrinsic value, Daniel Bernouilli, son of the mathematician Jean Bernouilli and nephew of the great Jacques Bernouilli, proposed bringing it back to the fortune of the one who hoped for it; a gain of 100 pounds represented nothing for a rich gentleman, whereas it was a fortune for a laborer. To make the difference between them he imagined the concept of moral hope, not to be confused with that of mathematical hope; with equal mathematical hope, moral hope would no longer vary inversely with fortune, it would only diminish with fortune (Bachelier 1914, pp. 36–37)11. By developing Daniel Bernouilli’s theory, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon contributed largely to its diffusion in his Essai d’arithmétique morale, in 1777. Moral fortune, he said, could not be equated with physical or numerical fortune: “The first linked to the second by a logarithmic formula is supposed to represent the pleasure that corresponds to the possession of the second” (Bachelier 1914, p. 39, author’s translation). Yet, the two categories of wealth were unequal, for while it may happen that numerical wealth was zero, moral wealth never is never: “Hope, however vain, is therefore a true good, the enjoyment of which is taken in anticipation of all other goods” (Bachelier 1914, p. 466, author’s translation). It was in this atmosphere of intense game and mathematical debate that the controversy known as the “St. Petersburg Paradox” arose, extending Pascal’s 1654 calculations of the dice game. Raised at the beginning of the 18th Century by Nicolas Bernouilli, Daniel’s brother, it posed the following problem: in the game of heads or tails, Paul offers a crown (coin) to Peter who throws the piece if tails comes on the first go, two crowns if tails comes on the second go, 2n − 1 crowns if tails comes on the umpteenth go. Under these conditions, Peter can only win and his win, of at least one crown, could reach millions. What would then be the sum equivalent to Peter’s expectation that, in the end, he is certain to win? Assuming that the probability of a coin toss, like the probability of a coin flip, is equal to 1/2, the game value is the sum of an 11 This theory condemned all games and most random transactions between people of different fortunes; it was never applied.

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infinite series of general terms, 2n − 1 = 1/2 (1/2n); in other words, Peter would have to concede to Paul half of a sum that is itself infinite. And yet, no rational gambler would want to commit more than a modest sum … The paradox resided precisely in this conflict between common sense and an apparently rational calculation of alea (Granger 1976, p. 43). Most of the great mathematical minds of the 18th Century – Montmort, Gabriel Cramer, Buffon, Daniel Bernoulli (then professor of mathematics in St. Petersburg), d’Alembert, Diderot, Condorcet (in his Mémoire sur le calcul des probabilités published in 1784) and Alexis Fontaine des Bertins – endeavored to answer it without exhausting the subject12. The controversy had highlighted the paradox of human behavior in the face of the events of a random variable of small value but infinite hope. While probability theory in this case prescribed a decision that no thoughtful actor would take, it also allowed the creation of balanced lotteries in France – such as the Loterie de l’École royale militaire and the Loterie royale de France – and a reliable insurance system. The posterity of modern mathematical work based on the model of alea games has proved to be particularly fruitful, extending to all areas of human thought and activity. The formalization of contemporary game theory, begun in the 1920s by Ernst Zermelo and Émile Borel, continued and developed in 1944 by Oskar Morgenstern and John von Neumann, originally aimed at modeling zero-sum games where the sum of the winnings between players was always equal to zero (Zermelo 1913; Borel 1921; Morgenstern and von Neumann 1944). Having become an essential theoretical tool for economic analysis, it has found many applications in the field of social and political sciences, both in strategic analysis and international relations, as well as in organization theory and evolutionary biology. Now focused on the study of interactions between agents, it gave birth to the mathematical theory of stochastic or Markovian games – named after its founder, Andrei Markov – used in computer science (Burkov and Chaib-Draap 2008). Today, there is practically no sector that escapes algorithms. The study of the mechanics of chance, through alea games, has undoubtedly contributed to the scientifisation of our societies.

12 The solution, put forward by Daniel Bernouilli in 1738, in a memoir La mesure du sort, required a distinction to be made between the quantity of goods acquired and the value placed on them by the player.

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3.4. Conclusion While playing and knowing that they were playing, children, mathematicians and social elites of modern times acquired knowledge, techniques, moral and intellectual values that the playful vector made more attractive. They found the main stimuli attributed to contemporary gaming: competition, rewards, recognition of status and community membership, or at least a stronger sense of community. To the question implicitly posed at the beginning of this chapter, the answer, proportionally speaking, is yes. Yes, pre-industrial societies experienced the birth of a gamification process.

4 Reward Chart for Using the Potty? Justifications and Criticisms of “Gamified” Child Rearing

In the afternoon, in a large shopping mall in Oslo, I walked into a bookshop belonging to one of the two big Norwegian bookstore chains. I was interested in the offer of children’s potty books. In addition, I was looking for a particular book. I asked the saleswoman if this book was on the shelves, she answered that it was not, but that they had something “better”. “Try this one, it’s the potty calendar! It’s really funny. There are funny stickers inside”, she said, showing me My Potty Calendar. Quit diapers with pee-pee and poop stickers, placed on the promotion display. It was a colorful calendar with eight weekly charts, a set of “pee” and “poop” stickers and a “diploma” full of congratulations and certifying the completion of “the journey from diaper to potty”. The stated aim of the device was to “turn potty training into a game”. I thanked the saleswoman by saying that I had already seen this calendar. During the following week, I regularly interviewed the staff of the kindergarten where I was making observations and asked them what they thought about the use of the stickers. All of their responses were consistent in their disapproval of this system, which teaches children to expect rewards for ordinary Chapter written by Victoria CHANTSEVA.

The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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actions and which accomplishment is supposed to be useful in itself. A few weeks later, I had dinner with a Norwegian researcher. I was going back to Paris in a few days and this was the moment when I made a point with her by telling how my investigation in Oslo went. At some point, I took out of my bag the “potty calendar”. Surprised to see such an object, on the verge of discontent, she exclaimed: “You’re not going to write in your thesis that Norwegian parents use stickers, are you!” I tried to moderate her impression by saying that indeed not all parents do, but that nevertheless I had received some evidence from those who used them and that I found the subject interesting, because I had seen that education professionals do not see this practice in a good light. The colleague added: “Well yes, stickers are not good!” (Field diary, Oslo, May–June 2017) Debates about the right ways to educate children are not new and the history of education is not lacking in examples of conflicts between experts (educators, doctors and psychologists), parents and/or industries1. From this point of view, the controversy described in the above excerpt embodies the classic antagonism: the opposition between the promoters of certain objects or practices that extol their virtues (“stickers are very funny” and “amusing”) and the critics denouncing them as dangerous or immoral (“stickers are not good”). On the one hand, the risk of compromising the child’s future through corrupting educational processes and, on the other hand, their pleasure and the simplification of tedious learning. However, a few elements give this controversy a contemporary air. Indeed, a century ago, could one imagine that correctly satisfying one’s natural needs, a banal action became private and discreet with the process of civilization in the West (Elias 1973), would be encouraged by good marks and diplomas? And that the rewards would not be the object of

1 Without any pretension to exhaustiveness, the subject being very vast, let us quote as an indication the works of Garnier (1995) on the controversies around the learning of walking in the 18th Century, of Manson (2014) on the affair of the “poisoned sweets” in the 18th Century, as well as the pioneering work by Ariès (1973) showing how the criticism of parental irresponsibility by moralists and educators in the 17th Century contributed to the awareness of the specificity of children as an age group.

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parental improvised gratifications – indeed the practices of “buying” the child’s consent are not new – but of an offer from the publishing industry? In order for this to happen, the reluctance toward the authoritarian habit training will first have to become so obvious that, instead of forcing the young child to use the potty, parents have the idea of looking for ways to motivate him or her to do it voluntarily. This is what happened in the 20th Century following the criticism of the disciplinarian toilet training: doubly supported by psychoanalysis and the psychology of development, the latter proliferated on the pages of the childcare advice books advocating a non-coercive and individualized approach2. A reconfiguration of the “mother’s job” (Gojard 2010) was then necessary, as women, by gradually gaining access to paid employment, carry out differently the work of care and education of young children3 thanks to the delegation of some tasks both to increasingly sophisticated and efficient material objects (this is the case, in particular, of disposable diapers) and to early childhood professionals, whose place was becoming important despite persistent invisibility (Ulmann et al. 2011). Indeed, in this new repertoire of the maternal role, the toilet training at the cost of time-consuming efforts appears unreasonable4. Finally, the elements of gamification – the transposition of the structural game components into non-game activity (Deterding et al. 2011) – will have to become so banal and widespread that they start to penetrate socially invisible and little valued practices as the toilet training of young children. The reward charts for toilet training are just an example of the diffuse but tangible mediation of education by gamified objects.

2 In L’Art d’accommoder les bébés. 100 ans de recettes françaises de puériculture, Delaisi de Parseval and Lallemand (1980) describe how, in reaction to criticism of early conditioning, the recommended age for starting “potty training” became later and methods turned to be more flexible. On the same evolution in the English-speaking world, see (Hardyment 1983). 3 Despite the new forms of involvement in mothering, women are still required to remain strongly attached to their maternal role, but it is now a different kind of involvement: instead of devoting their time to housework and the early discipline of children, they must first and foremost invest themselves emotionally. On the contradictions of these new standards of motherhood, see (Hays 1996). 4 In an advice book for parents denouncing “preconceived notions” about the education and health of young children, we read: “A child can be potty-trained at one year of age. But at what price! [...] The mother should spend a lot of time there (time to encourage the child to use the potty, time to monitor the condition of their diapers). And the physiological and psychological consequences for the child can be long-lasting” ((Bacus and Darnaud 1989, p. 176, author’s translation); Bacus and Darnaud’s use of emphasis).

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Yet, as we have seen in Norway, these new devices are encountering criticism. On what perspectives are they based? What are the arguments put forward against the rewards in child rearing and are they effective and dissuasive? Who are the actors who support the reward charts and who are those who attack them? After having analyzed more closely the arguments and discursive figures on which the reward systems are based in order to see if it is indeed gamification, we will study their criticisms and justifications in order to try, finally, to see to what extent the reproaches prove to be forceful and to what extent they succeed (or not) in shaking up this mechanics of gamification. The empirical material for this analysis comes from a PhD research that studies educational practices and cultural objects related to toilet training. Three different national contexts (France, Norway and Russia) constitute the fields of this multi-situated research (Marcus 2010). For the analysis that follows, we will first rely on a corpus consisting of five educational devices of the “reward charts” type and 25 children’s potty books published between 2000 and 2018 in French and Norwegian and containing stickers (these books were taken from a larger corpus that will not be dealt with in this chapter). To the analysis of these objects will be added the analysis of the comments of interviewed parents and educators who criticize or approve of them. Even if the theme of gamified objects has more or less emerged in three fields of investigation, for this chapter, we have chosen to rely only on the “Norwegian section” 5, because it is in this field that the sticker problem was most visible and took the form of a controversy between, on the one hand, certain parents who did not see any problem in the use of stickers and, on the other hand, educators and other parents whose “against-sticker” opinions were visibly constructed long before I questioned them. Not generating open and public arguments (at least, without my

5 The in-situ observation sessions were conducted for one month in the spring of 2017 in a kindergarten (barnehage) in the north of Oslo, which has a predominantly middle-class population. During our presence in this institution, 29 parents and 4 employees of the institution were interviewed, aged 26 to 45 years old, with degrees ranging from high school to PhD, entrepreneurs and employees in the public and private sector. With the exception of one Polish father, all the interviewees were Norwegian natives. The interviews took place in the institution, lasted between half an hour and 40 minutes and, for ease of communication, the language of discussion was English. In May 2019, a second visit to this kindergarten was made, resulting in discussions with a new head of the institution.

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witnessing them), this opposition of points of view constitutes a discreet but important dispute. Indeed, starting from a conflict of norms seems to us to be an advantageous position to grasp the way in which actors form and transform their practices both according to social perspectives and beyond determinisms (Lemieux 2007). 4.1. Gamified devices of toilet training When we look at the editorial offer of supporting material for toilet training (picture books, “teaching kits”, etc.), one is quickly struck by the number of references to the presumed playfulness of these objects. Whether they are books making sounds, those with pull-outs and/or flaps, or those accompanied by figurines, the word “playful” or “fun” is always placed on the front or back cover page. Since the field of childhood and education is characterized by a strong legitimacy of play (Chamboredon and Prévot 1973; Winnicott 1975; Brougère 1995), the definition of the object as “playful” is akin to its legitimization. Saying “it’s playful” suggests that it is suitable for children. However, are they always “playful” objects and would it not be more accurate to call some “gamified”? As the research on the infiltration of game mechanics into different social activities, work in particular (Savignac et al. 2017), shows it, gamification is most explicitly captured through the distinction that can be made between the play or “playful attitude” (Henriot 1989), and the game as an objective structure. When it is less a question of creating a situation of free and “frivolous” fun (Brougère 2002) than of modifying behavior through more or less explicit competition (accumulation of points, challenges, etc.), we can say that it is the logic of gamification. The reward charts or a set of stickers, whether they are a supplement to a potty book or a separate object, seem to fit this logic. The first element that attests to this is the mechanism of distinguishing and promotional gains. A sticker is supposed to please the child and therefore should serve as an encouragement as such. However, the idea of insufficiency of the sticker as a source of pleasure in itself immediately appears, because, according to the discourse of devices, it also serves to stand out and attract the admiration of others: “Stickers inside to display all your successes”, as we can read on the cover of Willems’ L’Heure du Pipi!

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(2003). The sticker thus resembles a sign of distinction by vaguely introducing the idea of attested performance. However, the competitive aspect of this performance is not always clear; it is only made explicit in certain devices, particularly for boys, which introduce the idea of competition through the use of sports vocabulary (“champion”, “no. 1”). Without putting the child in concrete competition with anyone, the idea of the sticker as a gain affirms the dimension of social prestige acquired both through the actions required (going to the potty) and through the acquisition of the marks of “success”. The agonal aura of this success is outlined without always being explicit. A second element conveying the dimension of the game appears in cases where the reward systems propose a structuring of time by “levels”, “stages” and other intermediate gains. Finally, as a logical continuation of the preceding items, the last gamification aspect to be mentioned is based on the idea of ultimate gratification: the “grand prize” (certificate, medal, diploma, special sticker, etc.) is emphasized, but it also supplants the incorporated learning outcomes (body control, ability to hold, etc.). This substitution of the direct and concrete product of an activity by its symbolic and external counterpart resembles, in fine, a form of “alienation” that Marx ([1867] 2017) describes as one of the pillars of capitalism. Yet, this is certainly a “new spirit of capitalism” (Boltanski and Chiapello 1999), for if the “diploma” is not meant to be exchanged (as is the case with Marx’s merchandises), it serves instead to crown the success of a time and efforts investment (“journey from the diaper to the potty”, as the diploma from My Potty Calendar states) and to attest to the acquisition of skills. This is what brings it closer to the managerial perspectives and forms of grandeur of the “city by project” theorized by Boltanski and Chiapello. However, it would be simplistic to limit the logic of the reward charts to the sole structuring of learning according to the scoring mechanism. The game is presented not only as a game, but also as a play. This can be seen, for example, in the encouragement to identify with a character who, moreover, is often explicitly gendered (“princess”, “pirate”). Apart from the color palette (pink for girls, blue for boys), this gender dimension impacts the differentiated universe in which children are invited to accumulate their “winnings”: pirate stickers are shaped like coins, while princesses accumulate diamonds. But the most important thing is that, despite the aim of accumulation, it is always fun and amusement that appears as the

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priority of the device6. At least, this is what emerges from the explanations that the authors give of their methods: Once the calendar is hung up and open for the first week, just pee and poop in the potty. Each visit to the potty is documented with a [poop sticker] or [pee sticker]. [...] And take it easy – remember that going to the potty should be fun. ((Sundby 2011), entitled Min Pottekalender, meaning My Potty Calendar, author’s translation) Why can sticking a sticker be fun? In the case of My Potty Calendar, this fun seems to be linked to the hilarious side of the stickers (the stickers literally represent a drop of urine and a “poop”). Their inducing force derives as much from the mechanics of visualization of progress as from the humorous and transgressive effect of a representation of excreta. However, this quest for pleasure and entertainment is not an end in itself. It adopts a behaviorist perspective7 and is subordinate to parental objectives8. Positive reinforcement is supposed to maintain the child’s involvement and “enthusiasm”, combating boredom and reducing the space for potential opposition. This last aspect is crucial because, as can be seen in the following excerpt, conflicts with the child are perceived as particularly dangerous and as a cause of psychological “blockages” or a “vicious circle” of resistance: This is an original tool that will help you to potty train your child and prepare him or her for the first day of nursery school. The proposed method is incentive and is based on the knowledge from ABA (Applied Behavioral Analysis). [...] The parents’ anxiety being reflected on the child, there are great chances to enter in a vicious circle that would block any 6 A similar amalgam between game (competitive aspects) and play (fun atmosphere) for the development of communication skills was observed by Le Lay et al (2017) in the framework of the “Ma thèse en 180 secondes” project. 7 “This gamification takes place through a behaviorist approach to humans,” point out Bonenfant and Genvo (2014, author’s translation) in their critical note. Triclot (2011) also denounces the reduction of play to “Pavlovian mechanics”, speaking of “gamified devices [that] deprive us of our power of decision, of our capacity to act on the world and its framework” (Triclot 2011, p. 234, author’s translation). 8 Thus, sticker systems are often present in explicitly educational devices, such as the extracurricular exercise books whose parental use is studied by Garnier (2013).

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progress. Let’s take things in order and see how to set up a virtuous circle. [...] Your child must experience this learning positively. [...] The “I go potty!” chart that we provide will help you to do this. The goal is to connect your child’s attempt to use the potty or the toilet to a pleasant event. This event takes the form of sticking stickers. ((Collectif 2012), entitled Je vais au pot!, meaning I go potty!, author’s translation) Guiding the will of the child without him or her having to rebel, such is the principle of this educational “tool” which, without being really “original”9, clearly explains its behavioral foundations: the prevention of the rejection of educational incentives and the maintenance of commitment through positive feedback. To record the appearance of such devices in a broader perspective, we can rely on the distinction between “disciplinary devices” and “security devices” elaborated by Michel Foucault10. While “disciplinary devices” impose a norm decreed in advance by the sovereign and are based on surveillance and correction mechanisms, “security devices” are based on knowledge about the phenomenon and make it possible to act on people’s behavior without imposing a restrictive law11. From this point of view, the old training practices (putting the child on the potty at regular times by instilling a habit) correspond to the “disciplinary” paradigm, while incentive systems are part of the “security” paradigm. The latter does not work by forbidding or coercing, which does not let any detail go by; on the contrary, it relies on the details of reality (the child develops bladder and bowel control: at such and such an age, he or she likes rewards, seeks approval, etc.) the security paradigm relies on the details of reality and turns these (details) into it’s (paradigm’s) weapon.

9 In 1974, Azrin and Foxx proposed a rapid learning method that included rewards (sweets, drinks) as an “indispensable motivation during the first phase of training” (Azrin and Foxx 1977, p. 46, author’s translation). 10 We are inspired in particular by Berlivet’s (2006) text, which mobilizes these Foucault’s concepts by analyzing health education campaigns. 11 The word “safety” has meaning here as it relates to risk prevention and risk identification. As Foucault himself explains, the principle of a safety device is to “take support on the reality [of the] phenomenon, not to try to prevent it, but on the contrary to make other elements of reality play in relation to it so that the phenomenon in some way cancels itself out” (Foucault 2009).

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4.2. “Short-term winning”, “another failure”: resistance to gamification Let us assume that reward charts can indeed delight children. Adults still have to be convinced to use them. That is where the project often stumbles. Significantly, education professionals are the harshest judges of this: It teaches the child to do one thing for another, and I don’t think that’s the best method. I think it’s a short-term winning, but in the long-term I don’t think it’s right. […] You want your children to learn why they have to clean up their room... uh... in a large perspective? Do you want them to do it for getting a sticker? Or you want them to do it because they know it’s good for them and for us? (Oslo, June 2, 2017, man, age unknown, headmaster of the kindergarten) I think the reward system teaches children that everything I do, I get a reward for it. I don’t think you need to reward children for being nice. You should be nice, it should come from within and not because of a kind of profit for you. (Oslo, May 25, 2017, man, 38 years old, educator) It’s behaviorism. It’s like the Super Nanny show on TV, where they have things like rewards. In this situation, they don’t think, that doesn’t make them wiser as human beings. (Field diary, Oslo, June 5, 2019, discussion with the headmistress of the kindergarten) Without denying the fact that reward systems can “work”, the discourse of these educators underlines the ephemeral nature of the results (“short-term winning”), points out the undesirable side effects (the child learns to be rewarded “for everything”) and above all denounces the general emptiness of the project: the game is not worth the candle if it does not make the child internalize the need to behave correctly through understanding the foundations of these behaviors (knowing “why it is good”). Reflecting recent changes in the social status of the child12, this argument is close to the 12 Elias (2010) articulates the moral impossibility of demanding blind obedience from children with the greater importance that children obtain in contemporary societies. In developing this tradition of thought, Wouters (2003) points out that the awareness of the need to cultivate reflexivity in children is linked to the contemporary moral regime that requires flexibility of conduct.

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educational model inspired by the Enlightenment, which aims to produce lasting dispositions in the individuals, based on reflexivity and moral sense. This education, which prioritizes the development of rationality, contradicts the neoliberal model which, in the words of Boltanski and Chiapello (1999, p. 184), values “lightness” and the emancipation of morality. It is revealing that this antagonism is present in many other spheres. Thus, in the context of the criticism of the idea of nudges, the small behavior modification devices theorized by Thaler and Sunstein (2008), we can observe the same opposition of two principles of the government of conduct. As Dubuisson-Quellier (2016) formulates it, we can oppose a behaviorist, rapid and individualizing approach, which aims to guide individuals’ choices without them realizing it (nudges), and another approach, social, slow and empowering, which seeks to build reflexivity and self-correction (educational campaigns). A second argument against stickers, less common, but highly revealing, is that this system opens the door to a feeling of failure: No rewards, it’s only their choice! [...] It’s natural, all kids want to stop diapers at some point, and… I don’t want it to be like a failure or success. When they are ready, they are ready. (Oslo, May 24, 2017, woman, 38 years old, sales consultant) Stickers, it depends on the children. For one child it works a charm, but for the other, it’s just another way of failing when they don’t get stickers. (Field diary, Oslo, June 5, 2019, discussion with the headmistress of the kindergarten) These remarks put the finger on an important dimension that the rhetoric of the devices discussed here often leaves in the dark: the management of failures. A medal always has a downside, and the reward system, however positive it may be, is discriminatory at heart, because it only makes sense if it penalizes the absence of the desired results. When we focus only on success, the system seems joyful, but what if the child fails to do what is expected of him or her? Should they be deprived of a sticker if they cannot do in the potty? Is it a “fault” if the “pee” does not come? In the case of bodily functions, sanctions, even by means of an absence of rewards, do not seem

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morally acceptable to some parents, making gamified devices problematic, if not unemployable. This is why, it seems, My Potty Calendar would like to point out: “Be a little generous – even if, from time to time, the use of potty doesn’t lead to anything, the child may still be allowed to put a sticker on it [the chart]” (author’s translation). 4.3. “Stickers are only stickers”: “good parenting” to the rescue of gamification

Material rewards arouse mistrust because of their competitive logic and because of their lucrative aspect, making people forget the true meaning of actions. But why are gamified devices used in spite of all these negative aspects? Indeed, in the interviews carried out in Oslo, several parents mentioned using the stickers, even though some of them underlined that they did not use them for the potty training, but for something else (tidying up their room, washing up, going to sleep at night). Studying the reasons for the utilization of sticker systems will allow us to understand what the mechanics of gamification refers to concretely in the practices of bringing up children and, beyond that, in commonly shared value systems. First of all, it is important to remember that when it comes to the children, everything related to play acquires a very special relevance. Even if it is the educational dimension which, a priori, catches the parent-buyer’s eye (Brougère 2018), it seems indisputable to the interviewed parents that what children like are games and everything related to them. Referring to this commonplace, parents do not make a distinction between devices that are gamified or not, they rely on the “playful” aspect, which is presented as both legitimate and effective: Sometimes children like it when it’s ludique, when they come to a store and pay for a book or a toy with theirs pacifiers. (Oslo, May 31, 2017, woman, 44 years old, journalist) There’s this Norwegian tradition of sending pacifiers to this Pirate … […] They have this famous Pirate cartoon character and he has a treasure box with pacifiers, so you send it in there and you get a diploma in return! So that’s very encouraging! (Oslo, May 23, 2017, man, 36 years old, journalist)

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These examples deal with a slightly different subject, the pacifier, but touch on related issues because, like diapers, it is a typical object for young children and from which it can be difficult to separate. The way in which parents approach the theme of “playful” rewards (using the pacifier as a coin, sending it to the Pirate who makes it his treasure) by presenting them as a priori operative reveals a powerful conjunction (childhood/game) to which gamification clings. Second, it should be noted that stickers are not always perceived as a strong and attractive enough object to be considered as an instrument of manipulation. Instead of this, they are seen as a harmless alternative to the most common enticing objects (candies, gifts, etc.). This is what emerges from the words of a mother who criticized herself for the use of rewards: When you want your child to do something, it’s better to have a good explanation to make them believe in your expectations instead of just … aim for a goal, you know. If you try to buy them in this way, it would color the way they think, in general. So that’s why I always feel a little bit bothered if I try to give them a snack or something [to convince them]. But what she [her daughter] did get was that I made a castle in the bathroom. I drew a castle that was very nice with some flags and everything, and then she got a sticker each time she tried. Because that was a process. […] Then after some tries and practices of sitting on the toilet, she sat on, and she was like sitting and sitting and telling me that she couldn’t do it. And then, in the end something came and she was so surprised! Because she saw that it actually worked! (Oslo, May 22, 2017, woman, 38 years old, administrator) This excerpt illustrates that being aware of an action’s flaws is not enough to avoid it. The practice of “tempting” children through rewards seems to be so commonplace and banal in the lives of parents that even those who, a priori, disapprove of it may resort to it. However, in this story, contrary to the sweets which are presented as a way of enticing children and which impact “the way they think”, the sticker embodies a pure good mark whose material hold is minimal. Inoffensive and anecdotal, it offers itself as an ideal medium for a “process”, the game of filling in a drawing, the aim of

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which is to overcome reticence and to carry out the first tries laying the groundwork for confidence in one’s strengths (“it actually worked!”). Thus, the fact that the interest of stickers does not last is not a problem: their role is not to offer a stable motivation, but to help to take the step. Finally, we can see that, in practice, stickers are not an overwhelming attraction that deprives the child of room for maneuver: they can simply be neglected by the child (as the mother said, at the beginning, her daughter was not very interested in stickers and it took quite a time to convince her). The third case where the use of stickers seems acceptable is when these symbolic bonuses are used not as a means of getting children to try something, but as an instrument of cooperation: I said to myself, when I have children, they gonna decide by their self to stop with diaper. I can motivate them if they say “I want to try”, and I can say “yes, sure, that’s good!” And we can make um … a sort of price to motivate them, when they start to get ready and they got the initiative. My oldest one said “I want to start to pee in the toilet”, and I said “well, if you feel you’re ready, you can get, you know, a sticker, we can put the sticker on a paper every time you poo in the toilet, you know, and after ten stickers you can have a lollipop or something”, to keep the motivation up. (Oslo, May 31, 2017, woman, 37 years old, educator) My little son started his potty training the same week he welcomed in his twin brothers. Naturally, being in the shadow of other exciting things, potty training soon became a bit uninteresting and boring. I started wondering what I could do to help my son, and one night – eureka! – I came up with the idea of a potty calendar! ((Sundby 2011), entitled Min Pottekalender, meaning My Potty Calendar, author’s translation) In the first excerpt, the use of stickers is well emphasized, but they were not used for an incentive purpose. On the contrary, this mother insisted on the fact that she consciously wanted to expect a voluntary commitment from her children. For her, it was not a question of creating a (false) motivation, but of supporting her sons’ decisions by giving them a helping hand of encouragement. The same logic of support is reflected in the way the author

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of My Potty Calendar tells the story of her invention, highlighting her desire to “help” her son when his learning process began to stagnate. What seems undesirable for these parents is to be uninvolved in their children’s education and to leave them alone with the learning. The last reason that seems to justify the use of sticker systems is the importance of the child’s participation and the consumer vein: the child acts even if only by choosing his sticker system as if he or she were choosing a toy in the store. Indeed, the active role of the child is an important principle in modern pedagogy13, while child consumption is central to the structuring of childhood in Western society, where commodities are aimed at a particular age group (Cook 2004). To illustrate this, here is an excerpt from an interview in which a father recounts how he bought My Potty Calendar to “get [his daughter] ready” to stop diapers: She really likes stickers so it worked for a while. But it only works for a while, because stickers are only stickers. […] The calendar was a big deal because she chose it herself, we went to a store and she took it. But it didn’t really last that long, this interest coming from reading and introducing books or the topic [about the transition] from using a diaper to using a toilet even though it stretched out quite a while before she became, I don’t know, toilet trained erm… the period from the decision that she wanted to quit diapers till really using a toilet wasn’t that long. (Oslo, May 30, 2017, man, 39 years old, carpenter) This father obviously had no illusions about the incentive power of stickers (“it only works for a while”). And yet this temporary effectiveness did not seem to disappoint him, what matters was the event, the active role his daughter was able to play in it and the fact that, in the end, the moment between the decision and the first tries to use the toilet “did not last that long”. Indeed, Norwegian parents are often accepting the learning process to last (and they are not in a hurry because of the nursery school demanding children

13 Even if the valorization of the active role of the child is a classic subject that is nourished by the philosophy of the Enlightenment (Garnier 1995), it is above all the New Education movement that has made the active position of the child its standard.

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to be toilet trained, as is the case in France14). What is more important for them is that the child cooperates and does not lock himself or herself into resistance by not showing himself or herself “ready” to toilet train when, in their opinion, he or she should be. Parents who do not disdain the use of gamified devices as a complement to learning do not see them as a magic wand, but display an attitude of confidence in the tool, unlike pedagogs who fear a “poisoned gift”. 4.4. Conclusion Based on the arguments to which today’s society is sensitive (the nonacceptability of behaviorist approaches), criticism of sticker systems fails to enroll all the social actors because it focuses mainly on educational principles. Contrary to education professionals for whom reflecting on educational methods is part of the job, not all parents adopt a pedagogical attitude and they are not continually preoccupied by the theoretical coherence of their educational actions. As parents, they feel responsible for the physical and emotional comfort of their children (especially if they are mothers), and, at the same time, they are obliged to bring the children up. When they buy the gamified devices or make them themselves, they do so to please the child and to be “good parents” (Martin 2014), i.e. encouraging, understanding and willing to invest in their child’s rearing. On the one hand, disciplinary methods are illegitimated, on the other hand, reasoning and explanation are not accessible to everyone requiring a great amount of specific communication skills and do not always prove to be very efficient with young children, so the sticker system appears to them as an acceptable and rather benign solution despite of its manipulative aspect. From the sociological point of view, it can be noted that by promoting educational skills and distinguishing themselves from those who poorly 14 In France, this issue does not translate into a more systematic use of gamified devices, but into the widespread use of potty books. In fact, the editorial offer of specific books whose objective is to “help” children to become toilet trained is quite large and has only progressed since 1990. The vast majority of parents interviewed in France reported having this type of book at home (intentional purchase or gift from a relative) or having borrowed them from libraries. Like the use of stickers for purposes other than toilet training, many behavioral topics are the subject of educational books (going to bed, eating, saying “hello”, etc.). However, considering the very ancient history of educational and moralizing literature, instilling good behavior through reading seems to remain in the framework of traditional pedagogy.

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master legitimate pedagogical techniques, people who criticize the use of stickers gain some social prestige (Bourdieu 1979). As for the ecological and anti-consumer arguments often put forward to condemn the use of disposable diapers (another object that facilitates the management of children’s “natural needs”), they are absent in this criticism, which does not question the overproduction of vaguely useless and unnecessary objects. This criticism is not aimed at the organizational forms of society, but at the type of individual forged through the first experiences of socialization. Still, “doing one thing for another”, is this not the very principle of wage-earning or labor for a salary? The accumulation of good marks leading to diplomas, is this not the modus operandi of the large number of institutions? In the end, in our meritocratic and capitalist societies, the “against-good marks” arguments do not seem to hold on very long, and yet they produce the effect of “good conscience” for those who mobilize them, giving the impression of having avoided the traps into which everyone has already fallen. In addition to the idea of learning as a “project” in which one gets involved in, spurred by the anticipation of material and/or symbolic profit, the devices discussed here seem to translate the “new spirit of capitalism” through a quantification of individual experience. As Boltanski and Chiapello (1999, p. 165) point out, in the neoliberal value system there is no longer a clear-cut opposition between different types of activities (work/ non-work, paid work/volunteer work). This ultimately means that any activity can be measured, accounted for, evaluated and – most importantly – sold as evidence of self-development. The experience thus becomes open to counting and to making profit: the self becomes quantified and quantifiable, both in its social and professional facets (number of “friends” or likes on social networks, CV lines, etc.) and in the body itself (counting of incorporated calories or the number of steps taken in a day, etc.)15. The toilet training through the accumulation of stickers put on the chart is an expression of this trend and only one of many others.

15 For a presentation of research on “self-numeration”, see (Dagiral et al. 2019b).

PART 3

Bodies and Subjectivities Involvement

The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

5 Digital Engagement Technologies? The Interplay of Datafication and Gamification in Quantified Self Activities

“Bravo! You have earned your Great Barrier Reef badge”! When this message is displayed on a respondent’s smartphone, it tells the recipient that they have walked the equivalent of “2,574 kilometers”. But these kilometers were not covered in Oceania, nor in a record attempt. What the application counts from a connected bracelet corresponds to the total distance travelled, walking, by this person for a year and a half, when he wears it on his wrist. For its designers, the virtual “badge” that suddenly appears – in a playful and offbeat way – translates a milestone in the measurement and recording of one’s daily walking practice, and celebrates the continued use of the connected device, in the manner of a reward. Positioned at the crossroads of preoccupations oriented toward the measurement of bodies, physical, mental, and sports activities, as well as a medical perspective, this technological field has been developing over the last fifteen years or so, making a notable place for the “use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Deterding et al. 2014, p. 5), perfectly everyday and most ordinary. This chapter therefore proposes to study the hypothesis of a “gamification” of society based on particular kinds of contemporary digital technologies concerned with people’s bodies. Rarely categorized in relation to the world of video games, or play for that matter, the devices in question nevertheless occupy a prominent place among the work of gamification specialists. These are objects, sensors, bracelets and applications grouped Chapter written by Éric DAGIRAL.

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under the label of quantified self (QS), and most often used voluntarily and personally, i.e. independently of institutional prescriptions (Pharabod et al. 2013). The diffusion of these objects and the appearance of the first uses among people concerned about measuring their steps, sleep, diet or a whole variety of indicators of physical and mental health or sports activities, have generated a large number of studies organized essentially around the following major issues: managerial practices and ethics of self; surveillance and control methods associated with the QS; forms of experience, contexts of use and study of quantification practices in both a sectoral and more transversal manner1. Often defined by its promoters as the implementation of precepts and mechanisms specifically derived from the field of video games to other social worlds, the concept of “gamification” proposes, as much as it aims to extend it, the process of generalizing playful devices to an ever-increasing set of activities. The latter can be of a personal, private or professional, individual or collective nature, and in fine, they can have a completely variable “playful” dimension, both significant and non-existent (Waltz and Deterding 2014). The vagueness that surrounds this concept seems very much due to the intertwining of the academic origins of the term with its undeniable reappropriation by design professionals, as well as to the interest of game studies researchers in extending their jurisdiction to the social sciences by the same token. If this notion must therefore be problematized from the outset, this chapter chooses to take the work of “gamification” seriously, just as contemporary sociology endeavors to analyze in detail the work of “datafication” social worlds and individuals (Denis 2018). We therefore use the term “gamification” several times to describe the process of “putting into play” and the transfer of principles and forms from video games, in order to underline its classical dimension, which is historically older than this recent formulation suggests. This is in the same way that the expression “datafication” can constitute an alternative way of naming a contemporary process of “putting into data” or “data making”, also inscribed in a long history (Ruckenstein and Schüll 2017). Therefore, what does the process of gamification – based on principles from the world of video games – of the Quantified Self, consist of? The interest in the place and role of gamification mechanisms among 1 Refer to Dagiral et al. (2019b) for a review of social science research literature on QS.

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self-tracking devices is mainly part of the critical perspective of surveillance studies, for which the quantification of forms of attention to oneself and their collective observation, at work or elsewhere, are doomed to failure (Whitson 2013). But what exactly are these mechanisms, and how do they fit into the dispositifs for quantifying individuals? More precisely, how are these mechanisms transposed, adapted and subject to “investments in form”2 by authors, theorists, designers and programers of the objects, software, applications and web interfaces characteristic of self-quantification? The analysis is positioned at the crossroads of a sociology of science and technology and a sociology that is attentive to the design and uses of digital technology in society. In order to do so, this chapter first draws on the literature relating to design theories (design, human–computer interactions (HCI), etc.) and on social science works that elaborate and discuss the notion of gamification in order to map the way in which the quantification of the self allows to thematize it, and to propose a problematized synthesis in terms of gaming formats (setting objectives allowed by setting data for activities, setting rewards, setting visibility and setting scenarios). In a secondary and rapid way, we also rely on initial interviews that address the question of these mechanisms and the place of the “gamified” content that the surveyed users encountered. They allow us to open up a question as to the actual meanings produced by these gamified contents and their reception by users. We therefore propose, first of all, an analysis of four play formats designed at least in part from game design elements, and considered here as sociotechnical scripts (Akrich 1987). We aim to propose a typology of the forms taken by gamification in the context of people’s self-quantification availability and practices (section 5.1). We then propose (section 5.2) an analysis of gamification in terms of a sum of attempts to produce and maintain the engagement of individuals in these technologies. Characterizing gamification as a central facet of the work of user enrollment and configuration also invites a discussion of the limits of the performativity of such mechanisms, which are only partly the result of game design3. 2 In this sense, “investments in form” designate “very varied formatting operations, from the material constraint of standardization to the moral imperative of engagement, passing through the obligation of agreements” (Thévenot 1986, p. 5, author’s translation). 3 This publication was produced as part of the ANR research project “QUANTISELF” (ANR16-CE26-0009) for which we thank the entire team. Thanks also to the coordinators and reviewers of the book, as well as to Vinciane Zabban, for their valuable suggestions.

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5.1. The formats of gamification in self-tracking devices What are the formats of “gamification” when it comes to self-quantification everyday practices? What can we do and how can we account for a number of steps in a relevant way for the user of a connected watch? How can we represent sleep duration, the frequency of food intake or the number of steps climbed during a week? The range of self-quantification practices used by individuals is so wide that it is valuable to begin their presentation by relying on the categorizations produced by computer device design theorists. The ergonomist Moustafa Zouinar proposes in this perspective an organization of “self-measurement systems” according to four thematic and chronological dimensions of self-quantification activities (Zouinar 2019, pp. 87–100, author’s translation): 1) data recording; 2) their restitution to the user; 3) setting and monitoring objectives; 4) the modalities of data sharing. Such a presentation makes it possible to categorize a very large variety of heterogeneous devices produced and marketed as connected objects and applications, both paid and free. We therefore focus here on theoretical analyses specifically devoted to gamification issues and their underlying technical mechanisms. 5.1.1. Playing the gamification card: putting data traces into play The first way to consider the use of practices that quantify walking, sleeping, eating and other activities is to encourage people to record their activities, and to make this practice enjoyable, even fun. This objective of the designers’ work, while it has its own literature, is not the best informed, or rather it is not thematized as such in terms of gamification. This is probably due to the fact that the great technological promise of QS lies in the automation of the act of recording: carrying a recording device is supposed to be sufficient, and therefore there is no need to motivate people to carry it,

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rather to prevent them from forgetting the equipment4. The work of gamification is crucial to make “one’s” data available to the user: figures, averages and graphical visualizations that can be displayed according to different time scales (day, week, month, annual synthesis, etc.) are all “investments in form” (Thévenot 1986) designed to provide support for interpretation. The design of “dashboards” typical of self-tracking applications and interfaces is likely to include elements characteristic of the video game world – but not only – as illustrated in section 5.1.2. From this perspective, datafication is a pre-requisite and a condition of possibility for gamification. Here, the action of “gamification” refers to a specific work of shaping the data so that it is of interest to and holds the attention of the person being quantified in return. 5.1.2. Setting goals, notifying and focusing attention At 10:32 a.m., Olivier is in a meeting when he feels his bracelet vibrating discreetly, advising him to go stretch his legs and break with a nonrecommended sedentary lifestyle. In most connected objects and their associated applications, information from traces of activity is not just shaped and then made available. Two other types of major form investments are generally proposed. The first one consists of setting objectives for the activities in question, and the second one associates reports to monitor the achievement of these objectives (reaching a certain number of steps, sleeping at specific times, not exceeding a certain heart rate, etc.), which are initially configured by default by the designers, and can be adjusted by the users. Juho Hamari, a Finnish researcher positioned at the crossroads of management, game studies and human–computer interaction, is one of the very active promoters of the notion of gamification. He proposes an analysis of the setting of objectives in terms of the design of self-tracking devices, of which he makes the central device of what he qualifies, along with others and in a classic psychological context, as “motivational technologies” (Hamari et al. 2018).

4 One way to guarantee this is, for example, by sending an email and various notifications to the user to let them know that their device will soon run out of battery power. Because some of the information is not captured, devices may encourage users to enter it manually: “Start recording your food (search and record foods for their carbohydrate, fat and protein composition)”. The form is more of a guide and tutorial than a game.

