Making life into games

Earlier today, Web Worker Daily ran a fascinating article about beating procrastination by making your work into a game:

There’s been some interesting discussion recently on using gaming metaphors to change behavior — everything from the RPG-like metaphors of Weight Watchers, to the underlying psychology of Nike Plus, to the MPG readout of Toyota’s Prius and smart meters in homes reducing energy consumption. The first step in changing your behavior is generally to “instrument” and measure it.

The trend is only accelerating. Newer games (largely on Nintendo platforms) like “Wii Fit” or even “My Stop Smoking Coach with Allen Carr” already use the concept of bringing the player’s real-world life into a literal game, rather than the self-imposed games of the Nike Plus or Toyota Prius.

I think this is an idea that is just screaming for more attention on the web. Find a way to plug real-life homework completion into tangible benefits in an MMORPG and you’ll have a new set of straight-A students in record time. For companies buying their own islands in Second Life, why not implement a “points” system for task completion, or for coming up with truly great, new ideas? Granted, anything like this would require careful study before rushing to implementation; there would be nothing worse than to create an entire culture of living by the game’s rules, when the game may fail to keep up with the realities it is simulating. Nonetheless, this field seems set to become the new definition of “serious games”.