What Makes Self-Gamification the Best Tool to Attain Real-Life Satisfaction?

Many inspiring books, which are also bestsellers, have at least several things in common. One of them is that even if we might not agree with every word in them, we can find many places in their text, which we mark, either literally or mentally, and quote in our work if we are writers too.

Jane McGonigal’s best-selling book Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World is not an exception to this rule.

I could (and might) write an article inspired by a quote from at least every chapter of her acclaimed books. And many would agree about the inspiration she provided with her work.

If you read some of my articles or books before this one, you would have seen that I often quote her definition of the core components of a game.

What defines a game are a goal, the rules, the feedback system, and voluntary participation. Everything else is an effort to reinforce and enhance these four core components. — Jane McGonigal, Reality Is Broken

Here are just two of the examples of the articles where I quoted it.

Another of my favorite quotes from Reality is Broken is this one:

Game design isn’t just a technological craft. It’s a twenty-first-century way of thinking and leading. And gameplay isn’t just a pastime. It’s a twenty-first-century way of working together to accomplish real change. — Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken

This on-point, enlightening, and insightful quote is from the introduction of Jane McGonigal’s book.

In this article, I would like to share with you the epiphanies I had on Self-Gamification — an approach of turning our lives into fun games — while reading chapter 3 of Jane McGonigal’s bestseller.

Let me make a little detour and introduce a Self-Gamification mini-glossary to you. That could be helpful, especially if you are not acquainted with the term yet or can’t imagine what this could be if you haven’t heard the term gamification before:

Self-Gamification: Self-Gamification is the art of turning our own lives into games. It is the application of game design elements to our own lives. Self-Gamification is a self-help approach showing us how to be playful and gameful, and bringing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification-based methods together. In Self-Gamification, we are both the designers and the players of our self-motivational games. Self-Gamification equals approaching life gamefully.

Self-motivational game: A real-life project or activity that you adjust in such a way that it feels like a fun game, with which you are eager and happy to engage, both in terms of its design and the playing of it.

Let’s go back to Jane McGonigal’s book and specifically to its chapter 3.

This chapter has the following title: “More Satisfying Work.”

Most of the chapter is about playing World of Warcraft (WoW). At the end of the chapter, Jane McGonigal also addresses “casual games.”

“’Casual games’ is an industry term for games that tend to be easy to learn, quick to play, and require far less computer memory and processing power than other computer and video games. (They’re often played online in Web browsers, or on mobile phones.)” — Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken

She names Minesweeper, solitaire games, and others as examples of these games.

Although World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online (MMO) role-playing game (RPG) and most “casual games” are single-player games, