What The Hell… There’s A Gamification World Championship?


If I drank coffee, I would probably be spitting it out right now. There is a World Championships for gamification. What is this strange planet we live on?

This isn’t a world championships to see who can collect the most meaningless digital badges, or accumulate the most pointless virtual wealth — it’s a competition to see how smart humans can best manipulate us lesser sentient beings into doing something completely banal and pointless for no good reason at all.

According to the official website the Gamification World Championships is a “fun, innovative and professional competition for students and professionals to develop their skill and understanding of the rapidly growing field of Gamification”.

There are three rounds to this competition. The two rounds are two hour quizzes that test the entrants’ knowledge on basic gamification concepts that “help increase profits, reduce risk, enrich data quality and enhance public image”. Details on the finals are more scare, but are said to involve some kind of Gamification Battle

Look, I understand the ‘need’ for gamification or, at the very least, the motivation for implementing it into certain areas of life. But the weird open way companies discuss gamification in terms of influencing and inspiring loyalty in certain products gives me a sick little feeling in my stomach. I don’t like being influenced in this way, and I don’t like the intent behind almost all types of gamification.


The Cheapest NBN 1000 Plans

Looking to bump up your internet connection and save a few bucks? Here are the cheapest plans available.

At Kotaku, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


3 responses to “What The Hell… There’s A Gamification World Championship?”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *