The Value of Value Capture
Using Gamification to Address Addiction and Sequential Choice Problems
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5617/jpg.8760Abstract
Gamification, roughly the use of game-like elements to motivate us to achieve practical ends “in the real world,” makes large promises. According to Jane McGonigal, gamification can save the world by channelling the amazing motivational power of gaming into pro-social causes ranging from alienation from our work to global resource scarcity and feeding the hungry (McGonigal 2011). Even much more modest aims like improving personal fitness or promoting a more equitable division of household labour provide some license for optimism about the ability of gamification to improve our lives in more humble but still worthwhile ways. On the other hand, Thi Nguyen has argued that there is a dark side to gamification: what he calls “value capture.” Roughly, gamification works in large part because it offers a simplified value structure – this is an essential part of its appeal and motivational power. However, especially in the context of gamification which exports these value schemes into our real-world lives, there is a risk that these overly simplistic models will displace our more rich, subtle values and that this will make our lives worse: this is value capture. The point is well-taken. The way in which number of steps taken per day can, for an avid user of “FitBit,” displace more accurate measurements of how one’s activities contribute to one’s fitness is a compelling example. If I become so obsessed with “getting my 10,000 steps” that I stop making time to go to the gym, jog or do my yoga/pilates then that is not a net gain. However, there is an important range of cases that Nguyen’s discussion ignores but which provide an important exception to his critique: value capture relative to behaviours that are addictive and destructive. Here I have in mind things like alcoholism, drug addiction, and gambling addiction. With these kinds of activities, value capture can not only be good but essential to a person’s well-being because (and not in spite of) of its displacement of the person’s more rich, subtle values. Interestingly, the point is not limited to cases of addictive behaviour, though they put the point in its most sharp relief. Any situation in which making rational decisions one by one can leave one worse off than “blindly” following a policy which is itself rational to adopt also turns out to illustrate the point, thus further expanding the role for value capture as itself a force for good. The more general point is that certain kinds of sequential choice problems carve out an important and theoretically interesting exception to Nguyen’s worries about value capture. In these kinds of choice contexts, value capture not only does not make our lives go worse, it may be essential to making our lives go better.
References
Bermudez, J. 2010. “Pitfalls for realistic decision theory: an illustration from sequential choice.” Synthese: 23-40.
Bogost, I. 2014. “Gamification is Bullshit.” In Walz and Deterding (ed.) The Gameful World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 65-81.
Holton, R. 2009. Willing, Wanting, Waiting. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hume, D. 1978. Treatise of Human Nature [1739]. Ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Joyce, R. 2001. The Myth of Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
McGonigal, J. 2011. Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World. New York: Penguin.
McClennan, E. 2012. Rationality and Dynamic Choice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nichols, H. 2017. “Best Apps For Quitting Smoking.” Medical News Today.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317633#Quit-Smoking-Slowly. _____. 2018.
Healthline Media, n.d. “Best Apps to Stop Drinking Alcohol.” Medical News Today. Accessed Au-gust 5, 2021. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/318913#Coach.me
Nguyen, T. 2020. Games: Agency as Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Ogborne, A. 1989. “Some Limitations of Alcoholics Anonymous.” Recent Developments in Alcoholism. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2648498/
Rey, P. “Gamification and Post-Fordist Capitalism.” In Walz and Deterding (ed.) The Gameful World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 277-296.
Ridge, M. 2021. “Fun and (Striving) Games: Playfulness and Agential Fluidity,” 2021. Journal of the Philosophy of Sport.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright in their articles and grant the Journal of the Philosophy of Games (JPG) right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under the following licence: Creative Commons Licence : CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. The licence allows others to share the work for non-commercial purposes with an acknowledgement of the work’s authorship and initial publication in this journal, but does not allow others to create derivative works based on the work without the author’s permission.
- Authors are allowed to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal’s published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), provided that such distribution includes an acknowledgement of the article’s initial publication in JPG.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access). Authors who distribute their work after its acceptance by JPG but prior to its publication agree to indicate on the manuscript that it will be published in JPG. Authors agree that they will not publish their work in any other journals, anthologies, or monographs before the date on which their work is published by JPG.
- Authors grant JPG a royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual, worldwide license to create derivative works based on their articles and to publish their articles or any part of their articles in compilations and anthologies.
In special cases, it may be possible for the author to negotiate an open licence other than the CC BY-NC-ND.