Is Gamification bullshit?

Abstract

Huizinga published Homo Ludens (1938) where he posited that play is integral to our lives. In fact, there was a tiny bit of academic controversy when he took offense at the grammatical correction of his ‘play element of culture’ to the ‘play element in culture’. What he meant was that play precedes culture, and thus, could not be relegated to one of the many elements of human culture. Play may be defined as the voluntary effort to overcome unnecessary obstacles. That, right there, is the crux of play - a potentially subversive space of freedom where you act not out of necessity or profit, but out of the play impulse...just for the fun of it. Think of how we get immersed in play - drawn into the magic circle of a precious time and space, thieved deftly from the snares of the real world. The politics of play is the politics of the Bakhtinian ‘carnivalesque’ - a sacrilegious, sticking-out-the-tongue to the rules of reality.