BEM Gamification: the (unexpected) future of

With the purpose of creating more content this year, and wanting to focus on creating a virtual Academy for gamification and game design, I decided to start by doing the thing I have been doing best in the past: writing articles. I hope to create more multimedia content on the future, but for now, as it has happened with the gaming industry, I will stick to what I know best. So, let's talk about the future of gaming.

The future of (?)

This article was inspired by the Netflix show "The future of", specifically the chapter on gaming, which I saw last night and was completely disappointed (spoilers ahead, although I don't think there is much to spoil). It is not that I expected much from such a chapter, but "gaming" was a footnote for an episode about AR/VR and Meta. While other chapters are talking about CRISPR and household plants as functional networks for data storage and protection, this chapter was not able to see beyond the same techs that have been in development for several years now. For this chapter, the far future of gaming is AR zoom calls!

In terms of gaming for this show the big conundrum to solve seems to be multiplayer AR gaming! While AR has been a failing bet for over a decade, the push of the episode is that integrating interfaces to real life, or immersive play are the future, as if gaming was a technological issue. Meanwhile, the few gaming examples provided by the episode were incredibly dull: an AR tamagotchi, a "shoot the alien" above you local caffe duck hunt, and gamification examples taken from 2012, with PBLs for shopping. So let's try to analyze the problem and offer other kind of speculations on the topic.

The technology bias

The discussion on the future of gaming has always been taken the wrong way. People has always assumed that gaming is a technological issue. I don't blame them, as video games are a big part of our current gaming culture and they were born from engineers. The technological race around consoles would seem to give credit to this idea: technology pushes the boundaries and game designers follow the trail. But this is a big misconception!

Technology is a medium to satisfy our gaming needs, and it has been pushed by the desire of gamers and designers to break some boundaries. Game designers have inspired technological advances more than the other way around! Artificial Intelligence was born from gaming by the need of creating intelligent virtual opponents; graphics and processors have been pushed to satisfy the need for more immersive gameplay; gaming techs have even inspired city building technologies, because players wanted to explore bigger and more realistic urban scenarios! Technology follows the desires of players, not the other way around.

And these desires have been misread several times, and the "unexpected" in gaming is the norm. Milestone games have been born from someone trying a paradigm that has been discussed, but was not believed to work out. No one in the industry in the 90s would have ever though a console like Wii could actually work, because video gaming is commonly a low energy state activity, but Nintendo surprised as with the nunchucks controllers to simulate more realistic interfaces for bowling and sword fighting. And Niantic and Pokemon Go, mentioned in the chapter, surprised us again with gamers taking to the streets. But these cases have not been replicated, and, as unexpectedly as they appeared, the disappeared as well. It is not that gaming cannot have a "physical" component, or sports would not be a thing, but is not as simple as just developing new tech. "Ready Player One" might be a more nuanced view of the future (well, the book more than the movie, really), tapping into Alternate Reality Games and not just focusing on the VR technology, but it seems that VR is a big selling point for future gaming techs in our shared cultural views.

Right now, AR, for example, has worked fine for more "playful" interfaces, like the ones exposed in the chapter (trying on clothes, changing your appearance in your camera and so on), but have little to no impact on gamers, that usually find these gimmicks actually disrupting for their gaming experience. Even simpler techs like the dual screen of the WiiU, with the ability to take the interface out of the screen into the controller, was not so successful and Nintendo Switch is a technological return to the classic console with some small gimmicks. On the other hand, haptic and secondary audio interfaces in the controllers have had more success, as they are not intrusive and can amplify the experience, and this was not discussed in the chapter.

Here in Colombia we have no Game Design degrees, although there are careers in Textile Design for example. In many parts of the world gaming is being thought as a technological and multimedia discipline: if you want to be part of the industry, learn to code or 3d model. And in this regard, Colombia, as many Latin American countries, have great developers and artists working on international studios, but only a handful a national studios have some sort of luck on getting a successful game in the market. The technical and technological aspect of games is a bias that ignores that the future of gaming probably lies more on the Sid Meiers, Reinier Knizias and Jane McGonigals of the world.

Why does the tech approach fails to predict the far future?

Think about the exciting problems of humanity for the next century and how we will be tackling them. Behind every big problem there is a scientist and a designer working on figuring out a solution (actually, they are teams of many people!). The future of cities have to solve many problems, from sustainability, economical and behavioral standpoints. And these problems can be extrapolated to far futures in a utopian and dystopian way. The advances of technology are tied to real life problems or desires, which can then be turned to compelling science fiction. Each time technology opens a door, it creates many more problems, which then others try to close. But it's the systemic relation between technology and humans what drives the imagination of writers, artists and scientists alike.

But when it comes to gaming, most people figure tech as a gimmick for entertainment purposes. We think players are asking just for better graphics and interfaces, but where we always have been blind in our predictions of the future is in thinking that "gaming" is a done deal! We have shooters so what is the future? Better tech to take shooters to the next immersive level (even though there is already paintball and laser tag). We have a city building game, so what do we need? Holographic interfaces controlled with your hand to move the city in an augmented reality space. People seem to believe we want to play "Space Invaders" in the future, but in AR! Thus, the series' "shooting aliens over the caffe" example. I actually have only been able to try VR once and the experience was amazing, except for the fact that the game was exactly that: an over-developed Duck Hunt. I got bored after just a few minutes of playing and wouldn't retry that game ever.