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From this perspective, “motivational design” breaks down objectives within the scope of motivation into various categories and differentiates several characteristic attributes: methods of setting objectives allowing selfregulation by individuals, differentiation according to the types of objectives (reaching a specific state, losing weight, promoting the monitoring of a process rather than a final objective) or the orientation of objectives (control, seeking objectification or avoidance). Embedded in psychology, this current of design, well present in the production of digital services, aims to achieve measuring and improve the efficiency and productivity associated with devices, following a general idea according to which designers give themselves as a professional horizon to “configure” users and their uses (Woolgar 1991), opening up possibilities and closing others. In this perspective, QS devices do have a family resemblance with those of video games: they are based on the structural principles of feedback – feedback loops – also present in the organizing principles of games. The configuration of a sound to signal a threshold or a result reached is part of this logic. In the same way, the vibration of a bracelet telling its owner to get up to go for a walk is a manifestation of action triggering mechanisms (joystick). The information presented by a game interface (relevant indicators, numbers, scores, etc.) can be translated and extended in a self-measurement application: for example, by encouraging user-players to immerse themselves in the game, to maintain or improve their performance, by organizing activities into levels or by classifying individuals according to their results to make them a source of motivation and recognition (reward system) throughout the stages designed by the designers. Even more generally, video games and QS tools have in common that they are, in part, interactive “attention” technologies (Kessous et al. 2010). Many researchers at the crossroads of Human Machine Interface, design, ergonomics and management point to the multiplication, or even generalization of such “mechanisms” within data analysis and monitoring systems, in terms of well-being (generalist QS applications) but also health. The numerous reviews of literature, services and chronic disease management systems, whose normative aims are explicit (Morschheuser et al. 2017), discuss the supposed benefits and limits for patients (Chen et al. 2017). In their attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of these motivational devices, also called “persuasive” devices (Fogg 2002), published in Health Informatics Journal, Orji and Moffatt (2018) point out that tracking and

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monitoring are present among a large number of devices studied (34 out of a total of 85), followed by feedback mechanisms. The model most mobilized in these specialized studies of medical contexts, the “transtheoretical” model of change, joins those presented here, namely, those of the theory of “goal setting” and “social conformity” (Orji and Moffatt 2018, p. 72). The first of these, the transtheoretical model, developed in the 1970s, proposes a theory of change in human behavior. It is fundamentally based on psychological theories that articulate a set of phases to explain change, from the pre-setting of an objective to its achievement, including a phase of relapse. According to the proponents of such an approach, it is possible to model, and therefore cause, a change in an individual’s behavior. Zouinar (2019) shows the extent to which the precepts on which the QS tools are based partly integrate these representations and mechanisms: The main theoretical sources used are psychological theories of motivation and behavioral change. […] Based on these theories, researchers have designed and implemented several motivation and behavior change techniques in different types of selfmeasurement systems. (Zouinar 2019, p. 110, author’s translation) 5.1.3. Rewarding to motivate: scores, badges and challenges of software systems Physical activity – 1 day out of 5: your first day is spent as a letter in the mail. Great job! (Message from a QS application) Previous work is also very consistent in pointing out that if the notion of gamification has a heuristic dimension in terms of digital design, it has a lot to do with the presence of a series of elements that are a priori emblematic of the world of play, and particularly of certain video games: rewards, points, credits, scoreboards, rankings, competition, forms of cooperation and collaboration, etc. Among these, the role of self-tracking applications of badges, accomplishments and other individual (and much more rarely collective) trophies is particularly consequential and visible. This information, generally arranged from a dashboard structuring the many different types of information represented, can be coupled with level

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systems, encourage progression (and retention in the environment) through leveling and encourage use of “challenges” and other “quests” (Miller et al. 2014, in particular). In addition to health devices, those oriented toward sports integrate, not surprisingly, competitive precepts and sophisticated ranking and performance measurement tools. It must be noted that these artifacts are part of the observation shared by this body of work of a “gamification” of digital technologies oriented toward self-care, well-being, health and physical and possibly sporting activities of individuals. About 10 years after their emergence, the most numerous uses of QS tools are still the general public uses initiated mainly at the initiative of individuals themselves. However, initial work is documenting projects for the internalization of such digital objects and the issues at stake in organizations, which rely on these resources both to motivate their employees and to try to meet the demands of health and well-being in the workplace. Prolonging the import of forms of play in companies at the intersection of challenges, role-playing games or serious games (Savignac 2017a), the use of connected objects in wellness programs is analyzed in terms of “managing job insecurity”. The work of British researcher Phoebe Moore is studying how the integration of considerations linked to employee well-being at work involves in particular equipping employees with tools for self-measurement and/or posture maintenance of the body, in order to encourage them to act in regard to themselves from a preventive perspective. According to her, the support of these programs in terms of digital tools mainly reinforces the empowerment of individuals in terms of health and wellbeing in the workplace. The work satisfaction indicators articulated in these programs usually underpin efficiency and productivity guidelines, and are typically organized in the context of challenges that put individuals and teams in these companies in competition with each other in a playful environment (Moore 2018). 5.1.4. Making visible: comparing, sharing and chatting about self-tracking activities Your weekly Fitbit progress report: last week’s winner for the “Step” category. Lead fun challenges with your loved ones to motivate you to move more. (Messages from a QS application)

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The networking of people and its quantification are accomplished through digital social networking platforms. Most self-quantification applications – both generalist and specialized – include functions for connecting users: adding “contacts” to a list allows users to notify and be notified in return, in various formats. The coupling of Social Network Systems (SNS) to connected objects is above all a condition for the possibility of the issues mentioned immediately above, in order to measure oneself against others: scoreboards and performance monitoring combining anonymity, knowledge, amateurs but also professional athletes (in the case of an application used by cyclists (see Lupton et al. 2018). If equivalence between oneself and others is one of the promises of these systems, their visibility can be very limited and is generally subject to fine regulation: questions of well-being, health or sport, to be limited to these registers alone, can also be part of very different sharing methods depending on the individual. Above all, in line with what the history of the Internet shows, this information is above all staged in the following way so as to provoke and sustain conversations, both among relatives and with strangers (Cardon and Prior 2016). Discussing one’s practice, comparing approaches or supporting each other are, once again, activities envisaged by design theories as emerging effects likely to reinforce the intensity of the practice and thus improve the chances of achieving the objectives set. Chris Lampe, who works specifically on the design and uses of SNS, thus underlines the common point between this type of device and video game environments: First, they are constrained environments where people engage in social interaction, but often without the full range of social cues that exist in other forms of interaction. Second, both environments are designed, which means that developers are making choices about which features are going to be used to support social interaction. (Lampe 2014, p. 463) 5.1.5. Scripting practices, suggesting paths for exploration Let us end this review of what we have called the “gamification formats” with a format that seems to us to be overlooked by the analyses in HMI, ergonomics and management. These are the scripted formats that populate self-quantification applications, and can take the form of “challenges and

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avenues”5, “training” – the format of the program – and all kinds of invitations: “find simple ways to make the most of your days to achieve your step goals. Get involved! Participate!”, “run a virtual race against your friends in real places”, etc. These script elements, which may or may not have “unlockable” levels associated with them, are true sociotechnical “scripts” in the sense of Akrich (1987). Their ambition is both to encourage users to continue using the system and to deepen their experience and knowledge of it, while providing projects to be implemented, associated with imaged user figures. In these exploratory perspectives, the objectives are assigned by the designers and are likely to be invisible: if the sensors provide data according to which the script can take place, the thresholds are crossed without necessarily remaining confronted with the figures. Thus, the digital devices, grouped under the category of quantified self, offer a wide range of formats involving people’s activities. From the data collected and put into a database, various indicators are created, which are the subject of a formatting work. The promoters of the QS have insisted above all on the reflexive dimension made possible by the confrontation with personal data, and have called for a personal work of reanalyzing the data provided by these services thanks to guaranteed access to “raw data” free of the designers’ perspective. However, it is clear that designers’ investments in training in this area play a major role for the vast majority of users. The current collective survey on the actual uses of their personal data by the respondents of the “Quantiself” project seems to underline how rare these are. The more researchers move away from the groups of enthusiasts involved in the dissemination of the QS movement, the rarer the recovery of raw data and their individual reanalysis remain. Consequently, the formats in which quantification practices are brought into play play a significant role in the discovery of devices by their users. Formats for data presentation, setting objectives, notification and rewards, social visibility and exploration: each of these dimensions can be linked to gamification considerations. Conceptualization in terms of gamification has a metaphorical dimension (Wyatt 2004): the notion has a primarily analytical 5 “Go down this trail to see incredible waterfalls: ‘Adventure’ is a non-competitive challenge in which participants walk virtually on a trail for several days, allowing them to better appreciate some picturesque moments, learn more about health and fitness and reach their daily destinations. Monuments mark important milestones along the route and are accompanied by panoramic photos”.

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and interpretative scope, the advantage of which we have highlighted in terms of design theories. However, the state of empirical work in regard to the production of self-tracking technologies does not yet allow us to empirically document the work of designers (objects, user interface, user experience, etc.) in this area, and how the theories evoked are actually mobilized and adapted – or not, and how? – in their concrete projects, as it is customary to proceed in sociology of science and technology (Suchman 1987; Bucciarelli 1994). However, the work of gamification, whose main issues and concrete formats we have listed, is not exclusively metaphorical, far from it. Mechanisms from the world of video games do find a field of expression and reconfiguration among developers of self-measurement tools. However, it would be naive to limit the genesis of these mechanisms to the world of video games alone, as the proposed incursion into psychological theories and the history of computer science, with the notion of feedback, remind us. It seems undeniable, however, that at the heart of the investments in form characteristic of QS – whether it be systems and functionalities for objectives, rewards, visibility and sharing, or scripting – the work of shaping (activity data dashboards, alerts, etc.) is also a work of play and therefore of gamification. 5.2. Shaping engagement inside and through self-tracking devices This section seeks to analyze these “gamification formats” in terms of the work of producing and maintaining user “engagement”, which we assume is a central focus. This orientation of design work as a search for the intensification of user engagement has already been analyzed at length in relation to digital devices, and particularly from the angle of the ins and outs of an “attention economy” (Kessous et al. 2010), and more generally of the centrality of “algorithmic calculations” and their market effects (Cardon 2015) in digital worlds. 5.2.1. Engagement technologies at the crossroads of behavioral psychology, cybernetics and the datafication of human Whether they are described by the softer term “motivational” or by the even more radically deterministic term “persuasive”, computer technologies conceptualized by engineering sciences and psychology have in common that they are primarily “behavioral” technologies. Seen through their potential for influencing the “human factor”, they promise to equip and

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operationalize a behavioralist project of self-concern anchored in institutional norms (Bergeron et al. 2018; Zouinar 2019), a psychological project that is discussed even in works devoted to the notion of gamification. Thus, Linehan et al. (2014, p. 81) write: “Of the many fields within psychology, behavior analysis has devoted itself to precision in the understanding of, and perhaps more importantly the control of, human behavior”. In following this thread, gamification projects are part of a long cybernetic tradition, as analyzed by the sociologist of science Andrew Pickering (2019), to whom we return to the concept of “engagement techniques” that he elaborates on the – more general – framework of the Internet of Things. In a similar vein, Bowker (1993) has insisted on an interdisciplinary cybernetic filiation in which behavioral psychology is central, in order to analyze the claim to “universalism” of this type of approach. In this perspective, notifications based on the analysis of data recorded from the sensors worn by individuals include the famous feedback loops characteristic of cybernetics. Gamification mechanisms are part of this connection insofar as they propose to provide universal “solutions” that can be addressed to and engage any person, whoever he or she may be, via the devices. If the mechanisms of engagement proposed are in theory the same, the promise of personalization is based on the adjustment of the analysis to the singular characteristics of individuals. However, the promise of adjustment to particular behaviors and activities is only possible through the extension of the work of giving data on human behaviors, movements and activities previously quantified according to conventions – established or renewed – likely to propose knowledge and support for action (Desrosières 1993; Martin 2020). In the context of self-tracking, as in other contexts, this work, as classic as it is ancient, is problematized through the expression “datafication”, whose formation is of the same type as “gamification”. Used to insist on the contemporary centrality of the processes of digital data fabrication, this term reaffirms well-known results of the sociology of science and technology: however digital they may be, data are not given and are the object of production work – and Gitelman (2013) reminds us that there is no such thing as “raw” data. In the field of health, anthropologists Minna Ruckenstein and Natasha Schüll propose a cautious examination of the promises linked to the effects of such data (around the so-called “personalized” medicine), while making room for neologism:

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An important starting place for social-scientific scholarship on the datafication of health is the recognition that this vision is mostly speculative, promissory, and, as yet, unrealized; what is needed, above all, are rigorous accounts of the actual reality of datafication as it takes shape in diverse practices, and, quite often, twists in unforeseen directions. (Ruckenstein and Schüll 2017, p. 262) What we prefer to describe in by the expression “datafication” allows us to nuance the apparent contemporaneity of such processes, while recognizing the relevance of the questions raised around this notion, and that the authors cut according to the angle of the power related to the “datafied power”, their increasing place in daily life activities, and finally the variety of forms of mediation between data and humans. These researchers call for a more detailed study of design work and how designers “conceive self-care” in their products in the form of motivational feedback loops and “micronudges” that reinforce some behaviors and discourage others. In short, in the case of self-quantification and self-tracking technologies, the question of the forms of involvement of activities and their meanings is fundamentally based on prior data work, the latter representing a condition of possibility of the mechanisms presented in section 5.1, in order to engage people in adopting a perspective of self-care mediated by technical interfaces. 5.2.2. Engaging and maintaining the user in his or her sensors The battery level of your Charge 2 is low. Recharge your battery as soon as possible. […] Have a good walk! (Message from a QS application) This alert message undeniably falls into the category of those who notify and anticipate an interruption of use that many people actually fear. Although representing a useful reminder for many users who want to quantify their actions on a continuous basis, this type of notification is also classified in the series of inconveniences and unwanted solicitations by other self-trackers. For if the configuration of self-concern and reflexivity through mechanisms of play represents the first promise of these digital devices, their analysis also highlights another type of dimension. The construction of play is also a matter of “capturing the client” (Cochoy 2004) in order to better attach it to its connected sensors. Producers of self-tracking technologies use and

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adapt the mechanisms of play, both to make the promise of tracking effective, and in the hope of retaining their consumers and transforming them into effective users, which is not self-evident. In fact, our survey of users and designers alike supports other analyses of professional discourse deploring the difficulty of retaining users beyond the first 3 months of discovering the device. While we do not have any official measures provided by these companies, they all agree on this point: retaining users after the very first months of exploration, once the effect of novelty and discovery of the object and the past service have been achieved, is a central issue, and it is worthwhile relying on techniques to retain and maintain – or even intensify – the engagement6. Formal investments, such as “objectives”, “notifications” or “scores and badges”, among others, help to achieve this retention objective, when they do not aim at the same time to intensify the practice of already regular users. Most services provide for notifications – via the bracelet, and/or by sending emails, etc. – to be sent to the user. Most services provide for notifications – via the bracelet, and/or by sending emails, etc. – to prevent service interruption, such as in the case of a flat battery, or even abandonment, by means of subsequent invitations and incentives. More than just making the user experience fun, it is therefore a matter of ensuring the continuity and sustainability of this experience by means of these layouts, including sociability features, which are inseparably designed to enable the production of meanings on the one hand, and to encourage commitment and maintain the practice of quantification on the other hand. 5.2.3. To quantify oneself in order to play with oneself? Classically, one of the notable contributions of the sociology of uses is to underline the great variability of the quantification practices of individuals (Lupton 2016, for a synthesis; Dagiral et al. 2019a; Pharabod 2019). This result is no less interesting insofar as it points to a paradox. On the one hand, proven mechanisms, imported from the world of video games, would be supposed to complete the process of enrolling curious users in intense use at all times. This amounts, in the end, to making this technology a determinant of social practices of self-measurement. At the same time, however, 6 The notion of “retention” has been a key element for video game producing organizations for several years now, and it is particularly discussed in connection with the transformations in business models and forms of pricing and payment for video games – including the possibility of their being free and the place of advertising content. The question of effective mechanisms for keeping players in practice is central to this issue (Davidovici-Nora 2014).

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interviews conducted with users underline how ambivalent the use of these devices is: they simultaneously expect directed and programatic help, a contribution toward a more or less clear and precise objective, for example, the achievement of a change7, and/or a less oriented exploration, not very much governed by an explicit expectation. An essential tension emerges from this assembly of self-projections: for some individuals, it consists of “trapping themselves” by relying on technology: At least it brings me back to what I really did … not walking enough, if I had forgotten or did not want to go running, in short I still hope that it will force me to stick to it, when I know that deep down I’m incapable of doing so! […] When I bought it, it was to compel me, to finally get there … (Mathieu, 43 years old, employee) On a scale ranging from engagement to disengagement, the scope of the practices observed is all the more extensive since the commitment to automating data collection is often accompanied by a dimension, if not of disengagement, at least of delegation to the device(s) of forms of self-care, reserving the work of reflexivity for targeted moments. Appropriating a selfmeasurement bracelet and its mobile application can in some cases be akin to the desire for “self-play”, with or without integrated gamification devices. This logic is partly in line with that of the promoters of “nudge” technologies, designed to guide behavior toward virtuous horizons and respect the agenda of public prevention policies, to continue with the health issue. What political science analyzes from the perspective of “libertarian paternalism” (Thaler and Sunstein 2008) concerns a wide range of fields, including play. The combined analysis, by Science & Technology Studies and economic sociology, of the mechanisms of gambling and their regulation has highlighted how much the design of slot machines renews the question of the production of “addiction by design” (Schüll 2012), or how a policy of monetary gains in gambling can claim to “govern behaviors” (Trespeuch 2016). Each time, empirical surveys attentive to the depth of social practices have underlined the fact that technologies do not radically, and even very little, determine the ways in which individuals do things, as illustrated by the following comments, among many others: 7 Pharabod et al. (2013) heuristically distinguish several measurement horizons, themselves articulated to distinct objectives: performance measures, monitoring and routinization.

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It’s the coaching side, in my opinion, that goes a bit too far: it’s insistent, repetitive … It’s a bit ridiculous by dint of wanting to motivate. And the badges are the height of ridicule […], but I was able to stop [i.e. disable] the main thing. Sometimes I even think about changing to something more serious, something a little more medical, which is not bad, but I’m not going to do that. It’s a gadget, it makes it a little gadget-like. It’s nice to discover, maybe at the beginning, for people who want to feel supported … (Justine, 40 years old, artistic director) I use it on my own, for myself, and these messages seem to want to put you in a kind of competition with others or with yourself […]. While it amused me once or twice, I took the time to disable more and more notifications early on, in the first few weeks, because it was intrusive […]. No, more than the messages on my smartphone – I’m used to it with Messenger, the news is still on – it was the emails every week and even more often … The worst was the messages telling you to get up, to go for a walk, with the bracelet vibrating every hour when you are working at your desk! (Jérémie, 32 years old, marketing) Designers have long struggled, and for good reason, to “configure” the character of a single, homogeneous or average user (Oudshoorn et al. 2014). As social science research on the development of media and communication tools has shown, techniques struggle to produce unambiguous effects, far from the power that is often spontaneously granted to them. The uses of connected objects of self-measurement are no exception to this observation: in the end, people own, transform and even simply avoid this tool, this function or this recommendation. Although designers are working hard to increase engagement with the devices they produce, the intertwining work of interpretation and decoding, coupled with the dynamics of social practices at work, jointly contribute to empowering users to shape technologies, including digital technologies. As part of a design process, the path of gamification also seems quite likely to falter.

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5.3. Conclusion Considered by its enthusiasts as a promise to re-enchant the world, bringing effective solutions that can be applied to countless human activities, the notion of gamification contributes to directing attention to the power of technology designers. Gamification professionals are to be found among designers, developers, marketing workers and some of the design theorists at the heart of this chapter. The production of software applications associated with the spread of smartphones plays a decisive role in the development of this metaphor. Whether it is the transposition of principles of exploration, scoring and classification to urban consumption since the success of the Foursquare application (Frith 2013), or the reconfiguration of geolocalized games on cell phones (Licoppe 2017), the hypothesis of a gamification of daily life certainly invites a careful exploration of the ways in which the world and human activities are computerized and put into data. It must be noted that the reception of this notion within the social sciences is not without a certain skepticism, even outright hostility. Thus, gamification is an emblematic case of “bullshit” according to Ian Bogost (2015), the beloved game studies scholar. Bogost questions the heuristic fertility of a term that is primarily forged by the gaming consulting industry, forgetting the long history of the precepts that constitute it. For other sociological authors, it embodies, in a more general way, a contemporary modality of the rationalization process, which it is a question of refusing or subverting – preferring a “bottom-up approach” to playfulness that is distinct from the dominant mechanisms that characterize it in their eyes (Woodcock and Johnson 2018). However, the analysis of the case of self-tracking technologies first invites us to take seriously the work of bringing digital devices into play, for at least two reasons. The first is that of the place and effects of a “digital culture” closely associated with the presence of video games among the practices and representations of programers. As the sociologist Christine Hine pointed out as early as 2000, digital technology is in a way an intrinsically playful medium. While this chapter places particular emphasis on the roles of the concept of “feedback” and behavioral psychology in the theories and work of designers, it nonetheless recognizes the combined influence of the world of video games and the promoters of the notion of gamification within it and beyond. A part of the literature mobilized above attests precisely to these crossed reflections. The second reason concerns the

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interweaving of three notions (all three constructed in the form of “-ification”) discussed and articulated in this chapter: gamification, datafication and quantification. Each of these notions is intended to characterize a processual regime of action based on the joint establishment of conventions and investments of form, the last of the three being the most classically inscribed in a social science question, through the current of a “historical sociology of quantification”. This is why we have proposed following, for the two others, the current academic proposals of “gamification” and – in a standard way in a STS approach – of “datafication”, whereas in French we originally chose to talk about “mise en jeu” (“putting into game”) and “mise en données” (“putting into data”) in order to highlight the common nature of their underlying operations. While the interest of the hypothesis of a gamification of society is as fascinating as it is undeniable, the interest of a social science perspective concerned with empirically studying the limits to the deterministic pretension of technical devices remains undeniable: as the sociology of video games has already emphasized, the game as a device and an arrangement of rules struggles to contain within itself and to determine in a radical way the extent of the practices that it solicits and generates (Berry 2007; Zabban 2009). The mechanistic vision associated with their design, and which sometimes underpins the uses of games, struggles to account for the practices observed: games do not produce the same effects on all their players according to their social characteristics and ages of life, just as QS devices remain subject to plural interpretations and practices.

6 The “Gamblification” of Life or the Extension of the Gambling Domain: Words from Passionate Gamblers in France and Belgium

Poker is a super important part of my life. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. (Rodolphe, amateur poker player) Gambling takes you day and night, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. (Mark, compulsive gambler) It is difficult to know if we play today more than before, but it is clear that game are increasingly present in our contemporary societies (Henriot 1989; Dechambre 2017). Indeed, while game has long reigned in the sphere of leisure (Dumazedier 1962, pp. 32–34), its empire now extends to areas that are said to be more “serious”. For example, we can speak of “serious games” to qualify “videogame” devices (Alvarez and Djaouti 2010, author’s translation) close to video games that “do not have entertainment, enjoyment or fun as their primary purpose” (Chen and Michael 2005), but which precisely “uses entertainment to further government or corporate training, education, health, public policy, and strategic communication objectives”. As this current book to which we are contributing shows, the term “gamification” will also be used to designate, for example, the integration of certain “game principles” into “work or training or marketing processes” Chapter written by Aymeric BRODY.

The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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(Savignac 2017a, p. 15). From leisure to work, education, politics or health, all spheres of life would potentially be concerned, to the point that life itself would, according to some, be “invaded by game” (Cotta 1993, author’s translation). It is in this context of the “gamification of life” (Silva 2013) that we undertook in the mid-2000s our first research on gambling practices, as an “extended case study” (Burawoy 2003) of this extension process of the gaming domain. We were led to believe that gaming in general, and gambling in particular, was becoming an increasingly important part of our lives, and of the lives of players and gamblers primarily. In addition to the development of the Internet gambling – first and foremost online sports betting and poker – which contributed to bringing these games into the home and making them an integral part of the daily lives of those who play them (via computers, smartphones and other tablets), gambling as a whole was becoming more and more accessible to as many people as possible1. The very image of gambling seems to have changed. If, on the one hand, gambling addiction was beginning to focus the attention of those working in the field – not only health professionals, but also gambling operators and policy makers – to the point of becoming a real public health problem at the turn of the decade, on the other hand, ordinary gambling practices were encouraged, sometimes with a great deal of publicity (Mangel 2009). Thus, the “medicalization of the most intense gambling behaviors” was paradoxically accompanied by a “revalorization of gambling” in favor of a “legitimization of so-called responsible gambling” (Amadieu 2013, author’s translation). Development, accessibility, medicalization and revalorization, these would be the four pivotal points of this process of extension of the gambling domain that we propose to name here “gamblification”. After giving a broad definition of this still emerging concept, we will try, through this chapter, to justify its use based on the various data available to us. First, we will rely on statistical data produced in France and Belgium, in order to grasp the extent of gambling development in these two countries. Second, we will turn to the gamblers themselves to try to find out to what extent this phenomenon can 1 In France, this process was made possible by the progressive liberalization of the gambling market, which began in 2010 with the opening of the online gambling sector to competition – allowing millions of Internet users to play horse betting, sports betting and poker on sites approved by an independent authority (ARJEL) – and is currently being pursued with the privatization and stock market listing of La Française des Jeux.

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have an effect on their daily lives. In order to do so, we will focus specifically on two populations of gamblers with whom we conducted the survey in recent years: amateur poker players and so-called compulsive gamblers. 6.1. Surveying gamblers and collecting their life stories Following a socio-anthropological approach centered on gambling practices, we first looked at the practice of a game, poker, with a particular interest in gamblers presenting themselves as “amateur poker players”, in the sense that they make the gambling game a leisure activity like any other (Brody 2015a). This initial research is based on a survey conducted between 2006 and 2011 in different situations, whether in private circles, on the Internet or during a large poker tournament bringing together several thousand amateur players across France. In addition to the observation work carried out in situ, the survey also made it possible to conduct some 60 interviews and collect nearly a thousand questionnaires from the players encountered in the field. The results of this survey finally led to writing a doctoral thesis, defended in 2015, on the gambling practices of these amateur poker players (Brody 2015b)2. While this initial research consisted of looking at the issue of gambling from the perspective of leisure by focusing on ordinary gambling practices (Brody 2015c), our postdoctoral research then led us to reverse the angle of analysis, this time to address the problem of gambling addiction. While pursuing the socio-anthropological approach that we took during our thesis, we then began a second investigation within different clinical or associative structures specialized in the support of so-called pathological or compulsive gamblers. Thus, we conducted a field survey among the members of a selfhelp group such as Gamblers Anonymous, meeting weekly in Brussels3. 2 This thesis project carried out within the Centre de rechercheinteruniversitaire, expérience, ressourcesculturelles, éducation (EXPERICE) received funding from the université Paris 13 (in the form of a doctoral contract) and research assistance from the Jeu et sociétés forum (now GIS). 3 Gamblers Anonymous is an association created in the United States in 1957, now present on five continents, whose goal is to bring together so-called compulsive gamblers to help each other in their “journey of recovery”, by following a 12-step program leading them notably toward abstinence but also toward another way of life based on moral and spiritual values such as “tolerance”, “solidarity”, “sincerity”, “honesty”, “dignity” and “respect” (“Fascicule des Joueursanonymes de Bruxelles – La charte des valeurs”).

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Between July 2018 and June 2019, we followed these “compulsive gamblers” in their “recovery journey” (to use their own words), conducting both direct observations during their group meetings and individual interviews with those who volunteered. In total, we attended 19 meetings and met with about 20 gamblers, seven of whom – out of a dozen regular members – agreed to give us in-depth interviews focused on their life stories4. In addition to the statistical data that we will mobilize beforehand to identify the overall context of our research, this chapter is therefore essentially based on the data we collected from both amateur poker players and compulsive gamblers in this self-help group. By looking at gambling as a leisure activity as well as an addiction, we will try to show that both are not “affected”5 in the same way by this extension of the gambling domain that we tried to objectify. According to this hypothesis, the process of “gamblification” in question would proceed both from the global context and from the empirical reality of a social phenomenon that is not without problems for the gamblers themselves. In this regard, it should be noted that our approach to gambling is that of a sociologist who, without having a firm idea about the practice of gambling, seeks to understand the meaning of gambling and the place it occupies in the daily lives of gamblers. It is precisely this comprehensive approach that led us to formulate the hypothesis of a “gamblification” of society through the invasion of gamblers’ lives. 6.2. Concept of gamblification What exactly is meant by “gamblification”? Since the term “gambling” refers to gambling and betting practices, the neologism “gamblification” could be literally understood as making these practices possible and accessible where they are not yet. By speaking of an “extension of the gambling domain”, we are therefore only following the literal meaning of the term, but in doing so, we broaden somewhat the scope of the concept as it is currently used in the scientific literature. In fact, the word “gamblification” 4 Funded for 2 years as part of a European program called Move-in Louvain (Action Marie Curie), this postdoctoral research was carried out at the Centre d’anthropologie, sociologie, psychologie – études et recherches (CASPER) at the Université Saint-Louis –Bruxelles. 5 Here we understand the expression “being affected” in a broad sense, which in this case refers to the concrete effect that a social phenomenon can have on individuals, including at the psychological level.

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is used more today – in connection with the concept of “gamification” – to describe the import of certain “game principles” from gambling in the context of a gambling practice or situation that is not a priori gambling, such as sports or video games. In the case of sports, the principle is well known since it is a matter of allowing spectators of a sports competition to bet on the result or the course of the game. In other words, the “gamblification of sport” consists first and foremost of making the practice of sports betting possible and accessible. There is therefore nothing very new, except that the phenomenon is now taking on forms that are original to say the least, such as with “virtual sport” (Lopez-Gonzalez and Griffiths 2016, 2017). Authorized in Belgium but forbidden in France, this video game device consists, as its name suggests, of betting on a virtual sports event – such as a soccer match or a horse race – whose result and progress are determined by an algorithm based essentially on chance. The originality of this new practice of sports betting lies in the fact that it does not require the presence of sportsmen and women. Halfway between sports betting, slot machines and video games, virtual sports are one of the most revealing examples of this sport gamblification process whose dynamics converge with the development of online betting (Lopez-Gonzalez and Griffiths 2016). In the field of video games, the gamblification process takes equally original forms (Niels and Thorens 2015; Kairouz 2018), as with loot boxes, these sorts of paid lotteries integrated into video games that allow players to randomly obtain certain “accessories” proving useful for progressing more quickly within the game (Commission des Jeux de hasard 2018). Admittedly, the loot boxes first of all monetize video games, by reinforcing the pay-to-win logic, but they also contribute to their gamblification (Johnson 2018), in the sense that it is a question of “[introducing] into the game characteristics that are specific to games of chance and money” (Kairouz and Savard 2018, author’s translation), such as the principle of random draws or monetary stakes. In addition to loot boxes, we could also mention certain video games, such as The Sims, Grand Theft Auto or Far Cry, which give players the possibility of virtually entering a casino or a gambling room and sitting, for example, at a poker table, while pursuing the goal sought within the game (Niels and Thorens 2015). While the money put into play here is “virtual”, it is indeed a question of introducing gambling situations into a video game system that is not a priori gambling.

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This is the meaning currently attributed to the concept of gamblification, that of a “hybridization” or “convergence” (Gainsbury et al. 2015) between gambling games and other forms of games, such as sports games or video games. If we follow Henriot (1989), such a phenomenon could also extend to other types of games since, according to him, “any game, whatever it is, can be a source of betting and be coupled with gambling” (Henriot 1989, p. 213, author’s translation). At any rate, this would justify the success of the concept of gamblification in the field of (cashless) gambling, since all games are, so to speak, “gamblifiable”. 6.3. For a broader definition of the concept However, we believe that the interest of the gamblification concept goes beyond game boundaries. This is at least what certain extensions of the field of the concept in the scientific literature would tend to prove. In addition to this convergence between gambling and certain playful practices such as sports or video games, the term seems to apply to other sectors of activity that are not necessarily of the game order. For example, social networks have contributed to the development of online gambling over the past decade. Consider applications such as Zynga Poker on Facebook which, without presenting itself as an online gambling site, offers its users the possibility of playing poker on the network (Gatto 2016). Like the video games mentioned above, these applications are not played for “real” money, but by simulating gambling, they are an excellent appealing product for online gambling sites, as several studies have shown (Kim et al. 2015; Gainsbury et al. 2016). In addition, the concept of gamblification is often used to qualify, beyond gambling itself, certain advertising or marketing methods allowing the gambling industry to establish itself in new activity sectors and, consequently, to address new audiences. To take the example of sports, this will involve, for example, sponsoring teams or enlisting sportsmen and women to advertise a gambling operator (McMullan and Miller 2008; Lopez-Gonzalez and Griffiths 2016, 2017). Without transforming the activity itself, these advertisements gradually become part of the game’s “decor” to the point of making it a simple medium for a bet: “no bet no game”, says for example the advertising slogan of an online sports betting site (Betclic) operating in both France and Belgium.

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According to Lopez-Gonzalez and Griffiths (2017), this broad definition of gamblification could even be applied to activity sectors that are not strictly speaking gambling, such as trading, as certain financial investments are increasingly associated with the gambling industry. This concerns Forex in particular, a foreign exchange market where one bets on the rise or fall in the value of currencies, whose companies nowadays adopt the same advertising methods as sports betting sites by sponsoring sports teams for example (Lopez-Gonzalez and Griffiths 2017). From there to talking about a gamblification of finance – in the sense of a convergence between the principles of trading and those of gambling6 – there is only one step that we would be tempted to take on the basis of an enlargement of the concept. 6.4. Some limits to the broadening the scope of the concept While the principles of gambling are used today in different activity sectors – video games, sports, social networks, marketing, trading, etc. – there are, however, areas in which they are struggling to establish themselves. This is the case, for example, in the work sphere, where the place given to the rhetoric of play is central to contemporary management techniques (Savignac et al. 2017). Yet, as Savignac (2017a) has shown on the basis of a survey carried out in the digital field, as well as in administration, research or the hospital sector, the practice of gambling is largely kept away from the process of gamification of work, the growth of which she also observes, the latter taking more readily the form of a “role playing game” or a “serious game” than a game of chance and money. Another limit to broadening the scope of the concept is education, which, contrary to what is believed, remains relatively impervious to the practice of games – although the rhetoric of play is often instrumentalized for educational purposes (Brougère 1995) – and even less so to that of gambling. Indeed, it is hard to imagine a teacher proposing to his or her students to experiment with gambling in order to teach them, for example, the principle of probability or the mathematical theory of games – even though the reference to gambling is often used in a theoretical way to illustrate this type of problem. A few initiatives show, however, that this can make sense in 6 The publicity currently being made for listing on the stock market and the sale of FDJ shares as part of its privatization process would be a good illustration of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e5y5tUJqx1I&list=PLBtrEM0ulBXtOxgoBbiCsblsGsfVq pyZI&index=9.

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certain contexts, such as for this high school teacher who used an experiment related to gambling to “shake up students’ conceptions of chance” (Thibault 2011, author’s translation), or for this business school that introduces its students to poker to “train them to make decisions in an environment populated by probability and uncertainty” (Chermann 2018, author’s translation). While these initiatives are part of a sort of “gamblification of education”, they remain relatively confidential and marginal. The broadening of the scope of the gamblification concept thus encounters certain limits, probably linked to the moral disapproval that gambling is still subject to, but also to the fear – no doubt legitimate – of arousing interest in its practice among the people concerned. This being the case, the progressive normalization of these games and the revalorization of their image seem to be accompanied by an extension of the gambling domain to new activity sectors. By broadening the scope of the concept of gamblification beyond its original meaning, it is the empirical reality of this social phenomenon that we are seeking to describe. 6.5. An invasion of life through play For some, it is even life in all its aspects that is “invaded by game”, as the economist Alain Cotta has been saying since the 1980s. In the face of the boredom which, according to him, threatens our advanced industrial societies, games would appear both as a “temptation” (Cotta 1993, p. 37) and a “solution from outside” (Cotta 1993, p. 54) in order to escape the “chain of seriousness” (Cotta 1993, p. 50, all author’s translation). This fight against boredom would then explain game development in all its forms and its extension beyond the limits of seriousness. Taking the example of money games, Cotta notes the increase in spending on this practice, while pointing out that this is only the tip of the iceberg, noting the “proliferation” and “diversification” of the games in question: The growing importance of the financial resources that we devote to gambling is only one aspect of the gaming invasion of our entire social field. (Cotta 1993, p. 179, author’s translation) In some respects, this theory of the invasion of life by game seems pre-monitory – the situation as described by Cotta has greatly increased since the 1980s – but it is nonetheless debatable in other aspects. First of all, it

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should be noted that this phenomenon of invasion is not new, especially when it comes to gambling. Thus, Cotta himself shows how much the history of gambling is made up of a succession of periods of expansion and contraction of the practice – depending on the jurisdictions in force (see Melh 1990; Belmas 2006, for the French case) – the contemporary era being ultimately nothing more than a “renaissance” (Cotta 1993, p. 83) in this constantly evolving history. Next, it should be possible to question, as Henriot did, for example, the very idea that man would play more every day and more and more numerous games: This is what we tend to believe, probably because of the “exposure” of the playful phenomenon. But the statistics available to sociologists and historians only concern certain specific categories of games and, above all, it seems very difficult to design and implement a rigorous scientific procedure for observing and interpreting forms of behavior that it would be legitimate to qualify as playful. What objective criteria can be used to identify them? How can their frequency and intensity be measured? (Henriot 1989, p. 27, author’s translation) Indeed, it is difficult to answer these questions with regard to game playing in general, given the extreme diversity and the sometimes precarious nature of behaviors that can legitimately be described as playful7. However, what about the “specific game category” that is gambling? What “objective criteria” allow us to “identify” them? How can we measure their “frequency”, their “intensity” and, therefore, their hypothetical “development”, beyond their recent transformations and evolutions? The 7 In this respect, Henriot considers that the important thing is not so much “that we play more and more games” (Henriot 1989, p. 31, author’s translation) but that the idea of play comes to be applied (more and more) to domains hitherto excluded from the playful sphere: “What is new is not so much that one plays more, but that one plays more deeply, more radically, that the very idea of play is taken as a theoretical model, as an explanatory principle that makes it possible to conceive and interpret a certain number of situations, to understand their meaning and perhaps to dominate them” (Henriot 1989, p. 32, author’s translation). Following Henriot, Delchambre rightly observes that, although it does not necessarily imply a development of the practice of play, this extensive use of the idea of play is accompanied, paradoxically, by a “proliferation of concrete games, nestled in specialized playful enclaves” (Delchambre 2017, p. 8, author’s translation). What we today call “gamification” (Delchambre 2017, p. 9) would be precisely the product of these two contradictory tendencies.

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advantage of this category of gambling, compared to other games, is that their practice is both highly regulated and highly observed, not to say monitored, so we can have a fairly precise idea of what it represents “objectively”, even if some practices escape the radar of institutional statistics. Initially, it is precisely these statistics that we will mobilize in order to measure the reality of the development of gambling in France and Belgium. In the absence of equivalent data in the two countries, we will focus more on the French case – on which we have more recent, more precise and more homogeneous data – while showing the similarities and differences with Belgium when the available data allow it. Then, in a second step, we will look at the results of our two field surveys – among amateur poker players and so-called compulsive gamblers – in order to measure the possible effects of this gamblification (in the broadest sense) in the lives of gamblers. Finally, in a third step, we will draw on this empirical basis to redefine the concept in question by showing how it is relevant to describe the context of gambling extension that gamblers face in the first place. 6.6. Gambling development Let us start by measuring the development of gambling in the countries concerned. In France as in Belgium and in most European countries, the gambling sector has indeed experienced strong growth in recent years, particularly with the growth of online gambling. As the data collected by the Observatoire des jeux (ODJ) show, the total volume of bets registered in France by gambling operators has, for example, risen from 24.3 billion euros in 2000 to 48.1 billion euros in 2017, an increase of more than 50%. The general trend is therefore upward, particularly for online gaming operators, who now account for about one-fifth of the market. This growth in the gambling sector is also true in Belgium, where the Loterie nationale (LN) achieved a record turnover of 1.3 billion euros in 2017 – 14.4% of which comes from the money players betting on the Internet (LN 2017). In addition, the Commission belge des jeux de hasard (CJH) announced a 34% increase in revenue for online betting operators between 2015 and 2016 and a 28% increase for Internet gambling rooms (CJH 2017). This raises the question of whether this growth in the gambling industry is translating into increased spending by the population. In any case, this is what the INSEE data on household consumption in France seem to indicate. In fact, net gambling expenditure – corresponding to all bets per inhabitant

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(not deducted from winnings) – has clearly been on the rise in recent years, rising from 133 euros per year in 2000 to 199 euros in 2017, an increase of 67%. However, to get a clearer picture of the budget that the French spend on gambling, we need to calculate the share of this expenditure in the overall household budget. It can be seen that, proportionally, the household budget devoted to gambling did indeed increase slightly in the early 2000s, from 0.81% in 2000 to 0.91% in 2004, but then suffered an equivalent drop between 2004 and 2008, before finally stabilizing at around 0.85% since 2012. In other words, while the amount of money the French spend on gambling has increased significantly in recent years, the share of the household budget spent on gambling has been relatively stable and limited. In Belgium, the Directorate General of Statistics (Statbel) estimates that about 0.2% of the household budget is spent on gambling. While this percentage is lower than in France – which was already the case more than 10 years ago (INSEE 2005) – it has remained fairly stable in recent years (Statbel 2016). Apart from the sums that the French and Belgians are willing to spend on gambling, what about the actual practice of these games? Is it increasing or decreasing? Difficult to say, given the profound changes that this practice has undergone in recent years, particularly with the rise of online gambling. According to a survey carried out in 2014 by the Institut national de prévention et d’éducation pour la santé (INPES) and the Observatoire des jeux (ODJ) on a representative sample of 16,000 French people aged 15–75 years old, 56.2% of those surveyed stated that they had played a gambling game at least once in the past year. Among them, 7.3% had gambled at least once online, representing 4.1% of the total sample (ODJ/INPES 2014). In Belgium, the most recent statistical survey available dates back to 2006, but already at that time approximately 60% of the respondents reported having participated at least once in a gambling game in the past year (VAD 2017). According to these figures, the practice of gambling is shared by a majority of French and Belgians. However, while most gamblers consider gambling to be an ordinary activity that occupies a limited space and does not involve excessive spending, others are said to have problems of addiction, in the sense that they lost control over their gambling and their spending within gambling, to the point where gambling became the “center of [their] existence” (Valleur and Bucher 2006, p. 45, author’s translation). According to the results of the two above-mentioned surveys, the prevalence of gambling addiction in the general population would be equivalent in France and Belgium, around 0.4%, if we focus solely on so-called excessive

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(ODJ/INPES 2014) or pathological (VAD 2017) gamblers. Admittedly, this is a very small minority of the population, but the risks that these gamblers incur (isolation, debt, depression, suicide, etc.) and the “social costs” that this generates (INSERM 2008), no doubt justify paying them special attention, especially since they seem to be extremely sensitive and vulnerable to the effects of gamblification, as we shall see elsewhere. 6.7. The case of amateur poker players Before discussing the case of those gamblers for whom gambling became a “pathological passion” (Freud 1961), let us look first at those for whom gambling remains an “ordinary passion” (Bromberger 1998)8. In this respect, the case of amateur poker players is particularly interesting. Although the gambling that these players engage in is somewhat specific – insofar as it is not based entirely on chance – poker is nonetheless a gambling game whose intensive practice carries risks, particularly in terms of addiction (Barrault and Varescon 2015). However, most of the amateur poker players that we met between 2006 and 2011 during our first field survey did not feel concerned by this type of problem. This is at least one of the main lessons learnt from of our survey: despite the passion that animates them, these “amateurs” would indeed have succeeded in making this gambling a leisure activity like any other (Brody 2015a). Let us take the example of Rodolphe9, a 26-year-old amateur poker player whom we interviewed in the spring of 2007 after observing him play several times in his circle of friends. Comparing himself to some of his gambling partners, he said: I have much less impulses than Florien and Victor [two friends of his]. They are really impulsive. It’s stronger than they are. I manage to keep the reasonable side: “When you lose, you lose”. Whereas when Florien and Victor lose, they absolutely have to win again. I think they are affected by their ego. I have the 8 We borrow this expression from Christian Bromberger, who defines the “infatuations” provoked by these “ordinary passions” in the following way: “Massively shared, individually assumed, morally accepted, intensely lived (but without dangerous abuse), these infatuations are perceived as legitimate aspirations for self-realization and the reenchantment of the world” (Bromberger 1998, p. 26, author’s translation). 9 To preserve their anonymity, the first names of the players mentioned have been changed.

