Why Everything is Becoming a Game

But the thing is, more and more of life is structured like a game. Increasingly, corporations, institutions, governments have begun to understand how powerful this way of transforming and shaping our agency, our behavior is. And so social media is structured like a game. Our school and work lives are structured around points, ratings, grades, metri... See more

“The gamification we encounter most often and most conspicuously in our lives doesn’t deliver the fulfilment or progress it promises. Instead, it maintains stasis. It keeps workers in line, funnelling profits to those who already have capital. It encourages us to study or train or play for goals that aren’t truly our own. And it reinforces the idea

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Second, when our basic needs are met, we will need a sense of purpose. The beauty of games is that they lend importance to the objectively trivial. If we reach a level of abstraction in which we all become investors, sending money back and forth, wrapping it in a game will make it feel more meaningful.