VR, for example, needs to address several human problems to become something really interesting for gaming, to really replace the comfortable and safe 2d-screen playing we have now. For example, we would need empty rooms in our houses or arenas to be able to move on the space more freely, and we'd need notification alerts when we are about to hit something in real life so we can feel safe. Otherwise, we get stuck with games that could be better enjoyed in the TV screen.

Why has nobody (that I know of at least) speculated about the use of VR and stereoscopic audio for movies? How would a cutscene work in a VR environment? Is the technological gimmick enough to make someone invest on creating a full movie for VR environments? VR and AR have been better used for art expression than for gaming right now, and that is because we haven't figured out the "gaming" aspect of AR/VR gaming. We translated things like soccer or baseball to the consoles... can they be translated to VR/AR? What would that be like? We'd really need some important advancement in haptics to sell the idea, or we could end up with a lot of articulatory issues like what happened with the nunchuck controllers (or try kicking a virtual ball and see if that is a satisfying experience).

AR/VR and Metaverse technologies (if the last is even a thing) are right now in a kind of technological uncanny valley, in which the closer they get to reality, the harder it is to feel the appeal of the experience. And I think this is because the feedback you get from these systems is really limiting, and you would expect from something like this more than audiovisual queues. Also, playing an AR game with other people would feel weird if we have to view everything through the screen of the cellphone, specially on a public park.

On the other hand, low tech gaming has been thriving unexpectedly...

Yes, let's talk about tabletop games...

If you know me, you know I'm a big fan of board games. While talking about analogue or low tech games is not limited to board games, I think it is right now the more fertile type of gaming without screens, and there is much to learn from them. Why not other kind of analogue games? Each has a problem:

• Sports have been consumed by tradition and media requirements. Designing a new sport would be fun, but it will be improbable that it will be picked by a media outlet to broadcast to the world, which is the revenue model for this event-based games. Maybe some day, but I don't believe there will be many risk taking initiatives in a field ruled by World Cups and Super Bowls. Maybe when we can create something like Blitzball from FFX? Of course, E-sports does not count, as they are not analogue.
• Escape Rooms: This are mid tech initiatives that require a lot of investment for puzzle solving mechanics. They have a strong cultural acceptance, but they are hard to create and monetize, as these puzzles are fun to solve only once (and are easily migrated to high tech environments). There might be interesting things in this field in the far future, but I think predictions will be highly inaccurate.
• Marbles and toys: this folkloric games have been losing ground quickly. Maybe a lack of innovation? High schoolers are just too engaged with their screens? This games are not being designed really by anyone, in the sense they don't come with a rulebook, so they are susceptible to the (lack-of) imagination of the users. Structured games designed with rulebooks are having more impact right now, so again, it's hard to predict their future.

What about RPG's like D&D? Well, I did say table-top on the heading, right? Still, RPGs are still a niche gaming style and right now the improvement of this games revolve right now on creating "game engines" and "worlds and lores". This creates heavy community-dependent game systems and, as time progresses, they will become harder to monetize as they have become more and more folcklorized. We also have Warhammer style games, which are changing in this way too, as 3D resin printing has become more available.

The interesting thing about RPG's and War games like these ones is they have a big influence in the video game industry. All video games have a meta-engine that resembles the ones invented by RPGs or Warhammer (leveling up, skill building, crafting, turn based combat, stats and probabilities and so on). As the communities grow and this kind of games end up on the hands of many players and designers, many interesting mechanics should appear that might have a bigger impact on video games and gamification than what may happen on the tech side.

And then, enter board games. In terms of mechanical innovation, I don't think any other game format is moving forward as fast as board gaming. Video games have become a data-driven industry, which means that copy-catting is a big thing for studios. Something works? Let's create more video games like that one! Fortunately, the Indie video game industry is doing some great stuff, but let me put a pin on it. But with board games, the focus hasn't been on creating "the perfect game". Game Designers have unprecedented credits in board games, with their names in the covers as if they were book authors, which means that their games have a personal brand to push, and this brand is about doing things differently. You don't want to have a game that is too similar to something already on the market, as publishers and game designers are building a reputation.

These games, with the advent of crowdfunding, have been coming in big waves, as the production costs and human teams required to get one to market are small, and you can get a game out in months instead of years. While for many the future of gaming might be in the tech we develop, I think that the future of gaming might be tied up to board gaming: NOT because board gaming will become bigger than video gaming, but because it will (and has) become a source of inspiration for video game designers.

Check games like "Papers, please", "Civilization", "XCom", and newer ones like the indie game "Citizen Sleeper": they have all borrowed board game mechanics and have take them to the next level. Board games are a quick low-risk innovation hub, where different things can be tested quickly and cheaply. Although this industry was stagnant for a long time, with the monopoly (pun-intended) of family board games, now it has opened the market and has vocal communities discussing about the bad, the good and the great in many fora. Quick feedback is the fastest way to move along, right?

Can AR and VR become less of a gimmick if we try to find the right mechanics for the tech? Yes, maybe, but where will these ideas come from?

The future of game design

Gaming is a complex relationship between players, publishers, designers and (of course) technology. But, while documentaries as "The future of" relies on tech advances that seem to end on AR/VR and Meta, as if it were a singularity point, I think the future of gaming will be more tied up to the real research of psychologists, behavioral scientists, gamification designers (yes, I do believe gamification will have a feedback loop effect on gaming in the future), economists, and system designers. Machine learning might have a bigger impact on gaming than AR/VR. Why? Look at the ChatGPT phenomenon. Beyond the ethical and social conundrums AI brings, the interaction of humans with AIs reveal a playfulness that has yet to be explored.

ChatGPT appeared and people have been training the AI by "playing games". It's more play than game, but still, the ludic factor is there. Think of John Oliver making a whole episode on the "John Oliver marries a Lettuce" social game, one that had no designers involved, but had a compelling engine to go and "play" with it. With ChatGPT you can see people trying to break the system, or asking the AI to act as if it were someone specific and then creating conversations, which makes the interactions more similar to Siri than Google. There is a psychological factor here that can't be dismissed, as every "playful" behavior has eventually been molded into a structured game.

Think for example of AI creating whole murder mysteries on the fly: the designer would have to create a great engine for the game (something I'm not sure and AI will be capable of in the near future and there is not much incentive to train it to do that) and leave the storytelling to the player-AI interaction. Then people will be able to share stories in social media and create a whole meta-game out of it. Because meta gaming will be huge! Not Metaverse gaming, but the idea of taking the game out of the game.

And, because of that meta-gaming, driven by social media and world wide interactivity, games will leak out even more from the gaming industry: gamification here is just a first step for a more broader thing! Take Kaleidoscope in Netflix. Games happen in the mind, and imagining how other viewers would have experienced the series creates hypothesis and the need to share. I spent the whole series trying to imagine "what if this chapter would have been my first?". Playfulness is a psychological trait, and psychology will help us, first explain why this systems are compelling, and then improve our prediction models onto what could be engaging in the future.

But, finally, I think Game Design will become a respected field in its own. Maybe not with that name, but it is starting to enter the academic spaces, now through post-graduate studies and side courses, but soon it might have it's own full-fledge programs. Academic papers on game design and gamification are on the rise and informed game designers may take this knowledge to unexpected places. Game Designers will start to be ubiquitous and will enter behavioral science teams in governmental departments, will be part of marketing campaigns, will be helping innovation teams and will revolutionize learning. Games will be more serious in the future and will go beyond "shooting" stuff in the screen. Games might be an agent of positive change, but, because of their power to hack our brains, they will never be without controversy, changing the way we date and interact with brands and services and even changing the way we understand democracy. Games will be agents of manipulation and scams, and will be agents of empathy and pro-social behaviors, heck, they might even have a big role to play on stoping climate change.

So what will be the future of gaming? I believe it will become a war zone. Gaming will be so powerful that each political party will have their own game designers figuring out how to deliver messages, corporations will use games to train marketing teams that will be "out-playing" each other, and will use "war games" to build strategies to disrupt the market. Game ethics will be a central part of the discussion and policy makers will struggle to keep the pace with every loophole designers find to avoid breaking the laws but still get expected outcomes. The future of gaming will be the future of humanity in a profound level. It will be more than people lost in their VR glasses (or brain implants or whatever) escaping reality, it will become reality.

What about me?

I hope I'm helping shape the future and want to be an agent for good. I want to be vigilant of emergent dark patterns, help teachers and parents understand this complex and scary world, use gamification on projects that I believe will improve humanity, based on science and research. I will continue creating games that help people understand complex concepts and learn the skills that are not taught in high school. An I will keep working with teachers to help them develop better learning experiences to have a better educated society. I will wage war against unethical uses of games, and will push parents towards understanding the risks of freemium games.

But, overall, I will push towards understanding games as a means to build autonomy. While technology and behavioral sciences try to simplify life, I will try to complexify it. I believe games can teach as to make better effortful decisions when faced with uncertainty, and games can improve the way we interact with feedback to learn and adapt. And I want more people to be aligned with this BEM way of understanding the power of gaming. I've been working until now solving one project at a time, and that is not enough. I now believe I'm having more impact with the articles I write than with the projects I undertake. I hope to be telling you more about the BEM Academy in the near future, something I'm really excited about; and I will be sharing, after 10 years in the making, my gamification engine, to bridge the gap between knowledge and technology.

And of course, if you got all they way to the end of this article, remember that you can be part of GamiconV48 this February with a discount using my code JAVIERV48: It's a virtual conference so take a chance! I just love being invited by Monica Cornetti to share my research and new ideas, and I'm so grateful that the Setentia Team believes in my work, so I hope to see you there!