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impression that they are losing their footing. It makes their head spin. You can’t stop them anymore. They’re irrational, compulsive. Besides, they could be playing anything: scratch cards, lottery, blackjack, roulette, slot machines … I don’t play any of that, it’s all chance, you have no way of deciding or managing your destiny. (Rodolphe, interviewed on May 27, 2007 in Boussy-Saint-Antoine) We see here how Rodolphe stood out from his friends, whom he considered “irrational” and “compulsive” gamblers. He insisted that his behavior was “reasonable” and implied that he knew how to stop gambling when he had to – in other words, “when you lost” – and that he would not try to recoup his losses at all costs. Furthermore, Rodolphe could decide to play or not to play, namely, games of chance which, unlike poker, did not allow him to “[decide or manage his] destiny”. Even if poker is also based on chance – which he readily admits – it is the game he chooses to play, particularly because it gives him a certain amount of leeway in the face of randomness. From the gambling game practice, he intends to make “good use” of it by remaining as much as possible in control of his game. However, the very person who presents himself as a “reasonable” player does not hide the intense “passion” that drives him and the place it occupies in his everyday life: Poker is a super important part of my life. There’s not a day goes by that I don’t think about it. It never happens to me. Every day I think about it, it’s obvious, but that doesn’t mean I’m obsessed with it. It’s just something I’m passionate about. Although he refused to make it an “obsession”, Rodolphe was nonetheless captivated by this game he thought about every day. Moreover, he was not the only one to think about it since he often spoke about it with his fellow players, even during a conversation whose subject was not necessarily the game itself: Between us, we are always alluding to it, either through images, expressions, or transpositions into everyday life. […] We do it so much with little things that, in the end, it is almost unconscious of it. It makes us laugh and then, two minutes later,

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we completely forget that we had just spoken about poker. We used a poker term, so it’s a game, even though we’re not at all around a table and we weren’t talking about it at all, but it still comes back on the mat [laughter]. While this last sentence makes us laugh, it is precisely because it illustrates – through the metaphor of the gambling “mat” – the tendency of amateur poker players to use images or expressions from poker and then transpose them “into everyday life”. A tendency that we observed repeatedly among the players in our survey as if the game gradually unfolds in their speech and verbal interactions and eventually becomes one of the main topics of their conversations. Quite simply, it seems that amateur poker players like to talk about the game they are passionate about, even when it is not the very subject of conversation. But in doing so, the metaphor moves the game beyond its traditional boundaries. Among these boundaries, there is notably the one that still separates play and work today. A highly symbolic boundary that Rodolphe does not hesitate to cross several times during our interview, using the metaphor of play to evoke his professional life. It should be noted that Rodolphe worked as a salesman in a couch store, which may have led him to work in fairs and exhibitions, as he tells us in the following excerpt: By working in exhibitions, I learned how to sharpen my eye and how to read people. So it wasn’t to read their game [like poker], it was to read their intentions. Was I going to be able to sell them a couch or not? You’re in a booth where there are twenty different couch models. Next to it, they’re selling fireplaces, right behind the kitchens, and you’ve got onlookers in the middle. You see three thousand people a day in your aisle looking at your [couches]. You can’t address the three thousand people, so you have to fake it. Since you are paid commission, if you spend half an hour with a couple, when they will never buy anything from you, you wasted your time and therefore money. You are forced to select people on subjective criteria. It’s you and your reading, and in poker it’s the same thing. Reinvesting the vocabulary of poker to describe his experience as a couch salesman in an exhibition, Rodolphe here threads the metaphor of play as if poker had become a language game – along with a particular attitude that

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echoes his work. For example, to explain his attitude toward the thousands of customers he sees at his booth every day, Rodolphe refers to an image that allows him to imagine the situation: “It’s you and your reading”. Applied to poker, the term “reading” (to which players sometimes add the adjective “psychological”) refers, in principle, to the observation and interpretation of the opponents’ behavior. Consequently, Rodolphe’s attitude at this show would not consist of “reading the game” of his opponents, but of “reading the intentions” of the customers who stop in front of his booth in order to “select” potential buyers among them. An attitude which, according to him, is reminiscent of the practice of poker. However, beyond the metaphor, will Rodolphe adopt a “playful attitude” in his work? By dint of playing poker, will he end up behaving like a poker player in the exercise of his job as a salesman? In other words, will he turn his work into a kind of “game that does not dare to speak its name” (Henriot 1989, p. 43, author’s translation)? This cannot be ruled out in view of the link he says he created between these two activities: When I was playing poker, I was sharpening my eye. It was practice. I was trying to feel things, to heighten my sensitivity to behaviors, attitudes, gestures, words, nods, winks, mouth twitches, hand movements … What I learned in poker, I used in my work, and conversely. Using the practice of poker as “training” to “[sharpen] his eye” as a salesman, Rodolphe would have developed a certain “sensitivity” to the behaviors of others that he would have used in the service of his work. Acquired through the game, this “heightened” sensitivity to the slightest “gesture” and the slightest “word” would allow him, in short, to “read the game” of his clients. Thus, what he learned through the game would be useful in his work and, “conversely”, what he learned at work would be useful in the game10. From play to work and from work to play, the symbolic boundary would here be crossed in both directions. If, like all the amateur players we met during our research, Rodolphe gave poker a limited place – that of a leisure practice like any other – his 10 In this regard, Rodolphe also explained that his work taught him also how to improve his “reading” within the game: “I still learned a lot [in the exhibitions]. Of course, with three hundred people a day in ten days, all different people, I had an almost exhaustive sample of guinea pigs [laughter].”

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passion sometimes seemed to go beyond the framework within which this playful practice is supposed to take place. It remained to be seen whether this “overflowing passion” – which nonetheless remains “ordinary” – was shared beyond the group of friends Rodolphe was used to playing with. To find out, let us take Thibault, for example, another amateur player we met 4 years later during a poker tournament we attended. While we questioned him about the benefits he got from playing poker, this career soldier of about 35 years of age immediately evoked the confidence he acquired by playing: Poker gave me a lot of confidence. For example, there when we spoke, or in relationships with others. It really strengthened that. Because it’s a game where you have to go to people, you have to know how people are going to behave, why they behave the way they do. And you realize that in everyday life, when you have a job interview, even when you go to buy a newspaper, or a car, or when you negotiate a couch, you have to know how the person is thinking in order to negotiate the best price, or the interview. So I found that poker really helped in that sense. It improved … let’s say negotiations, and even relationships with people. It took a little bit of the barriers away between people, I think. (Thibault, interviewed on April 10, 2011 in Tours) We then insisted that he give us examples from his own experience: Well, I don’t have any concrete examples … Finally, I noticed that I was more comfortable negotiating but … Yes, I bought a couch recently. That’s why I’m talking about one. Before, if it was worth 6,000 euros, I would have bought it for 6,000 euros. Now it was worth 6,000, I bought it for 2,500. And I think that before playing poker, I could have never negotiated like that. So, I don’t go as far as to say that the saleswoman had “tells”, but the way she stood, the intonation of her voice, I felt that the price she was announcing to me, she could easily lower it. So I proposed lower. Then she made her move. She went to see her so-called boss. She came back and finally, it lasted three-quarters of an hour, but I took the couch at a lower price. Thibault’s use of the metaphor of play here – almost unintentionally – obviously reminds us of the interview we carried out with Rodolphe a few years earlier, except that it was no longer a question of selling but of buying a

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couch. What Thibault calls “tells” in the lexicon of poker thus refers to clues in the behavior of a player that can betray his real intentions, such as “the way she stood” or “the intonation of her voice”. Rodolphe voluntarily practiced detecting these clues in the conduct of his clients, while Thibault did so, apparently unconsciously. But he finally took the same attitude toward the couch saleswoman, whom he suspected was somehow “bluffing” – even if the term was not used. Negotiating the price of this couch was thus, here again, part of a “game that does not dare to speak its name” but which Rodolphe and Thibault shared (at least) metaphorically. In an article published in 2013 in an issue of the journal Sciences du jeu devoted to the work of Jacques Henriot, we used this same example to show how the metaphor of play operates on the basis of an analogy between the structure of a particular game, in this case poker, and certain situations in everyday life (Brody 2013). Now, contrary to comparison, the metaphor of play is not satisfied with a simple analogy, it in fact carries out a transposition based on a “homology of structure” (Henriot 1989, p. 54), displacing with it not only the idea that one has of play, but also the playful attitude of the players to which it refers. Thus, the metaphor of play bears witness to an “extension of the playful domain” since, as Henriot asserts: The very idea of play is being applied to realities, situations and behaviors about which its use, recently introduced, would have seemed inappropriate, even absurd or scandalous. (Henriot 1989, p. 31, author’s translation) By giving a playful color to situations that are still difficult to conceive of as games, poker players thus contribute to this extension of the idea of play, while making the practice of this gambling game an “ordinary passion”. 6.8. The case of so-called compulsive gamblers If passion can be defined as an affective form of interest in the practice (Bourdieu 2015, pp. 317–319), it distinguishes the amateur who seeks to cultivate it from the so-called pathological or compulsive gambler who cannot resist it. Thus, it is necessary to distinguish the “ordinary passion” of the amateur, however “overflowing” it may be, from the “devouring passion” that invades the lives of those who are among the most intensely “affected”, as is the case of the gamblers in our second survey.

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In his famous text “Dostoyevsky and Parricide”, Freud defines this “pathological passion” (Freud 1961, p. 190) as an autotelic and repetitive behavior directed by a self-punitive impulse that pushes the gambler to desperately search in the game to satisfy his “sense of guilt” (Freud 1961, p. 178). This “obsession for play” (Freud 1961, p. 191), which Dostoyevsky11 in particular suffered from, is now considered a pathology in its own right, to the point that it appeared in 1980 in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III). Initially defined as a “disorder of impulse control” (APA 1980), “pathological gambling” is now classified by the DSM 5 as an “addictive disorder”, alongside “substance-use disorder” such as alcohol or drugs (APA 2013). To describe this “gambling disorder” – which we saw involves a very small but significant proportion of the population – we will therefore speak of “gambling addiction”, even though the term “compulsion” is still used by some people – especially Gamblers Anonymous. Similarly, the concept of “passion” continues to attract the interest of some psychologists who tend to consider gambling addiction as a form of “pathological passion” that differentiates “addicted” gamblers from other passionate gamblers (Rousseau et al. 2002; Mageau et al. 2005; Morvannou et al. 2018). Unlike most gamblers who live their passion for gambling in “harmony” with other activities in their daily lives, some gamblers are driven by an “obsessive passion” that they cannot resist and that invades their lives to the detriment of everything else. In this “dualistic model of passion” (Vallerand 2008, 2015), “harmonious passion” and “obsessive passion” in a way form two sides of the same coin which, depending on life’s circumstances and contingencies, could just as easily tip to one side or the other (Rousseau et al. 2002). On one side of the coin, we would find gamblers who could fully engage in gambling while still being able to concentrate on another activity; on the other side, we would find gamblers who had gradually lost this ability, to the point that their entire lives would now be invaded by gambling. For some, we could speak of 11 In his text on Dostoyevsky, Freud describes a man “obsessed with a mania for gambling”, whose deep neurosis is linked to the “sense of guilt” (Freud 1961, p. 190) that he bore following the murder of his father. Although Dostoyevsky was not really the author of this murder, he would have felt guilty for having desired it, and would have unconsciously inflicted his own punishment by playing and replaying over and over again until he lost everything: “For him, gambling was a method to self-punishment as well” (Freud 1961, p. 191).

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“centration” on gambling, as a voluntary process that involves both a capacity for “con-centration” and “de-centration”. For others, we could legitimately speak of an “invasion” of life by gambling, since this passion for gambling could, so to speak, take control of their daily life. Let us now see how this “obsessive passion” is expressed in the life stories of the gamblers we met in the field of our second investigation, starting with that of Pierre, a “compulsive gambler” (according to his own terms) interviewed in Brussels following a meeting of the self-help group we followed in 2018 and 2019 as part of our postdoctoral research. For the past 20 years or so, this 38-year-old light technician engaged in all kinds of gambling games (bingo, lottery, roulette, slot machines, etc.), going so far as to lose “all [his] savings” and plunge into “great misery”. In this excerpt, he tells us about his trajectory within gambling, as if his entire life depended on it: In fact, gambling has never left me. It’s a bit like an electrocardiogram, there are rhythms, ups and downs, depending on the events I may experience. But gambling has always been there. There are peaks where I play very loud... And then I calm down because I don’t have any more money … And then I start playing again … And it goes like this in a jagged way. […] I think it’s always been like that: I play, I stop, I play … Everything is focused on gambling, gambling, gambling. […] Everything gets mixed up, everything jumbles together. The misery of the mind takes place and that’s when the gambling mechanism and this compulsive side begins to take over and eventually take control of daily life. (Pierre, interviewed on October 18, 2018 in Brussels) In this excerpt, we see how the “gambling mechanism” and “this compulsive side” that Pierre attributes to himself end up “[taking] control” of his daily life, as if he no longer had any control over it. According to Pierre, it is indeed gambling that sets the rhythm of his life, like an “electrocardiogram” that follows the fluctuations of his involvement in the practice. Everything is “focused” on gambling, it takes up all the space, it is everywhere, all the time and has always been. No matter how hard Pierre tries to “calm down”, his passion for gambling always takes over and keeps on “getting the upper hand”.

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Now let us take the example of Melvin, another compulsive gambler whom we also met at a meeting of this self-help group. During the interview he agreed to give us in October 2018, the 28-year-old social worker told us with some bitterness how his gambling addiction not only caused him to lose money but also led him to be isolated from his friends: I knew there was a problem, because all the money I had was going there. […] And all the friends I had, well, I almost don’t have any more today. I don’t have any more at all. It’s all because of gambling. Gambling isolated me from everything. Gambling rotted my life. All my life, it rotted my life. Because every time I was invited somewhere, well, I didn’t have any money to go, so I found an excuse: “I can’t come”, “I’m sick” … I always had a good excuse … So, as a result, people don’t invite you anymore. That’s how you get away from the people around you. […] In fact, all my current circle of friends are gamblers, “fake friends”, I call them. […] Because my “real friends” didn’t have the same gambling aspirations as me. […] Well, they didn’t necessarily want to go to the casino every week. They preferred to go for a drink, just for fun … That’s what I did in the beginning: have a drink, have fun, go out, and all that. But there was always this little thing that told me, “I could be gambling right now, I’m wasting my time”. (Melvin, interviewed on October 9, 2018 in Mons) This interview excerpt measures the harmful consequences of gambling addiction in the gambler’s social life. As his passion for gambling grew12, he isolated himself from his “real friends” to become closer to his “fake friends” who were “gamblers” like him. Far from seeing gambling as just another form of sociability (“[having] a drink, [having] fun, [going] out, and all that”), Melvin made it the main cause of his isolation. Even though he was aware of the problem, he said he was unable to manage alone this “illness” that “rotted his life”, like a worm in a piece of fruit. For both Melvin and Pierre, gambling was thus experienced as an invasive and destructive force that somehow took control of their lives, to the point of leaving no room for the rest of their existence. An external force that they would end up internalizing and that would push them to constantly 12 Melvin started out playing poker before turning to online games, roulette, slots and lottery.

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project themselves in the game (“there was always this little thing that told me, ‘I could be gambling right now […]’”.). This “invasion” of life through gambling, as described by psychologists, is thus clearly expressed in the life stories of the gamblers encountered within the field. However, contrary to certain psychotherapeutic approaches which, faced with the problem of gambling addiction, propose an “introjective response” aimed at making the gambler the agent of his own change, the response found by the compulsive gamblers in our survey would be more “projective”, to take up a distinction outlined by Ehrenberg (2018) in his latest work on La mécanique des passions. Following an externalist conception of “illness” shared by Gamblers Anonymous (Suissa 2009), the compulsive gamblers we surveyed, indeed, felt persecuted by an externally induced evil that caused them to act compulsively. Faced with this external force that they had internalized to the point of no longer being able to resist it, their response – at least the one they were trying to implement within their self-help group – would be to “socialize the evil” in order to project it outwards, holding gambling responsible for their addiction problem, as we saw with Melvin and Pierre. While these same gamblers may have had a more “introjective” response in other circumstances – such as in a one-on-one interview with a psychotherapist, for example13 – they nonetheless remained inclined to embrace a conception of gambling addiction that led them to recognize their “powerlessness” in the face of the “illness” and the “temptation” of gambling that was invading them14. Finally, we would like to quote an excerpt from an interview with Marc, a 53-year-old commercial director, whom we also met during a meeting of this self-help group. Defining himself as a “compulsive gambler”, like all the other members of the group, Marc had played in casinos for a long time – mainly roulette – until he ended up in debt and largely isolated after his wife left him. To date, he has been clean for 17 years, yet he still attends every weekly group meeting, if only to share his experience with other members and to remind himself that he is not immune to relapse. In this excerpt, he discusses 13 This was notably the case for Pierre, who, before joining the group, had the opportunity to consult a psychotherapist specializing in gambling addiction who, from a “risk reduction” perspective, encouraged him to “regain control” of his gambling. 14 This is the first step in the recovery program that Gamblers Anonymous follows collectively at its meetings: “Step 1: we admitted that we were powerless over gambling and that we had lost control of our lives” (“Fascicule des Joueursanonymes de Bruxelles – Les douzeétapes”).

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the risk of the current development of gambling, while referring to his past experience: When I was [a sales representative], gambling was everywhere but not as much as it is now. Now I think it’s even worse. […] If you watch TV, all the ads for sites like Bwin or Unibet, all the casinos you have, all the betting agencies. Today, you can make bets on anything, on soccer, on a tennis match, on anything. That didn’t exist in my time. Now you have … what’s it called? Ladbrokes. That didn’t exist either. Lucky for me. Because I’ve touched everything: scratch cards, lottery, lotto, lots of stuff. Everything that existed, I played. So, if all that had existed in my time, I would have played it too. Now you can play on your [laptop], on your computer, on your iPad. Lucky for me, it didn’t exist because otherwise I could have played it even at work. […] Gambling takes you day and night, twentyfour hours a day, seven days a week. (Marc, interviewed on September 26, 2018 in Brussels) Despite a long period of abstinence, which commands the respect of the other members of the group and gave him a certain confidence in his ability to resist gambling, Marc saw gambling as a permanent temptation that would only increase with the current development of gambling. When he played compulsively, gambling was already “everywhere”, he said. He traveled a lot as part of his job and could easily gamble at the casino or in a gambling room, wherever his business trips took him. Today, however, gambling seemed even more accessible to him, between casinos, gambling rooms, betting agencies (such as Ladbrokes) and other online gambling sites offering gamblers the possibility of betting on “anything” and “everything” at any time and in any place. While Marc was glad he didn’t experience this in his time, it was to better highlight the effects of this relentless exposure to gambling on gamblers like him. Like a force of attraction that “compulsive gamblers” cannot control, gambling, he said, “takes you day and night, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week”. This last sentence illustrates how some of the most vulnerable gamblers can be directly “affected” by the process we called gamblification. Faced with what they perceive as an external force that invades them, Mark and the other members of this

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self-help group testified to their powerlessness, seeing their salvation only in abstinence15. 6.9. Conclusion To close this chapter and to open up some avenues for reflection on the effects of this gamblification process on the lives of gamblers, let us try to redefine this concept as we tried to develop it throughout these pages, based on the analysis of the statistical and empirical data available to us. Initially defined as making gambling possible and accessible where it is not been yet, we first described this process, as an extension of the gambling domain, even beyond the sphere of gambling. On the strength of its four pivots, namely, the development of gambling, the increase in its accessibility, its medicalization and its revalorization, we were then able to see that this gamblification had concrete effects that we sought, as far as possible, to “objectify”. Based on the statistical data available for France and Belgium, we observed that the development of gambling in these two countries resulted in an increase in spending on gambling, even if the importance of this spending should be put into perspective. Above all, we were able to measure the massification of the very practice of gambling, which for most gamblers now appears to be an ordinary activity, but for others, it may take the form of an addiction. Among those who experience the practice of gambling as an “ordinary passion”, we looked at the case of the amateur poker players we met in our first field survey. By analyzing the life stories they told us, we found that they could both give limited space to their gambling – a hobby like any other – and at the same time fully engage in it to the point of making it a kind of metaphor for their daily lives. We then turned to this group of compulsive gamblers, which we followed in our second survey. Along the way, we discovered that, for them, this extension of the gambling domain was experienced as a permanent temptation resulting in an invasion of their daily life, against which they feel largely powerless.

15 According to the gamblers in our survey, abstinence appears to be the last line of defense against the “illness”, the only one that will ultimately keep them from giving in to their gambling addiction. While the willingness to stop gambling is not a prerequisite for joining this self-help group – unlike most Gamblers Anonymous groups, abstinence is the main means and very end of the gambler’s “recovery” process, for lack, according to them, of ability to really be “cured”.

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So what can we learn from these observations which, in many respects, alert us to the place that gambling occupies in our contemporary societies? First of all, let us insist on the fact that this gamblification process is not just a simple language game that would displace the meaning we give to the practice of gambling, it is also a social reality that “affects” directly those who are most concerned, namely, the gamblers, especially as they are passionate about it. These “real” effects lead us, in particular, to question the idea that play is, by definition, an activity separate from “everyday life” (Huizinga 1951; Caillois 2001), even though it is at the heart of the lives of the gamblers we met in the context of our two surveys16. Second, there are some particularly vulnerable gamblers among these “passionate” people who, by indulging in their passion for gambling, may have developed a “gambling addiction” that they are unable to control. While these gamblers only represent a very small portion of the population, the way in which some of them experience the gambling process should be of interest to us. Indeed, there is every reason to reflect on the sense of powerlessness evoked by the compulsive gamblers in our survey, especially if the gambling operators and the states that are primarily responsible for this extension of the gambling domain agree to blame the gamblers themselves for their addictive behavior by inviting them individually to gamble “responsibly” (Kairouz 2019). Finally, while we used the concept of gamblification in a very broad sense, let us recall that the transformations and the technological development that we mentioned in the first part of this chapter (speaking of gamblification in the restricted sense) are part of this extension process and that this invites us not only to question the boundaries that traditionally exist between play and everyday life but also between gaming and gambling – boundaries that, in many ways, tend to disappear today. Although we still know little about the concrete effects that these transformations can have on gamblers’ behavior (Macey and Hamary 2018), by placing this phenomenon in a broader context of the extension of the gambling domain – which itself is part of a global context of “gamification of life” – we saw that it is likely to have an impact on the lives of gamblers. 16 In this respect, we could also challenge the idea defended by Caillois, among others, that “the principle of play [would be] corrupt” as soon as “what was pleasure becomes a fixed idea; what was escape becomes obligation; what was entertainment becomes passion, obsession and source of anxiety” (Caillois 1967, p. 103, author’s translation). Indeed, according to the gamblers in the self-help group, we followed during our second survey, it is, on the contrary, gambling itself which is the source of their “compulsion”, and they continue to define themselves as “gamblers” even if they stopped playing the game for good.

PART 4

The Political and Social Extensions of Play Through Gamification

The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

7 Politics and Video Games: Presidential Elections and the Gamification of Partisan Mobilizations

With each French presidential election, political communication undergoes accelerated transformation. In 1965, as a direct extension of the 1962 referendum campaign, the televised debate was established as the major instrument of democratic confrontation, thus breaking with the preeminence of the parliamentary arena (Delporte 2001; Leroux and Riutort 2017; Veyrat-Masson 2017). In 1988, opinion polls and surveys were used as never before by the candidates in contention (Blondiaux 1998; Garrigou 2006). In 2006, the Socialist Party (Partisocialiste, PS) invented with the primaries – in a then closed form – an unprecedented system for selecting its candidates (Gerstlé 2006; Barboni and Treille 2010; Lefebvre and Treille 2016). In 2012, social networks, from Facebook to Twitter, became “obligatory” for partisan mobilizations (Greffet 2011; Lefebvre 2016; Theviot 2018). The 2017 presidential election did not depart from this principle. During this election, digital technology established itself in the French communications landscape, from Big Data to the NationBuilder platform, from holograms to YouTube, from Instagram to Snapchat (Mercier 2017; Theviot and Treille 2019). Among the different weapons of informational dissuasion used, however, a new instrument of electoral conquest was distinguished: the political video game. Already developed in 2012, notably by François Bayrou, gaming tools Chapter written by Éric TREILLE.

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imposed themselves as one of the real novelties of the 2017 presidential campaign. In this context, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was the leading candidate with Fiscal Kombat1, a game freely inspired by Mortal Kombat. Available free of charge on all browsers, this example of retrogaming2, created on the Discord Les Insoumis server, deliberately drew on the vintage aesthetics of arcade games (Urbas 2019). Fiscal Kombat gave the opportunity, thanks to a digital reincarnation of the La France insoumise candidate (a democratic, socialist, left-wing party), to shake like apple trees the avatars of Nicolas Sarkozy, Christine Lagarde or Emmanuel Macron. This amplification of the gamification3 of politics therefore deserves to be questioned. However, this is only possible if its scope is strongly qualified. This movement was very partial, modest in its strategic ambitions as well as in its financial commitments. Like the games Fiscal Kombat, En marche vers l’Élysée and Marine Présidente 2017, developed outside of the partisan apparatus by supporters or specialized companies, political gamification also remained very much influenced by the external management of campaign teams, despite its promotion by candidates on and off social networks. Why is it that what was then controversial in 1992 – the Nanterre court sentenced Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1996 to withdraw his game Jean-Marie, jeu national multimédia FN92 for “invasion of privacy” following a complaint filed by Fodé Sylla, the president of SOS racism – was considered in 2017 as a legitimate medium and a vector of political modernity? In the meantime, this process was strongly questioned in 2007 when Ségolène Royal (Bousquet 2011) opened a local committee of her association Désir d’avenir in the virtual world of Second Life4, and was easily “mocked” (Berry 2012) in 2011 with François Bayrou. Is this gamification of partisan mobilization the result of

1 According to Discord Les Insoumis, more than 435,000 players took on the character of Jean-Luc Mélenchon when the Fiscal Kombat game went online. 2 New digital form recycling the material aspect of old video games from the 1970s to 2000 (Urbas 2019). 3 An English-language neologism coined by the digital media industry in the late 2000s to refer to the transfer of game mechanisms, especially video games, to other social domains such as marketing and management (Deterding et al. 2014). 4 The Front National (FN) was, however, the first party to open a virtual office on Second Life, thus recalling “the precursory investment (of this party) on the web” (Dezé 2011, author’s translation).

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candidates catching up after searching for new communication solutions, or is it the sign of a deliberate expansion of the repertoires of public action of French political parties, such as the campaign led by Hillary Clinton in 2016? Is it a new stage in the “symbolic arms race”, as Erik Neveu (quoted by Offered 2017, p. 475), of majority outsider candidates, or the expression of a deeper movement to transform relations with politics (Aldrin et al. 2002; Greffet et al. 2014)? To answer these various questions, we first wish to show how the objective of gamification in politics has served more to modernize the image of the candidates in contention than to participate in “partisan renewal” (Gibson and Ward 2011). This is done through digital technology and seeks to retain, even in a recreational way, those excluded from politics, especially the youngest among them (Muxel 2018). Second, we wish to show that the tools developed or relayed by the campaign teams of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Emmanuel Macron were part of a wider international circulation of political persuasion methods dominated by the development of digital devices developed by the campaign teams of the Democratic candidates: Howard Dean in 2003, Barak Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016. We wish to understand the new meaning given to the online political game in 2017, especially in relation to 2012 and the tools implemented by François Bayrou’s campaign team. To do so, we will show how in France, and especially in the United States, the development of recreational activist applications and immersive marketing offers through gaming is taking place in a general movement of inter-party emulation. The aim is to strengthen electoral micro-targeting techniques (Theviot and Treille 2019) in the absence of a new paradigm aimed at gaming modes of political participation or broadening the “telematic action repertoires of neo-militancy” (Granjon 2002, author’s translation). The focus will then be on how the parties have remained out of the game in developing the instruments of political gamification for the 2017 presidential election because of the exteriority of their production – activist gamification (section 7.1). Then we will analyze how French candidates distinguished themselves from the digital campaigns conducted during the 2016 US presidential election to strengthen the online video game management of political activists – the gamification of activism (section 7.2).

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7.1. Activist gamification or political parties out of the game 7.1.1. Geek candidates in spite of themselves With the title “Mélenchon, LE candidat 2.0?” (Mélenchon, candidate 2.0?) RollingStone magazine summarized one of the key features of political communication developed during the 2017 presidential election: the consecration of digital technology as a tool for winning votes5. As an emblematic candidate of this fundamental movement, Jean-Luc Mélenchon constructed the widest technological offer, from the creation of his own web TV on YouTube to the use of holograms in his meetings, and the use of the NationBuilder platform (Cautrès 2017). Within these very complete “packaging politics”, the video game Fiscal Kombat, however, distinguished itself by a communication impact that went beyond the electoral field: JeanLuc Mélenchon not only “youtubed” politics (Mercier 2017, p. 116), he also strongly gamified it. Chronologically closing the presentation of La France insoumise communication devices, this game was able to establish the figure of a “geek” candidate6 in tune with the times. Inspired by Mortal Kombat, the video game Fiscal Kombat featured Jean-Luc Mélenchon in battle scenes whose objective was to shake up – “slowly”7 however, as Miidnight, its designer, specified, in order to make his game more acceptable (Gerber 2015) – avatars of competitors chosen for their repulsive character, such as Jérôme Cahuzac or Patrick Balkany, in order to finance his program. Better still, presented to the press on April 7, 2016, at the heart of the controversy sparked by Le Canard enchainé in regard to François Fillon’s wife, this game not only took up the codes of the fighting game, but it also allowed the players to put themselves in the shoes of a vigilante who returned unduly earned money to the state, and allowed La France insoumise to translate in a recreational way the personal situation experienced by the representative of the Republicans (Lefebvre and Treille 2019). This flash game, which was supposed to condense the candidate’s political strategy, was not, however, conceived and designed by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s campaign teams. Developed by a small group of sympathizers 5 RollingStone, April 16, 2017. 6 “Mélenchon, boss du jeu vidéo dans la campagne”, Libération, April 4, 2017. 7 Le Monde, April 8, 2017.

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who were still students, in a “hobbyist” spirit (Cayatte and Giner 2019) on a server called Discord Les Insoumis, this game was often presented as an “official by-product” which long remained “invisible”8 in the eyes of the campaign team. It was relayed only belatedly, once the success of the operation called “holograms” was noted on February 5, 2017, without being subject to scrutiny on its initiative, on its form or on its political substance9. Jean-Luc Mélenchon was not the only candidate to receive the support of game developers from outside the political world. French Minister of the Economy Emmanuel Macron first made a name for himself by having his face scanned for inclusion in the Fall Out 4 video game at the CES in Las Vegas in January 2016. Then, he created on December 2016 another video game to organize the candidate’s trips named En marche vers l’Élysée. This game, characterized by the press Super Macron Bros, was also developed by an organization independent of the former minister’s campaign team. Despite its success – more than 10,000 downloads in 1 month – this game, allowing for the control of Emmanuel Macron’s smartphone, did not, however, receive the same support as Fiscal Kombat. Little appreciated by his family and friends because of its “populist” tone10, the game was quickly discontinued11. Produced by Celestory, a non-activist start-up, it nevertheless allowed its designers to make themselves known to the political world and to

8 Le Monde, April 8, 2017. 9 The absence of an avatar of Marine Le Pen in Fiscal Kombat was thus a decision taken by the designers and notably the game’s graphic designer and not by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s campaign team. 10 Liberation, April 10, 2017. 11 This precedent did not prevent the Jeunes avec Macron (JAM) from creating, during the 2019 European elections, a retro platform game inspired by Super Mario Bros called Super JAM Bros in which the player’s mission was to help LREM’s number one Nathalie Loiseau collect the 12 European stars and counter the “bad guys” Jean-Luc Mélenchon (named Melanrus, a Russian patronymic that caused LFI to react strongly), Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen. According to BFM TV, this game cost between 5,000 and 10,000 euros and required 2 months of development for the German company AdAsGame, an economic choice that was strongly questioned in the French digital world, especially in Montpellier (Journaldugeek.com, May 10, 2019). In response to this game “featuring the former boss of the ENA”, the French Communist Party launched its own game called Écrabouille les patrons, featuring the number two on its list, Marie-Hélène Bourlard, a former textile worker in the North. Similarly, La France insoumise developed a European edition of its Fiscal Kombat game in which its head of list ManonAubry replaced Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Nathalie Loiseau (named Gudalie in reference to her student past) was the main target.

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win new markets with other candidates in the legislative elections. As a final example, La Taverne des Patriotes, an activist discussion forum also hosted by the Discord platform, launched a free application called Marine Présidente 2017, a fighting game designed as Fiscal Kombat in a deliberately retro mode. In all three cases, albeit to different degrees, the exploration of these “game worlds” (Berry and Borzakian 2015) took unconventional paths. If there was a gamification of politics, it was akin to smuggling. Developed either by a group of sympathizers of La France insoumise gathered in a chat room, by a company eager to show off its digital know-how, or by a structure of cyber-activists close to the FN, these games did not fit into preestablished mobilization strategies. The integration of these devices into the campaign took place after their launch. As Jean-Luc Mélenchon pointed out, once the media success of the Fiscal Kombat operation was acknowledged, “no instructions” were given to the game’s administrators. Better still, he even welcomed this “bottom-up concept” coming from the “grassroots” and let this activist group continue the exercise with the creation, on a site called Larc.fr, of an interactive version of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s program called Melenchonouimais.fr, it confirmed ex-post the success of initiatives born outside of La France insoumise but whose goals were in line with those of his movement. The favorable reception of Fiscal Kombat, as well as the stunt announcement on April 1 of a meeting by Jean-Luc Mélenchonin regards to the Minecraft game, should not be misinterpreted as positively consequential. Given the largely fortuitous nature of the presidential candidates’ investment in online games, the gamification of politics put forward in 2017 was largely based on a misunderstanding of the impact of the applications. The Fiscal Kombat project offered a gaming experience without direct exploitation of its users, due in particular to its development by game designers coming solely from the gaming world. Worse still, its lack of connection with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s campaign strategy condemned it to remain marked by its exteriority. For their part, the games developed around the figures of Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen did not fare any better: the first was stopped for lack of new updates; the second, released late and in a logic of inter-party emulation (Lefebvre and Treille 2019), targeted only FN supporters.

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Finally, the game sphere took hold of the candidates for the presidential election rather than the other way around12, in a positive way with Fiscal Kombat or in a more polemic way, as in the example of the online game entitled L’émission pourritique. This application proposed that gamers become Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s interviewer, prolonging, under the guise of a “counter-public space”, a denunciation of the journalistic work that was already strongly inscribed in the 2017 presidential campaign (Mercier 2017; Treille 2018). As we can see, like Bernie Sanders during the 2016 American primary campaign, Jean-Luc Mélenchon became a communication medium – and diversion – for many digital players, both close and far from his political positions. Highly inspired by the “Can’t Stump the Trump” campaign led by young Donald Trump fans, the expression “Can’t Stenchon the Melenchon”, hijacked by the jeuxvideo.com site – the first French video game site accessed by 5 million unique visitors per month – thus became an unofficial slogan aimed at the general public as well as being utilized by La France insoumise13. During his seventh week review on his YouTube account – a self-produced “conversational broadcast” (Leroux and Riutort 2013) that had more than 100,000 subscribers – Jean-Luc Mélenchon even paid tribute to the creative work of Internet users by declaring: “I also owe a special thank you to the forum of 18–25-year olds from jeuxvideo.com.” Because they said nice things for me. So in my turn, I say: “Long live the forum of jeuxvideo.com.” Better still, the candidate of La France insoumise made his supporters an offer of political narratology not heretofore proposed outside of extremely controlled electoral communication devices (Cautres 2017; Mathieu 2019): “They invented a motto for me, I didn’t understand anything but it has been explained to me in the meantime. So I’m going to say: ‘Yes, we canchon’”14. 7.1.2. Targeting an economic sector and its employees through the gamer public This outsourcing of the production of these online games to political sympathizers or private service providers did not only concern the technical 12 Rolling Stone, April 16, 2017. 13 Blogmédiapart, May 13, 2017. 14 RTL.com, November 18, 2016.

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aspects of their production. It also affected the activist aspect given to these recreational devices. For the developers, playing a political game was in itself a political act, even if the action took place in a “minor mode of reality” (Piette 1993, author’s translation). Conversely, for the parties and candidates concerned, the gamer was not a central campaign target. The game remained a game, even if its purpose was political. In this sense, the video game played little part in the “partisan renewal” (Gibson and Ward 2011, author’s translation) of the communication tools for the 2017 presidential election. Rather than helping to “part differently” “be a part of something else” (Ethuin and Lefebvre 2015, p. 10, author’s translation) by capturing new audiences, it was mainly used to target traditional electoral categories, attracted by the innovative nature of the approach. Two conceptions of the game were in fact in opposition. On the one hand, it was a question of mobilizing through the game an electorate already politicized but symbolically relegated by the political system. On the other hand, it was a question of demonstrating modernity by using the illustrative value of the game and the players. Outside the partisan world in the strict sense, even if they were close to it, the developers of these online games – and first and foremost Fiscal Kombat – thus took on board – in a very critical manner – the different categories of partisan action. Miidnight, the creator of Fiscal Kombat, explains that “the typical profile is largely sympathizers but rarely door-to-door activists. Most of them were not even necessarily politicized before”15. In the same way, they were the first to minimize the technical and political scope of their own instrument of mobilization. According to Miidnight, Everyone can have fun, the game is easy to take in hand. But there’s a political message in the game anyway, it’s about program measures, energy transitions, etc. It’s a game that’s easy to play. If there’s a political message in the game, that’s good, and if there’s not, that’s fine, and if there’s not, it’s going to be fun for those who are already convinced. The format adopted has played a major role in this difficulty in fostering political inclusion. While the low cognitive entry cost of play made it easier to understand what was at stake in voting than a traditional electoral instrument,

15 Le Monde, April 8, 2017.

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it nevertheless remained dependent on the modes of exposure chosen. Modern in its political purpose, the Fiscal Kombat game was not modern in terms of technology and aesthetics. Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s game, a two-dimensional game said to have a horizontal screen, deliberately recalling the “motor nostalgia” of the arcade terminals of the 1990s (Urbas 2016), never went beyond the exercise of shaking up political opponents and fictitious money-making, with a very short game experience – 15 minutes according to its designers. This was not very conducive to the development of extended interaction by its users (Gerber 2015) and thus appealed to the activist loyalty of lay audiences, in the form of “slacktivist” or “lazy activism” (Morozov 2011). Therefore, the high numbers of visits should not hide the reality of the game experiences on offer. While, according to Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s campaign team, more than 435,000 people seized the Fiscal Kombat game the weekend following its presentation, and the game En marche vers l’Élysée was for its part downloaded more than 10,000 times before being stopped, these online political games were not designed to promote social and political integration over the long-term. They mainly obeyed the logic of transmedia instantaneity. The video game is, indeed, an eminently telegenic communication instrument. Like the riposte parties16 organized by François Hollande’s digital teams in 2012 (Theviot 2014), the games offered the possibility for candidates to showcase political speeches – Jean-Luc Mélenchon thus put himself on stage playing with his digital double in front of cameras for YouTube – choosing to put in image form electoral programs in favor of advanced digital technology, and in fine to recalibrate the modernity of candidates hitherto considered as far removed from the worlds of adolescents or young adults. The development of Fiscal Kombat, as a result, enabled Jean-Luc Mélenchon to correct his image with video game users. In 2014, the candidate of the left-leaning party had considered in very harsh terms the flagship game Assassin’s Creed Unity as “propaganda against the people” and a “rereading in favor of the losers to discredit the one and indivisible

16 The 2012 presidential election was marked by the strong reaction on Twitter of viewers to the candidates’ speeches broadcast live on streaming news channels. Constrained by the rise of these live tweets, the campaign teams then organized riposte parties, responses of political formations to online activism (Theviot 2014).

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Republic”17. In 2017, Jean-Luc Mélenchon found this game to be of “splendor […], of an absolutely magical technical achievement”. Better still, on Europe 118, the candidate for La France insoumise made a strong plea in favor of the game considered to be a “magical instrument of education and culture”: It is not childish behavior, gaming is structuring human imagination. We start by playing to build ourselves as a person. It all sounds a bit serious, but it’s just to shut up those who have contempt for gaming. You would think that playing is a waste of time. Well, not at all […], playing video games is a way to save time because you can become richer as a person. Similarly, the presidential candidates relied less on the mechanics of the game to generate political engagement than they did to support an important economic sector for the country. Thus, Jean-Luc Mélenchon highlighted a sector considered to be “structuring” and “French know-how”: “I will do everything I can to ensure that this sector exists, that it develops and that people do not need to disappear”19. Failing to use the full technical and strategic potential, he used the Fiscal Kombat game to build ad hoc programmatic elements, such as creating a “tax on joysticks” or a National Video Game Center similar to the National Film Center. He also considered gaming as an activity in its own right on the forums of jeuxvideo.com and in his shows produced for YouTube. The representative of La France insoumise did not, however, represent an isolated example. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, the candidate from Debout la France, also highlighted a “sector of excellence” and a “source of jobs and talent” on the same jeuxvidéo.com site. Like the La France insoumise candidate, his campaign put forward the same notion of economic patriotism, proposing to “grant a broader tax credit for video creation to companies producing in France and whose games had a French version”. Finally, Benoît Hamon, the PS candidate, for his part referred in his program to video games among the cultural activities to be supported.

17 To change the candidate’s position, a major chain of specialty stores offered him a console with the game. 18 www.journaldugeek.com, March 16, 2017. 19 Europe 1, March 15, 2017.

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Finally, the figures for visits to campaign sites should not make us forget the candidates’ desire to move from “keyboard mobilization” (Badouard 2013) to meetings with real people. In fact, the development of online video games made it possible to add to the traditional circuits of favored public appearances during the presidential election, from the International Agricultural Show to fairs and markets, new places that had hitherto received little attention, such as high-tech fairs or training venues, thus updating the policies for political tours (Mariot 2007). Jean-Luc Mélenchon took advantage of his visit to Angoulême’s École nationale du jeu et des médias interactifs numériques (CNAM-ENJMIN) in January 2017, a leading video game school, to present the digital component of his presidential program. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan also went to Paris Games Week. As we can see, technological renewal of campaign tools did not necessarily equal political renewal. A heterodox communication offer could very well be put at the service of a more classic program. In fact, the “magical instrument of training and culture” praised by Jean-Luc Mélenchon remained a secondary political communication tool, underscoring the difficulty for French political parties to “share” games and diversify digital investment strategies previously allocated to the sole direction of the media (Desrumaux and Nollet 2014). 7.2. The gamification of activism or political management through gaming 7.2.1. François Bayrou in 2011 or the mocked pioneer However, the gamification of politics did not wait until 2017 to develop in France. In 2012, the digital press had already devoted itself to François Bayrou, the geek candidate of the presidential election, 5 years before JeanLuc Mélenchon. As for this representative of La France insoumise, an online political game had enabled this highlighting: Les Volontaires. After the timid attempts of Jean-Michel Baylet, candidate of the Radical Left Party (Parti radical du gauche, PRG) in the citizens’ primary of 2011, then of Eva Joly, designated by the sympathizers of Europe Ecology-Greens (Ecologie-Les Verts, EELV), with the project named Bingo Mox designed to elect the best “nucleopath” of the country, the teams of the Modem representative’s web campaign had launched a play platform of a much

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larger scale. As its name indicated, the centrist game was not aimed at the general public, even if according to Matthieu Lamarre, the head of François Bayrou’s digital campaign, “gamification is a field that allows us to reach an audience that we would not otherwise have been interested in”20. Les Vo-lontaires was above all dedicated to the activists or sympathizers of the party wishing to engage in François Bayrou’s campaign. Unlike Fiscal Kombat, the game was developed with agencies paid for that purpose – Spyrit and Big Youth – and hosted on the candidate’s official website. The operation of this game was based on a mechanism called “pointification” (Robertson 2010; Bogost 2015). After registering beforehand on the Bayrou.fr website, the sympathizer received by email an activist roadmap guiding him in carrying out a certain number of missions, hybridizing offline and online activism, such as making a donation, attending a meeting or tweeting messages of support during his candidate’s speeches on a television set. Depending on the missions accomplished – or declared as such – Internet users were rewarded with points – counted in “decibels”, the French translation of the buzz generated, the objective being to “give voice” to their support of the candidate. Gold, silver and bronze badges called “engagement trophies” were also awarded. By recognizing activist acts with awards and by ranking the best volunteers – the top three cyber activists – the developers of this game did not ultimately choose to offer a new gaming experience. As Matthieu Lamarre argued, the aim of the game was “to create a desire for Internet users and activists to get involved in the campaign”21. By focusing on incorporating the classic activist activity – handing out flyers, attending a public meeting, etc. – and gamifying honorary management techniques, they “re-innovated” the forms of partisan engagement less (Gibson and Ward 2011) than introduced by the logic of scoring a method to “index” performances “to their degree of recognition” (Ihl 2007, p. 392). The activist impact of this game on François Bayrou’s campaign was, however, rather weak, the proposed political emulation proving to be of little incentive, as another mobilization of the centrist candidate conducted via a

20 “La France distante vis-à-vis de la gamification du politique”, www.reseaux-telecoms.net, June 7, 2012. 21 “PGD 2012: la gamification touche aussi la politique”, www.cio-online.com, June 7, 2012.

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Konami code taking up the style of games such as Final Fantasy or Zelda had more public success – more than 150,000 visits in 48 hours. Worse still, Les Volontaires was attacked by many detractors: on the one hand, gamers did not find it entertaining enough, even though they recognized the originality of the approach; on the other hand, François Bayrou’s rivals mocked this intrusion of gaming into political life. As Matthieu Lamarre, François Bayrou’s director of communication, pointed out at the time, “the French are afraid of ridicule and of giving a negative image of politics”22. Hosted on the Bayrou.fr website, the game Les Volontaires has therefore attracted less new user communities than it has made it possible to create an unprecedented political mechanism that merges in- and out-of-the-box gaming and facilitated offers of activism. All of this was directed from a virtual HQ developed both on a platform and applications available on iPhone, iPad as well as on Android, as well as communicating by email and allowing connection to Facebook. Better yet, the development of this game allowed for the first time a candidate to test, on a large scale, techniques for optimizing activism through digital technology, which until then had been developed mainly in the United States. As Jean-François Martins, François Bayrou’s communications director, pointed out: The campaign led by Barack Obama in 2008 was rich in lessons about the ability of the web to organize volunteers to carry out campaign actions. We decided to go further with this platform23. 7.2.2. Hillary Clinton in 2016 or the acceleration of political managerialization

Criticized by the gaming community for using the game’s possibilities too wisely and, conversely, gently mocked by political communicators for having exploited a non-traditional communication medium, the “pointification” mechanism used by François Bayrou’s campaign team in 2012 is today a major development axis for online political game designers. However, there is one nuance: it is less a question of attracting audiences distanced from political activity through games than of engendering activism among the game’s user community. 22 “PGD 2012: la gamification touche aussi la politique”, www.cio-online.com, June 7, 2012. 23 Franceinfo.fr, February 7, 2012.

