Gamification: The case against competitiveness

 Win! Be independent! You're the best!

If you are saying this to yourself, you are playing the wrong game. We are encouraged to be ambitious, competitive and self-sufficient to our detriment.This mentality isolates us. Makes us soloists. What's the point in being competitive with our colleague to the point that we have to bargain for assistance? It seems that many fear giving it should we inadvertently help someone get ahead of us, or of taking it, lest our glory be taken from us. In this world, even if we win, we win alone. All alone.

The image takes us away from how we should be. Work promotes 'star performers', and cripples the rest, plummeting the rest of us into doubt and obscurity. To be happier and more productive, we should be a lot more co-operative in our work rather than thinking that getting assistance from others is somehow weak or undeserving of the praise given to a ‘leader’.

Perhaps this shift happened in industrialisation, perhaps it happened with the breakdown of the communal village, but for the last century, it has surely been in all the popular media.

Movies promote heroes of Wall Street, TV shows aren't happy with the art they created, but must find a single winner. Compete. Dominate. Alone.

And games. The biggest game of the 20th century was Monopoly, and it is a sore, sore indictment of what that century stood for.Look at Monopoly. Just look at it. It is a terrible game. Very limited options where everyone starts with cash and gradually fails, ground down by one despot, leaving the rest despondent.

That's what we got sold! That in order to win, others must lose.This is so embedded in the culture that, during a business course last week where we played the prisoners' dilemma to show how humans end up supporting rather than betraying each other, one woman said, "Oh, that's just a game. That's not what it's like in the real world."...yes it is! In the "real world", humans thrive on working together, setting goals, contributing to the success of that goal and the benefit of a cause. Contribution from others can also allow us to work with our strengths while someone else covers our weaknesses. That's what humans do! That's how we live! How we survived the savannah and thrive today!

Modern games DO promote bond and growth, especially co-op games. In Pandemic, for example, all players must work together, each using their own individual strengths against a global disease with one clear goal in mind: to save the world.

There might have been an outbreak in India, or three in the South American countries. Immediately the group discusses which mini-goals are a priority and while each has their own character with unique abilities, all pitch in their opinions about the strategy the group will employ.

So long as one person doesn’t dominate the discussion (which is a problem with co-ops), everyone gets to contribute to the success of the team. Ralph suggests that he use his unique skill to fly to India, Mary that she should resolve the Brazil situation with Ted’s assistance, and the opinions are immediately supported with feedback. Mini-goals are achieved (or not), and the world is saved (or not) and everyone together celebrates their combined victory, with everyone feeling that they contributed to it.

Even with modern competitive games, the players generally end with more than they started with, allowing them to feel less like they failed, and more like it was a partial win.Much of our work life is not organised like a good game. In their own work, Ralph and Mary might hardly get an opportunity to share their ideas with others, let alone the direction of $100,000 of company funds to enact them. The weight of responsibility and doubt would make them stall before they started.

And to some degree they are right. Anybody’s first idea is often raw and untenable, including those of the go-getters. Ideas need assistance to shape it into something which can be put into play, and to do that, we need others, exactly like the discussion in Pandemic.

How do we achieve this? Just like any good co-op game. Open up a safe space where people can share their ideas on a project: what the project is trying to achieve; how they can contribute; is there a better way; can we ask company X what they did in such a situation – and so on. If nobody is allowed to dominate, nobody selfishly claiming everything their own, and contributions encouraged, then a good idea can turn into a great idea, and becomes very group-achievable.That’s not the total solution. We still need the ambitious go-getters to get things stared with an imperfect plan and carry it through to completion. That’s their strength, let them use it.

Save the world. Together.

The aim, and this goes against the competitive culture that we are exposed to, is to seek to assist without seeking personal aggrandisement. As Harry S. Truman once said: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit”.

Some companies encourage this by timing everyone’s coffee brakes to happen at the same time in the same room, which forces everyone so spend their relaxed time sharing what is happening in their projects, and seeing how they can help out others’. Other companies make formal round-table procedures on their task force. Others still give members that are not usually in a team one afternoon to spend together to discuss goals they can achieve together.This has been shown to multiply the effectiveness of the dominant leader models several times over. When a group decides on a goal that is challenging but achievable, then sets about achieving it, all members win, and win happy.

Isn’t that more fun than going solo?