To Gamify or Not to Gamify

[This is the story of the start-up and app Purposely™. Each week I’ll chat about its purpose, progress, and possibilities. Let’s consider this the memoir of an app <smile>. If you’d like to be in touch, please drop me a line to [email protected]. And please take a peek at my latest book, Choose Your Life Purposes, which spells out the principles upon which Purposely is built.]

Purposely invites you to take your life seriously. It invites you to take you seriously. It does not presume that you need to feel like you’ve earned a thousand points, crept up some level toward a decal, or been rewarded in any way for living your life purposes, except by having made yourself proud by your efforts. Purposely—so far—has refused to gamify itself.

But is that smart? And does that meet human beings where they are at? Don’t millions and billions of people need the experience of playing a game in order to exercise, diet, or do much of anything? Aren’t millions and billions of people passing the time by game-playing: by playing poker, tennis, chess, word games, math puzzles, sports betting, anywhere where one can compete and “win”?

Here are some estimates. 1.6 billion people place sports bets annually. 600 million people play chess. 150 million people play poker. 3.3 billion gamers worldwide play computer games. And lotteries? Another billion. Wouldn’t only a self-sabotaging idiot not build gamification into his or her app? People crave game-playing. They crave it like they crave drugs. No so-called ADHD child is even slightly ADHD while playing a game. Where did the attention deficit go?

And that’s just the people who do play games. What about those others? I suspect that a significant percentage of the people who don’t compete, who don’t play games, are not competing because they are so competitive that they fear manifesting their competitive nature and maybe turning into some kind of monster or addict. They are not competing not because they aren’t competitive but because they are too competitive! I sort of sense that in myself.

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Competing looks to be baked into us. No doubt about it. And our culture magnifies that innate intensity by letting us know who is winning and who is losing. Which movie has won at the box office? Who is the best of all time at soccer, basketball, football, tennis? What’s the best movie ever made? The Olympics. Academy Awards. Nobel Prizes. What’s the best can opener, eyeliner, and place to visit? Best, best, best. And everything and everyone else? Losers.

And, in the real world, winning is monetized. You can ask a lot for an ad if you have a million followers and nothing at all if you have ten followers. That first is an influencer and a winner who is taking money to the bank. That second is not only a loser but impoverished. When competing is baked into us, when the culture is continually announcing its winner and losers, and when capitalism is where we’re at, who dares ignore those realities?

So, given those triple realities, that gaming is baked into us, that our culture keeps keeping the score, and that winning means money, must we gamify Purposely? Is that absolutely necessary? Are we obliged to award you a thousand points for doing something you ought to be doing? Will Purposely not prove to be sticky enough without the flypaper of gamification?

Maybe.

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