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The political and technical scope of Fiscal Kombat should therefore be put into perspective. Parties and candidates, especially in North America, are more likely to use electronic coaching applications that invite “selfquantification” (Dagiral et al. 2019c, author’s translation) of the Fitbit type24 than Mortal Kombat, the game that inspired La France insoumise. Worse still, while the development of activist applications for recreational activism is increasingly part of the extension of the digital domain in politics, France appears to be isolated in this general movement of inter-partisan emulation to re-invent political micro-targeting, linking the activation of “edutainment” technologies (Vial 2013) with uses of data and activism in the field (Théviot and Treille 2019). The 2016 US presidential election and the campaign led by Hillary Clinton particularly demonstrated the development of these new immersive marketing offers through games that closely combined empowerment techniques and political management. After using the Pokémon Go25 game and the Tinder application26 during the senator’s campaign, Hillary Clinton’s campaign team launched an ambitious mobile application called Hillary 2016 just days before the Democratic nomination convention on July 25 and 28, 2016, allowing each registered activist to build his or her own virtual or digital campaign headquarters. Hillary 2016 went beyond the fan applications offered in previous campaigns by positioning itself from the outset as an activism gaming app. Designed by Dreamworks Animation alumni, this app incorporated elements based on the FarmVille27 game model to coach Democratic activists in their daily missions. The application also offered supporters the opportunity to test their knowledge of their candidate’s program with a quiz called “Trump or False”. Another more specific application, called “Trump Yourself”, finally enabled “short sentences” to be edited, those pronounced by the Republican candidate corresponding to the Facebook profiles of his supporters, in order to encourage women and communities to vote.

24 American company created in 2007 developing connected physical activity monitors or electronic coaches. 25 A mobilization called “Pokémon Go To The Polls” was thus developed, a mobile virtual hunting game used to attract voters to the polls. 26 “Tinder for Voters” platforms were used to exchange votes between states. 27 Hillary Clintonlance une appli pour faire de sa campagne un jeu. Numerama, July 25, 2016.

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By offering the equivalent of “self-tracking” or “activity trackers” (Pharabod 2019) – carrying out four daily missions just like the proposed number of steps of sports applications – Hillary 2016 wanted to be close to the spirit of the Fitbit application. Each goal achieved allowed the user to earn points, both virtual rewards – including furniture to decorate her HQ28 and badges, such as “super supporter” – and also real ones – gifts, such as autographs from the candidate. In this, the application adopted the same scoring logic as the software used by candidate during the primary election – Organizing, the internal equivalent of NationBuilder – a tool for organizing communities of support allowing each democracy activist to self-organize29. Like fitness applications, Hillary 2016 was designed to translate digital activism into action. Online and offline activism were thus closely blended. The daily challenges offered to online activists in exchange for rewards mixed the logic of connected action – such as subscribing to a mailing list or posting the candidate’s publications on social networks – and action on the ground – such as attending a meeting or going door-to-door (Lefebvre 2016) – so many “small actions […] that will add up and allow us to win this election and make history”30. 7.2.3. A trompe-l’oeil Americanization of recreational applications in French political life Unlike the games developed by the campaign teams of the pioneer Howard Dean in 2003 – Howard Dean for Iowa Game – Barack Obama in 2008 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, the French games implemented during the 2017 presidential election were not integrated from their design into the candidates’ classic campaign devices, such as digital devices; they were added ex post in order to reinforce the saturation of media spaces and to modernize the “showcase” of parties in search of distinctive elements, or even simple communicational “gadgets” (Mabi and Theviot 2014). In this sense, it is difficult to talk about standardizing these new forms of digital activism and political marketing. The gamification of politics remained a niche tool during the 2017 election campaign. The game was 28 Hillary Clinton 2016, le jeu mobile pour gérer votre propre QG de campagne. BfmTV, July 26, 2016. 29 Comment Clinton surfe sur Pokémon pour faire campagne. Challenges, July 25, 2016. 30 Comment Clinton surfe sur Pokémon pour faire campagne. Challenges, July 25, 2016.

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taken more seriously in the United States, notably to strengthen the performance of activists and the instruments of electoral life, thus underlining the difficulty for French parties to “appropriate not only the tools but above all the underlying representations of the network” (Blondeau and Allard 2007, author’s translation). In addition, the political game developed in the United States was able to benefit more from the economic support and technological experience of the major digital players. The Hillary 2016 application was developed directly by DreamWorks engineers, while the Fiscal Kombat game was developed in a chat room by amateurs, often still students. The strategies employed by the various French technological innovation intermediaries to transfer this “new electoral science” from the United States (Pène 2013) are largely responsible for this trompe-l’oeil import movement. Following the trips undertaken by the Terra Nova Foundation and Arnaud Montebourg, then National Secretary for the renovation of the Socialist Party, to the campaign teams of Barak Obama and the Democratic Party in 2009, the supporters of Jean-Luc Mélenchon31, Emmanuel Macron32 and Alain Juppé for the primary election of the Right and Center (Théviot 2016) were mainly interested in the virtues lent to platforms for mobilization optimization platforms in general and to NationBuilder in particular. This attention emerged in particular because of the role now played by data collection, management and analysis techniques to better profile the electorate (Théviot and Treille 2019), thus leaving the political video game very largely outside their communicational shopping basket. 7.3. Conclusion The media success encountered by Fiscal Kombat in the presidential campaign of 2017 should therefore not be misleading: video games are still accessory instruments of electoral mobilization in France. Worse still, the integration of recreational applications into the arsenal of political persuasion tools cannot be interpreted as the result of an irresistible process of diffusion. In the United States, after having been put forward by Hillary Clinton’s campaign teams in 2016, video games are now a prime target for 31 Notably Sophia Chikirou, his communications director, who experienced the Bernie Sanders campaign. 32 With the electoral start-up Liégey Muller Pons (Ehrhard et al. 2019).

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President Donald Trump33. Once considered “disgusting and macabre”34, they were accused of being partly responsible for the shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, on August 3 and 4, 2019. In March 2018, Donald Trump had already stated on CNN, following the Parkland High School shooting in Florida, that “the level of violence in video games changes the thoughts of younger people”35. In 2012, he also tweeted that “video game violence and glorification must be stopped – they create monsters!”36. In response, the American video game union, the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), reacted strongly to the causal link established by the White House. Digital media professor Ian Bogostalso pointed out in an opinion column published in The Atlantic newspaper that video games are still a “sacrificial lamb slaughtered in the name of protecting gun ownership rights”37, especially when it comes to gun ownership legislation. In France, marked by its first steps with the FN in 1992, rarely taken seriously in 2011 when it was deployed by François Bayrou because of its too crude logic of “pointification”, the video game was integrated in 2017 among the campaign devices of the candidates for the presidential election. This rollout was modest, however, undertaken by candidates such as Jean-Luc Mélenchon or Emmanuel Macron, on the fringes of the major parties of the time such as Les Républicains (LR) or the Partisocialiste (PS), in a still very “artisanal” manner (Trémel 2002). The 2019 European elections did not disturb this picture: from Fiscal Kombat édition européenne to Super Jam Bros produced for La République en marche (LREM), the French political video game is above all entertainment in terms of content and retrogaming in terms of form, while its American counterpart is more educational and more often falls into the category of government simulation games. As a result, the gamification of politics in France functions primarily as introducing an element of modernity to a candidate’s campaign while failing to really motivate activist communities, as is the case in the United States, much less so audiences far 33 At the same time, however, Donald Trump chose to open his own channel on the live video broadcasting platform Twitch, owned by the Amazon group, which is very popular with online video game players. 34 Le Monde, August 6, 2019. 35 L’Obs, August 5, 2019. 36 Le Monde, August 6, 2019. 37 Video game violence is now a partisan issue. The Atlantic, August 5, 2019, quoted by Le Monde, August 6, 2019.

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removed from the political world. In spite of the promotion of practices “foreign” to the techniques of partisan mobilization in France (Frinault and Le Bart 2009) and inter-partisan emulation (Lefebvre and Treille 2019), digital technology and digital techniques continue to occupy a niche location as sources of information for voters (Theviot 2018, 2019) while the more traditional forms of communication, notably television (Leroux and Riutort 2017; Védel 2017), still remain predominant within the panoply of campaign “obligations” (Lefebvre 2016).

8 Datagames: Questioning About the Unproductive Criterion of Play

8.1. Introduction Caillois proposes six criteria for defining play as an activity: “free”, “separate”, “uncertain”, “unproductive”, “regulated” and “make-believe” (Caillois 2001, p. ix). In this chapter, we will focus on the “unproductive” criterion, which the author defines as follows: [Play] creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game. (Caillois 2001, p. 10) Caillois invites us to consider in this way that no game can be the source of any benefit for the players, except a redistribution of the winnings already involved. When he defined this criterion, at the end of the 1950s, he was no doubt thinking of gambling. However, the latter, of course, was not then reconfigured by the advent of games on the Internet and, in particular, the “datagame” (Alvarez and Djaouti 2012, p. 162). This serious game category, whose main characteristic is to play with and produce data, most probably emerged in 2006. In that year, Google Image Labeler (Google 2006) was one of the first datagames. This free title is played by two people on the Internet. A series of images is offered on the screen. Keywords should be used to describe the different visuals. Each word found increments the score. Chapter written by Julian ALVAREZ.

The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Some words are forbidden and cannot be used. At the same time, each participant is asked to avoid using the same word as his or her partner. Otherwise, the game offers a new image. At the end of the series of images, the game is over. Google Image Labeler has been developed by Google to improve the relevance of its image search engine. Each game played is thus a means of enriching its database, collecting statistical data to refine the links between certain images and the lists of words proposed by the different players. This approach seems to be part of the broader field of digital labor. As Casilli explains (Cardon and Casilli 2015), this is the area of research aimed at studying the way in which users of digital technologies, particularly those connected to the Internet, are led to produce value, often free of charge, on behalf of the actors who offer these tools. This enrichment of Google’s database by the Google Image Labeler game is, therefore, in line with the idea of making every Internet user work for free. The notion of work often implies that of productivity, which leads us to reconsider the “unproductive” criterion of Caillois associated with the gaming activity. Let us specify this however. For Caillois, the “unproductive” dimension refers to the fact that play creates “neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind”. For all that, enriching a database corresponds to the production of new and exploitable elements. Is Caillois wrong? The question is actually more complex. Indeed, Caillois’ approach is logical insofar as play can be considered as belonging to an activity deployed in the sphere of leisure with no economic or professional purpose. In this sense, play is opposed to the notion of productivity. However, with the case of Google Image Labeler, we note that Internet users playing this application can feed a database. We are, therefore, confronted with what at first glance looks like a paradox: playing to work. However, for Blanchard (1995), professor of anthropology at Lamar University, we can follow Denzin’s suggestion that work and play are not necessarily opposites in that one can play as well as work during a play activity (Denzin 1975, p. 474). Based on this suggestion, Blanchard proposes a graph entitled “The Dimensions of Human Activity” which crosses the axis “play” and “not-play” with the axis “work” and “not-work” or “leisure” (Blanchard 1995, p. 46). In this way, he obtains four zones: – zone A, “playful work” which associates “play” with “work”; – zone B, “playing at leisure”;

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– zone C, “non-play work”; – zone D, “non-play leisure”. These links between play and work support the idea that it is possible to play while being productive, as in the case of using the Google Image Labeler datagame. This is corroborated by Schmoll: The equally recent notion of “serious game”, extending to a whole set of applications (advertising games, informative games, simulations) the oxymoron that was already contained in that of “edutainment”, confronts the paradox of a futile activity with a useful purpose. (2011, p. 15, author’s translation) We share Schmoll’s approach to the fact that serious games allow people to play while aiming for goals that go beyond mere entertainment. However, it is in the sense of a “utilitarian” purpose that we mean a “serious” and not “useful” purpose. Indeed, can it be said that entertainment is necessarily not useful? On the contrary, can we affirm that all productivity is necessarily useful? The search for a utilitarian purpose can, on the other hand, connect us to the idea of productivity in the case of Google Image Labeler. However, this is not an obligation insofar as the use of a serious game can also aim at personal development on behalf of the player. For example, the use of a serious game with an educational aim (edugame) or a serious game dedicated to health (health game) will guide the utilitarian aspects on behalf of the player. However, edugames and health games are not necessarily datagames, even if they are all serious games. These points having been clarified, we confirm the idea that a datagame belongs to the serious game family and that it is a question of combining play and a utilitarian purpose. While we have established links between work, the utilitarian aspect, productivity and serious games, we still need to know if the player benefits from the work done by playing a datagame like Google Image Labeler. Indeed, if “all work deserves a salary” (Dutour 1965, author’s translation), we need to know if this is indeed the case. In our previous works, we have precisely questioned the notion of unproductivity associated with serious games. And we have come to the following conclusion: All play activities set up by an organizer may present potential gains and risks that may lead to potential “benefits” for the

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player. But […] these benefits are also relative, depending on the players. (Alvarez et al. 2014, author’s translation) Such a conclusion thus puts into perspective that the benefit to the player is not a guarantee to the extent that it is “contingent” and “relative”. On the other hand, we will remain attentive to the fact that, for Caillois, the situation for the “entrepreneur”, the one who designs the game, is quite different: he or she receives the potential profits linked to the activity of the players, he or she does not gamble and protects himself or herself from the associated risks (Caillois 2001). Thus, for Google Image Labeler, the Google company is comparable to the entrepreneur who does not take part and who reaps the profits generated by the activity of the various players each time. In exchange, it could be evoked that setting up the Google Image Labeler game free of charge on behalf of the players would be a form of gratuity. But for a datagame such as Google Image Labeler, the benefit paid to the players remains possible and relative. Playing to produce data corresponds in this case to unpaid work, the free work proposed being justified by its gamified form. But do we find this case for all datagames? Do all companies offer to register their users in a digital labor context when they propose a datagame? Is it possible to identify or imagine datagames that would be able to involve the entrepreneur in play and bring him or her to enrich the players in turn? If we position ourselves in the field of education or health, the entrepreneur could be assimilated to the teacher or the doctor, and the players would be the students or the patients. In such a configuration, the mediation operated by the entrepreneur seems to be able to enrich the players by a benefit that could be translated by reinforced knowledge or know-how, or even therapeutic contributions. Starting from such a pre-supposition, perhaps we can identify datagames that would enrich the different parties involved, entrepreneur and players, and this with the production of associated wealth? To try to answer such questions, we propose to start by defining what we mean by a serious game and the link we establish with the concept of gamification. Once these elements have been specified, we will present the datagame sub-category in a detailed manner. We will study whether there are different types of datagames. This approach will lead us to review the notions of “crowdsourcing” and “metrics”. These steps will allow us to nourish reflection to discuss the possibility of redistributing, or not, benefits on behalf of datagame users.

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8.2. Serious games and gamification 8.2.1. Serious game concept There are many definitions of serious games. The most concise is that of video game designers Chen and Michael (2006): “games whose first purpose was not mere entertainment […]. According to this definition, serious game can be applied to many sectors. This list of areas of application must regularly be updated to reflect the emergence of new ones. It has, today, the following areas: State & Government, Military, Health, Education, business, Religion, Art & Culture, Ecology, Politics, Humanitarian & charitable, Media, Advertising, Scientific Research”. Serious games can be either digital or analog (Abt 1987). According to Alvarez et al., the serious game can be defined as follows: A device, digital or not, whose initial intention is to combine, with coherence, both utilitarian (“serious”) aspects such as, in a non-exhaustive and non-exclusive way, teaching, learning, communication, or information, with playful resources (competition/challenge, rules of control, of closure and procedure, scoring, the artificial character) resulting from play, a videogame or not (“game”). Such an association is aimed at an activity or a market that differs from entertainment alone. (2016, p. 17, author’s translation) This definition can be summarized by the following relationship: serious game = utilitarian scenario + game (video) The word “video” is put here in brackets to indicate that the “video game” medium is only one of the possible ones in the serious game register. To designate only serious games of a digital nature, we can use the expression “serious video game” or “digital serious game” as opposed to “serious analog game” to designate all non-digital titles. “Utilitarian scenario” refers to the work of researcher Étienne Armand Amato, who in 2007 proposed the term “utilitarian game” to designate serious games. For Amato, “utilitarian” is understood as aiming at: The aim is to bring about a transformation in the recipients of these games, leading to an improvement in skills (training), adaptation to the environment (treatment of phobias),

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understanding of a phenomenon (education) or greater adherence to the message conveyed (promotion, advertising, ideological video games, also known as political games). (2007, p. 8, author’s translation) Three main families of utilitarian functions to be associated with play can be referred to: broadcasting a message, providing training and promoting the exchange of data (Alvarez et al. 2016). It is this last function, associated with data exchange, that interests us in the datagame framework. But before developing this sub-category of serious games, it is necessary to specify the concept of gamification to situate it in relation to serious games. 8.2.2. Gamification concept For Deterding et al. (2014, paragraph 14), “gamification is the use of game design in non-game contexts”. And they add: Both games and serious games can be differentiated from gamification in that games form sets, while serious games borrow parts from those sets. (Deterding et al. 2014, paragraph 14, author’s translation) On this basis, they propose a figure along two axes: “totality/parts” on the one hand and “gaming/playing” on the other. The first axis allows us to consider whether the artifact constitutes a whole or not. The second defines whether we are on the side of the ludus, which the authors associate with the term “gaming”, or the paidia, which the authors associate with “playing”. The four zones defined in this way make it possible to situate serious games and games (gaming + totality), toys (playing + totality), gamification, which can also be referred to as “gameful design” (gaming + parts and finally “playful design” (playing + parts). The four zones thus obtained are illustrated in Figure 8.1 (Deterding et al. 2014, paragraph 30). Figure 8.1 compares parts of varying natures, in the occurrence of artifacts (games, serious games and toys) with processes (gameful design and playful design). However, it could make us think that taking parts of the “game or serious game” set that represent artifacts could lead us to gamification, or a process.

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However, the definition of gamification evokes the idea of borrowing such parts from game design. To understand Figure 8.1, it is probably appropriate to interpret “(serious) games design” instead of “(serious) games” and “toys design” instead of “toys”. Put together in this way, all zones now present parts of the same nature, namely, design processes (design) (Alvarez 2019, p. 104).

Figure 8.1. Gamification in regard to playing/gaming and parts/totality axes. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/lelay/gamification.zip

Once these parts have been posed, another question comes to mind: what is the purpose of gamification? The authors explain it to us: Under the name “gamification”, this idea is generating intense public debate as well as numerous applications ranging from productivity to finance, health, education and sustainable development, to information and entertainment media. (Deterding et al. 2014, paragraph 1, author’s translation)

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The target markets encompass a wide range of markets that go beyond entertainment alone. This is precisely one of the characteristics that we can associate with serious games to differentiate them from games dedicated to entertainment alone. Therefore, by taking a few parts from game design, do we really depart from what could be similar to making a game or a serious game, in fine? The authors explain: Let’s recap: while serious games fulfil all the necessary and sufficient conditions to be games, gaming applications only borrow a few design parts from games. From the designer’s perspective, what distinguishes gamification from “normal” games for entertainment and serious games is that it is built with the intention of developing a system that includes game parts and not a game in its own right. From the user’s point of view, such systems that include design parts from games can then be invested in and experienced as “real games”, as gameful or playful or other experiences – this instability or openness being what differentiates them from “real games” for users. (Deterding et al. 2014, paragraph 26, author’s translation) With such remarks, the boundary that separates a gamified artifact from a serious game seems to be the designer’s appreciation. So nothing prevents a designer from declaring that he has designed a gamified artifact rather than a serious game. However, the reverse is also true. There is nothing to prevent a designer from using the gamification approach to finally declare that he has designed a serious game. Allain (2017, paragraph 18, author’s translation), who has sought to differentiate the two objects, comes to the following conclusion: “whereas the two devices (gamification and serious game) are regularly confused by the sponsors, one might have thought it an abuse of language if more theoretical arguments distinguished them”; and to add: “The imbroglio of the devices seems total and only the argument of temporality (superimposed time or not) can still resist”. The difficulty of establishing this boundary is also mentioned by Deterding et al.:

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Naturally, the boundary between a game and an artifact with gaming parts can often be blurred – is Foursquare1 a game or a gaming application? To complicate matters, this boundary is empirical, subjective and socially constructed. (2014, paragraph 19, author’s translation) It is also interesting to note that Allain does not compare gamification to game, but to serious games. Allain goes so far as to present in his writings the “interchanging” between gamification and serious games (Allain 2017). For their part, the writings of Deterding et al. (2014) and Haudegond (2012) also compare serious games with gamification. The boundary between serious games and gamified artifacts thus seems extremely porous. Faced with this observation, and also to specify that gamification is a process and not an artifact in the same way as the serious game, we have appropriated the concept by trying to clearly establish the link with the serious game and the notion of design as follows: Gamification consists – contrary to serious games, which associate a utilitarian aim with play – in associating play or game mechanics with contexts or objects that are originally devoid of them. (Alvarez et al. 2016, p. 41, author’s translation) The gamification process can then be interpreted at two levels: – at a macro or meso scale, introducing a game, digital or not, utilitarian or not, into a formal situation related to a company, a school, a hospital, etc., is in itself a gamification process. Indeed, it involves associating play or game elements with a context that is devoid of them; – at a micro scale, the approach is the same but the engineering is different. How to associate a game or game elements with a utilitarian object such as a coffee maker, a pair of glasses, a car or an educational resource? One approach could be to associate a badge or scoring system with these

1 Initially, the Foursquare application (2009) for smartphones and portable game consoles was a social network combining microblogging and geolocation with a playful approach in that users received badges from other users based in regards to the challenges they faced: https://cursus.edu/articles/3491/le-phenomene-foursquare-melanger-media-social-jeu-etgeolocalisation (accessed August 15, 2019).

