January 2011. Lots of mental anguish in the McLeod household. The job may be the best professional setup I’ll ever get. But it’s not the right time to move our family from Ames, Iowa. What to do, what to do? Think outside the box! Pitch UK a ‘global worker’ proposal. 90% of my work is online / electronic anyway. Can I remain in Ames and fly to Lexington a few days a month to take care of the rest? We wait anxiously, fingers and toes crossed. UK says YES!
Scott does really interesting work and his move to UK will have implications for our field in more ways than one. A key to consider, is it OK for a tenured Associate Professor to set up shop at a major University and not live there? Teaching I can working well, but that is only a piece of what one does as an academic at a place like UK or PSU.
The title of this symposium shorthands these points for me: the slogan "For the Win," accompanied by a turgid budgetary arrow and a tumescent rocket, suggesting the inevitable priapism this powerful pill will bring about—a Viagra for engagement dysfunction, engorgement guaranteed for up to one fiscal quarter.
Exploitationware captures gamifiers' real intentions: a grifter's game, pursued to capitalize on a cultural moment, through services about which they have questionable expertise, to bring about results meant to last only long enough to pad their bank accounts before the next bullshit trend comes along.
Gamification seems to me to take the least interesting thing about games and try to shoehorn it into other areas of life. Points and upgrades... bleah, I get enough of that from my frequent flyer program. Where's the imaginary world? Where are the characters to care about, the story to follow? Where are the viscerally meaningful consequences of my decisions?
WHERE'S MY GODDAMNED MAGIC SWORD?
I'm not certain I agree with Bogost, but he does raise some interesting points (and he's approaching this from a similar viewpoint; tenured faculty at georgia tech). The most interesting dialog takes place in the comments...
It seems like he wrote this in reaction to the activity of fly-by-night business consultants. Personally, I see a lot of value in gamification in education. Stubbs and I participated in writing the ELI white paper about gamification: http://www.educause.edu/Resources/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAboutGamif/233416