Houses in motion: an overview of gamification in the context of mobile interfaces
Nathan Hulsey · 2014
Mobile advertising and location-aware applications are slowly becoming synchronized to the rhythms of urban life (Cronin 2006; Wilken and Sinclair 2009). At the same time, gaming and mobile devices have come to the forefront as a new brand of playful mobility that creates unique dynamics of spatial practice (Chan 2008; Gazzard 2011; Licoppe 2009). By examining the concept of gamification and the subsequent embedding of game mechanics into everyday activities such as shopping, mobile practice, energy consumption, and spatial representation, I broaden the conversation about the place of games and play into the context of mobilities. Scholarly work tracking developments in mobile communications and ubiquitous computing have noted a certain affinity between game mechanics and spatial practice (Sutko and de Souza e Silva 2008). Pervasive games such as Blast Theory’s Can You See Me Now? and Uncle Roy All Around You use mobile technology to highlight the interplay between physical environments, technology, and play (de Souza e Silva and Hjorth 2009; Montola et al. 2009; Benford and Giannachi 2011). Pervasive games are commonly defined as games that break with the traditional boundaries (the screen, a board, a device) and expand gameplay socially, spatially, or temporally (Flintham et al. 2007; Stenros et al. 2012; Montola et al. 2009). In the case of pervasive games, mobile technologies and applications are an intrinsic part of a playful mobility that is utilized to influence playful behavior. The penetration of mobile devices has brought pervasive gaming out of the realm of experimentation and into the mainstream, especially in the case of marketing and advergaming (Campbell 2011; Sennott 2005). Mobile marketing tactics that include game-like qualities differentiate themselves from pervasive games by emphasizing the behavioral results of ludic, or game-related, protocols such as mechanics over the production of a self-contained, playful environment. In other words, there is a growing trend for applications to include pervasiveness and playfulness without ever creating (or marketing) a game. This method of design, known as gamification, seeks to incorporate game-like qualities into non-gaming systems and applications (Swan 2012; Scofidio 2012; Savitz and Heisler 2012; Liyakasa 2012b, 2012a). Mainstream gamified applications such as McDonald’s Monopoly, an interactive consumer rewards service, and Shopkick, a location-based shopping app, use varying forms of game mechanics while never actually making themselves out to be “a game.” Rather, gamified mobile applications act as mobile interfaces that attempt to induce compulsive behaviors in the user, motivating them to engage with a system of commodification that is then monitored in real time by the designers of the application. I argue that gamified mobile applications help constitute hybrid spaces, where data, bodies, perception, and physical environments are inextricable from one another (Benford and Giannachi 2011; de Souza e Silva 2006). However, my line of enquiry slightly departs from examining the changing notions of spatiality that hybrid spaces encapsulate in favor of examining the downside of exploiting the synergy between mobile technologies and game mechanics for synoptic and consumerist aims. In short, game mechanics and mobile interfaces work in concert with each other to recontextualize physical and social spaces while also allowing for profitable lateral and top-down surveillance. Using applications such as McDonald’s Monopoly, an interactive consumer rewards service; Shopkick, a location-based shopping app; and Green Button, a domestic energy management application as examples, I show that gamified mobile interfaces produce frames, understood as the material, social, and ideological boundaries that precede territory. These frames subsequently help to influence the spatial practices of users, especially in regard to leisure, shopping, and consumption. First I explore how gamification operates in a mobilities context by exploring consumerist applications. Second, I examine how gamification is implicit in the creation of hybrid spaces by examining gamification in a domestic context. Each of these examples serves to highlight an increasing trend involving the use of game mechanics as a vehicle for the surveillance-driven colonization of spaces and practices that previously either could not be monitored or, on the other hand, encountered strong popular resistance to monitoring (i.e., the home). Key here is the idea that introducing motivational protocols makes users more willing to engage in systems that track their location and their behavior under the guise of play. By exploring consumerist and domestic examples, this chapter adds to previous literature (de Souza e Silva and Frith 2012) concerning the interactions between hybrid space, mobile practice, and surveillance.