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utilitarian objects or devices. These different transformations of objects ultimately lead us to obtain, depending on the case, serious game, if the artifact is able to set and evaluate objectives or serious toys. Thus, whether we are on a macro, meso or micro scale, such gamification processes allow us to obtain a concatenation between utilitarian and playful aspects, which can very well generate a serious game. Of course, we keep in mind that it is only the designer who can claim to have designed a gamified artifact or a serious game. On the other hand, for users and sponsors (Allain 2017), the artifacts seem to merge. This link between gamification and serious game being specified, let us now study what a datagame represents. 8.3. Datagames: approach and contributions 8.3.1. Datagame concept Datagames (Alvarez and Djaouti 2012) are part of the serious games family. A datagame proposes as a main utilitarian function to promote data exchange. In concrete terms, this consists of playing with data, generating, collecting or exchanging data. Thus, datagames are serious games associated with databases, following the example of Google Image Labeler presented in the introduction. With a datagame, the player plays and potentially contributes to improving the associated database by the solutions proposed during the game. A concrete field of use for data games is crowdsourcing. 8.3.2. Crowdsourcing concept Crowdsourcing consists of calling upon crowds, especially Internet users, to collect information, opinions, data, etc. In this register, we can evoke the case of Wikipedia to constitute an online encyclopedia or sites like TripAdvisor to evaluate restaurants, vacation spots or other hotels. Crowdsourcing also concerns the realization of laborious or meticulous work of a scientific nature and can be translated as “participatory science”. The website www.zooniverse.org proposes in particular to Internet users to

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help researchers study photographs of the Moon to identify the best moon landing site, to analyze various star images to locate exoplanets, or to locate asteroids located near the Earth. These examples, which are not exhaustive, highlight work that exceeds the production capacities of the research teams behind such requests. Datagames can thus be part of crowdsourcing by proposing to use the game as mediation to ensure evaluation activities, census or by aiming to find solutions to a given problem. But what is the counterpart for the users of such devices? 8.3.3. Datagames: a direct contribution for the player In the case of Google Image Labeler, the benefit for the company is clearly identified: Google reaps the fruit of the games played by Internet users to improve its image search engine. But what about the users? What do people who associate words with series of images reap in concrete terms, apart from the potential pleasure of having played? On a cognitive level, by playing, it can be argued that users are led to train themselves to summon vocabulary. This would correspond to the utilitarian function of “providing training” mentioned above. Thus, there would be a cognitive benefit. However, the person will only use the vocabulary he or she already knows. Indeed, Google Image Labeler is not intended to teach new words. We could bring this idea closer to the words of Caillois (2001) when he states: “creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind.” To break away from this postulate, the datagame must, therefore, be the source of creation of new elements. Perhaps this is the case for datagames that are part of the crowdsourcing register, particularly in relation to participatory research. Indeed, we can assume that in such a framework, the entrepreneur, embodied by the research laboratories, will have the vocation of redistributing profits to the participants. Within the framework of participatory science, we have identified Foldit (University of Washington 2008)2. This datagame is in the form of a jigsaw puzzle that presents three-dimensional proteins to be folded. While the first

2 http://fold.it/portal/info/science (accessed April 22, 2017).

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level is simple, the following levels are quickly completed. So much so that if the player finds solutions, it will be of interest to the researchers who developed the game in order to open up perspectives in their field of research. For Foldit, the Washington lab is clearly identified as the entrepreneur in the sense understood by Caillois. Thus, in 2011, Foldit enabled the researchers involved in the project to identify the spatial configuration of a molecule used in AIDS research3. The community of players found a solution in 10 days, whereas the scientific community had been confronted with this problem for more than 15 years. If we perceive the benefit to the scientific community, what benefit can be identified for the players? The first benefit may be symbolic or ideological: that of having contributed to scientific research to advance collective knowledge and potentially lead ultimately to a concrete societal benefit, such as one day having a vaccine to protect against the AIDS virus. If this is the case, it is a profitable spin-off for society, which can be part of the “common” perspective and which corresponds, for its supporters, to wanting to go beyond the capitalist and individualist logic (Dardot and Laval 2015). In this approach, even if the person producing the data may be intrinsically motivated by making a contribution to society, it should be noted that everyone, even those who have not played Foldit, is benefitted (knowledge, vaccines, etc.) since it is society in the broadest sense that becomes the beneficiary. It is the same logic with the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia, for example. People who contribute to Foldit or Wikipedia can be considered as volunteering on behalf of society. If we now wish to identify other types of benefits on behalf of the players who work for Foldit, they are then indirect and remain hypothetical, just like for Google Image Labeler, while the benefit on behalf of the researchers, who here represent the entrepreneur, is concrete: data are produced and can be used for scientific publications. These publications may correspond to the sharing of knowledge on behalf of society. This may correspond to a form of profit sharing. But if these data are then the subject of patent applications or other financial transactions, the players will not receive any direct remuneration for their part. If we now discard the financial profit track, what other direct benefits could we identify on behalf of the players?

3 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/09/19/aids-protein-decoded-gamers_n_970113.html (consulted April 22, 2017).

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8.3.4. Datagames: a redistribution of direct benefits to players In order to identify benefits that could directly reach the players, we need to move away from crowdsourcing, which is based on volunteerism, and focus our research on titles that could benefit the players in a tangible and direct way. Health-oriented serious games, such as X-TORP (CHU de Nice 2014), Paldokangsan 3 (Hoseo University 2014) or Hammer & Planks (NaturalPad 2012), aim to stimulate patients’ cognitive and physical abilities while informing doctors of their progress through the collection of medical data. Even if the data produced by the players through these games are directed to the medical team (entrepreneur), the latter can in turn modify the difficulty and objectives of the game to best help the players in their rehabilitation. Thus, the entrepreneur can, by the nature of the data collected, help the player to progress. We are, therefore, dealing here with a tangible and direct benefit for the player. Nevertheless, we must emphasize that the different health games presented here are special cases: the data produced concern only one patient at a time. A priori, it is not a question of collecting data that would come from different patients in order to draw global lessons to improve an artificial intelligence (AI), for example. The redistribution of direct benefits on behalf of the entrepreneur does not really seem to be appropriate: if the medical team is considered as the entrepreneur, its mission is essentially to adapt its therapy in the light of the data collected. The serious game does not automatically ensure this redistribution. It is difficult in this case to talk about datagames. To identify what a datagame could be with automatic redistribution of benefits on behalf of the players and the entrepreneur, we can take as an example Akinator4 (elokence.com 2007). This video toy linked to a database offers to guess a personality that the player has in mind. To do this, he or she asks a series of questions in order to deduce the right answer. After a few exchanges, Akinator proposes a personality. Whether the answer is right or wrong, the player is asked to return to the game. This improves the relevance of the program and enriches the database if necessary. This is similar to the Google Image Labeler approach for the moment. Nevertheless, a form of sharing for the players’ accounts appears: during the following games the players will benefit each time from a more and more relevant game to find 4 http://fr.akinator.com/ (accessed April 22, 2017).

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the personalities to be discovered. This is mainly due to the increasing number of personalities registered in the database but also to a statistical refinement of the choices usually made by all the players. Thus, for the same player, the gaming experience will be enriched with each new game, because thinking about the same personality should lead Akinator to be able to identify it more easily. While the utilitarian dimension is not really clear in the case of Akinator, which remains dedicated solely to entertainment, this example highlights that an automatic redistribution of the work provided by the players to the players is technically possible around a datagame. These few examples of health games and the Akinator video toy seem to relativize Caillois’ approach to the unproductive aspect of the game5 by producing new content and the possible redistribution of profits among players. But we will remain cautious because we have not really found any datagames that propose to redistribute direct benefits to players. In this context, this leads us to an intermediate observation: there are potentially different types of datagames, those that tend toward a redistribution of benefits to players and those that do not. 8.3.5. Different types of datagames Google Image Labeler or Foldit only offers to feed the database associated with the game without redistributing direct benefits to the player. We can, therefore, designate such datagames as one-sided. In this case, the entrepreneur is the only beneficiary of the data produced by the players. By associating health games (X-TORP, Paldokangsan 3, Hammer & Planks) for their utilitarian dimension with the video toy Akinator for its automatic redistribution of benefits, we are facing what could lead to bilateral datagames. In this case, the entrepreneur would no longer be the sole beneficiary of the data produced by the players because a direct redistribution of the benefits to the players would take place. To date, we believe we have identified such a datagame with Tam Tam (KTM Advance 2012), which we will present a little later (section 8.3.7). Figure 8.2 summarizes these two cases.

5 Let us specify that this positioning on unproductiveness is not in line with Juul’s attacks against Caillois as denounced by Triclot (2011, p. 49), Juul inscribing game in a formal approach from which the activity is evacuated.

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a)

b) Figure 8.2. The two types of datagames: a) unilateral; b) bilateral. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/lelay/gamification.zip

8.3.6. Case of the game with data redistribution only Unilateral datagames let us glimpse a possibility to be explored: a game that only proposes to redistribute benefits to the player without giving anything to the entrepreneur. That is, a game, as presented in Figure 8.3, where the associated database would simply feed the game without collecting data from the players6. In this case, is it still a datagame? This type of game exists. It is, for example, Pulse!! (BreakAway 2007). This serious game is the result of an order from the American government

6 Any game requires the management of variables based on the players’ actions. We are talking here about data stored in a database that would have a purpose other than to make the game itself work.

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and represents to date one of the most expensive serious games on the market: more than 10 million dollars have been invested in its development. Pulse!! offers the player the role of an emergency doctor who has to take care of a patient. It is possible to directly examine the patient, ask questions or send him or her for tests such as an MRI. The user can manage the intellectual part of the diagnosis, but also the relational aspect. The user’s “know-how” in dealing with the patient influences the quality of the information he or she obtains. In addition, some patients with serious disorders need to be treated quickly, adding a stress factor to play. Crisis situations, such as a chemical attack or a car accident, can be played out in order to prepare doctors for the worst-case scenarios. Pulse!! offers 25,000 different clinical cases. But in no case does the game take into account solutions produced by the player to improve, for example, care protocols that could benefit any entrepreneur.

Figure 8.3. Game that simply distributes data without collecting data from the player. For a color version of this figure, see www.iste.co.uk/lelay/gamification.zip

In this context, in our opinion, we cannot speak of a datagame. In fact, a majority of games dedicated to entertainment only offer to feed the game by relying on a database that only the publisher takes care to feed. Adventure games are going to draw dialogs for the different non-players according to the player’s actions, strategy games, like chess, will search a database for records of moves to be played to respond to the player if necessary. Drawing information from a database to feed a game is therefore not a sufficient characteristic to designate a datagame. Indeed, the main characteristic of the latter is that it enables playing with data but also collecting data from the

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player to feed a database. The redistribution, or not, of direct benefits makes it possible to distinguish two types of datagames: unilateral and bilateral. 8.3.7. Active and passive collection In both unilateral and bilateral datagames, we can also see two distinct ways of collecting data from players. First of all, there is the active way. The player proposes solutions within the framework of the game. This is, for example, the case for Google Image Labeler or Foldit where the player suggests words to describe an image and ways to fold proteins, respectively. The challenges proposed in the game invite players to perform specific actions that feed a database. Then there is a passive method. The player is analyzed by the game during the game. This is, for example, the case with health games (X-TORP, Paldokangsan 3 and Hammer & Planks) that we mentioned earlier. With this method, the player feeds the database with a set of actions and choices that the player chooses to record and study. The player does not necessarily know the nature of the recorded metrics. However, many games offer to analyze the players via, for example, Google Analytics. To stay within the datagame framework, these metrics must feed a database that will be used by the game for subsequent games, as in Akinator. Note that metrics are a set of variables that the designers of an application choose to plot. The metrics produced by the player during a game can feed a database. It is thus possible for a trainer or a health practitioner to follow a user’s path and to know the strategies adopted, reaction times, responses formulated, etc. Research on metrics in the context of the use of serious games has been conducted by Carron et al. (2008) and Djaouti (2011). However, by registering ourselves only in the register of passive collection, we cannot speak of datagames. Indeed, the player must be able to play with the data itself. This is not the case for the three health games X-TORP, Paldokangsan 3 and Hammer & Planks, which confirms that they should be eliminated from the datagame family. In order to be registered in the datagame register, a game must, therefore, be available that combines passive collection with active collection.

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Is it possible to find a datagame that combines both active and passive collection? On the theoretical level, nothing would prevent such an association where the game would propose to find solutions to a given problem while analyzing, via metrics, the action of the different players. Such a datagame can be recorded with Tam Tam (KTM Advance 2012). This game is an information and exchange device (web platform and serious game) intended for employees of the Bayer group. The company’s aim is to raise social issues such as the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the positioning of the company in relation to nanotechnology, the decline of bees, etc., with them. In this way, Tam Tam wants to offer a playful way of opening up the debate on ideas with scientific and sociological information that questions both the Bayer Group’s position (management and employees) and the stakeholders in civil society. In the game, participants can put forward arguments for or against a market in which the Bayer Group would like to position itself. This is the active part of the game. At the same time, the entrepreneur (Bayer) can collect data on how much time players spend on the platform, how often they use the game, and so on. This is passive collection. On the benefits side, Tam Tam is a means of expression for the entrepreneur, allowing him to get feedback from employees and to know their overall positioning. For the players, the benefit is as much about getting to know the arguments of other employees and management as it is about expressing their opinion on whether or not they share the Bayer Group’s values. However, it is important to note that expressing one’s arguments will not necessarily change management’s opinion on the strategic positioning adopted. It may, on the other hand, provide the entrepreneur with a managerial approach that allows, for example, the “manufacture of consent” (Burawoy 1979). 8.3.8. Inventory of the different types of datagames With the parameters “unilateral and bilateral benefits”, as well as “active and passive collections”, we theoretically obtain four types of datagames as shown in Table 8.1. For each of these combinations, we searched for associated datagame titles. To date, we have identified titles for 50% of these combinations. The other half has yet to be identified.

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Benefit/collection

Unilateral Benefits the entrepreneur only or possibly the players indirectly

Bilateral Benefits to the entrepreneur and the players

Active The player offers solutions that match the datagame’s collection

Google Image Labeler Foldit

?

Active and passive The datagame collects the solutions proposed by the player while analyzing it.

?

Tam Tam

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Table 8.1. The four different types of datagames

8.4. Conclusion The question of this chapter is linked to the questioning of the fourth Caillois criterion for defining play as an activity, namely, an activity that is “unproductive: creating neither goods, nor wealth, nor new elements of any kind; and, except for the exchange of property among the players, ending in a situation identical to that prevailing at the beginning of the game”. In this criterion, we can distinguish two propositions: 1) the creation of wealth or new elements; 2) a situation at the end of the game identical to the one at the beginning. Based on the datagames, we can question these two proposals. For the first one, we have indeed identified that serious games of the datagames type can generate wealth, or at least new elements. This wealth is expressed in the form of data collection that can be carried out actively (the player proposes solutions) or simultaneously in an active and passive way (the player is also analyzed via metrics). In response to the second proposal, it is worth noting a change in the situation between the beginning and the end of the game for the players and

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not only for the entrepreneur. Table 8.1 shows that there is, in our opinion, at least one datagame (Tam Tam) with a title of a bilateral nature: the benefits are aimed at both entrepreneurs and players. A bilateral datagame thus implies a change of situation for the players at the end of the game. This allows us to discuss the “unproductive” dimension of Caillois to define the game. With this observation, can we definitively rule out Caillois’ fourth criterion related to unproductivity? The case is not simple. Indeed, it could be retorted that datagames constitute a very specific category of game and that only those presenting a bilateral benefit allow us to refute this fourth criterion; unless one considers that datagames are not really games but rather gamified utilitarian applications. The title Foldit is thus considered by some researchers as such (Leroux 2012). It is also a possible interpretation. In order to progress in this questioning, it is necessary to question the authors or entrepreneurs to find out on a case-by-case basis whether they consider it to be a serious game or a gamified device. In the same way, users of such applications must be questioned as to the direct benefits they derive from them and check whether their activity is suitable for unpaid work. This is an ethical point that must be taken into account and resolved in the context of datagaming. All of this can be included in the research field of digital labor. Let us not forget, finally, that at the time when Caillois proposed this criterion, computer games only existed in university or military laboratories. As for the possibility of crowdsourcing via datagames on the Internet, this did not yet exist. It was therefore not possible for Caillois to take such elements into account in his approach to play.

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The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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List of Authors

Julian ALVAREZ DeVISU INSPÉ LNF Lille France Elisabeth BELMAS IRIS University of Paris North – Paris 13 France Aymeric BRODY EXPERICE University of Paris North – Paris 13 France and CASPER Saint Louis University Brussels Belgium Gilles BROUGÈRE EXPERICE University of Paris North – Paris 13 France

Victoria CHANTSEVA EXPERICE University of Paris North – Paris 13 France Éric DAGIRAL CERLIS The University of Paris France Jean FRANCES ENSTA Bretagne Brest France Stéphane LE LAY Institut de psychodynamique du travail Paris France Pierre LÉNEL Lise Cnam-CNRS Paris France

The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

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Emmanuelle SAVIGNAC CERLIS The University of Paris New Sorbonne University – Paris 3 CNRS France

Éric TREILLE Arènes University of Rennes EHESP Rennes CNRS France

Index

A addiction, 99, 104–106, 113, 114, 122, 123, 125, 126 agent, 26, 123 artifact, 22, 25, 92, 152, 154–156 attention economy, 95 B behavior, 25, 64, 91, 117, 126 belief, 45 benefits, 90, 118, 149, 150, 157–160, 164, 166 bilateral datagame, 166 bullshit, 9, 101 C capital, 82, 158 capitalism, 20, 34, 72 new spirit of, 36 chance, 12, 51, 60–62, 64, 107, 109, 112–115, 121 choice architecture, 24, 40 common, 16, 38, 64, 90, 93, 95, 158 competition, 7, 32, 38, 41, 44, 91, 92 sports, 107

consequences, 4, 7, 13, 17, 29, 31, 43, 122 control, 9, 28, 29, 31, 36, 37, 42, 60, 86, 113, 121, 122, 151 cooperation, 43, 91 crowdsourcing, 150, 156, 157, 166 culture, 13, 16, 24, 28, 101, 138, 139 cybernetics, 96 D datafication, 85–87, 89, 96, 97 degamification, 6, 15 device(s) disciplinary, 74 digital labor, 148 dynamics, 22 E education, 6, 8, 31, 41, 52, 58, 109 electronic coaching, 142 empowerment, 142 engagement, 23, 29–37, 42, 43, 87, 95–97, 99, 100, 121, 140 ethics, 24, 86, 166 evaluation, 36, 40, 43, 44, 61, 90, 157

The Gamification of Society, First Edition. Edited by Stéphane Le Lay, Emmanuelle Savignac, Pierre Lénel and Jean Frances. © ISTE Ltd 2021. Published by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

194

The Gamification of Society

F feedback, 34, 37, 41, 43 fiction, 5, 37 flow, 14, 33 fun, 10, 12, 21, 23 G gambling, 12, 105, 108, 109, 113–115, 119, 126 game(s) elements, 6, 14, 22, 27, 28, 31, 32, 39, 155 mathematical, 60 mechanics, 21, 22, 24–28, 33, 34, 37, 42 pedagogical, 53 political video, 129, 144, 145 sports, 53, 56, 108 studies, 37, 86, 89 gameful, 12, 20, 24, 28, 34, 36 design, 20, 21, 152 gamification (see also degamification), 16, 52, 101, 129, 131 of politics, 134, 143 gratification, 33, 35, 150 H hard work, 29, 30, 32, 38 HCI (human–computer interactions), 19, 43 health, 22, 50, 57, 86, 90, 92–94, 96, 104, 113, 149, 150, 159, 163 hybrids, 16–18 L learning, 16, 31, 39, 41, 44, 49, 52, 60 legitimacy, 71

leisure, 6, 8, 12, 14, 17, 45, 104, 105, 114, 117, 125, 148 loot boxes, 107 ludicisation, 15, 50 ludus, 4, 9, 20, 152 M, N magic circle, 26 marketing, 6, 20, 29, 108, 109, 131, 142, 143 MDA (mechanics, dynamics and aesthetics), 21, 23, 24, 39 mechanics, 22, 23, 29, 31, 36, 37, 39, 42, 43 mediation, 25, 28, 33, 150, 157 metaphor, 3, 7, 8, 11, 12, 101, 116, 118, 119, 125 metrics, 150, 163–165 modalization, 7, 13, 15 moral/morality, 54, 63, 110 motivation, 6, 14, 16, 17, 21, 30, 32–34, 39, 41, 42, 90 needs, 30, 33, 34, 45 neoliberal, 76, 82 norms, 23, 96 O, P oxymoron, 15, 149 paidia, 5, 9, 20, 152 performance, 21, 30, 33, 35, 36, 38, 90, 92, 93, 144 player-centric, 22, 26 playful design, 152 frame, 8, 15, 16, 18 pleasure, 36, 43, 45, 157 pointification, 37, 38, 140, 141 political communication, 129, 132, 139

Index

power, 97, 100, 101 probabilities, 12, 61, 62, 64, 109 productivity, 90, 92, 148, 149 profit/gain, 56, 61 psychology, 30, 44, 45, 90, 95 Q, R quantification, 30, 34, 36, 40, 42, 87, 88, 93, 94, 97, 98 quantified self, 85, 86, 94 recording, 6, 88, 97 reification, 5 retrogaming, 130, 145 reward, 49, 65, 87, 90, 91, 94, 143 chart, 67, 70, 72, 75 rhetorics, 12, 41 rules, 4, 17, 22, 25, 27, 28 ruse/trickery, 6, 9, 12, 16, 17 S scores, 35, 36, 90, 91, 93, 98, 155 scoring, 101, 143 SDT (self-determination theory), 34

195

self-tracking, 87, 89, 91, 95–97 simulation, 5, 13, 16, 37, 145 social and cultural determinants, 41 networks, 49, 51, 93, 108, 109, 129, 130 pressure, 38 prestige, 72, 82 structure, 26, 27, 50, 119, 134 surveillance, 86, 87 system, 23 game, 26 of constraints, 26 T, U, V, W toy, 5, 153, 159, 160 unpaid work, 150, 166 utilitarian, 149, 151, 155–157, 160 value, 6, 55, 63, 136, 148 well-being, 90, 92, 93

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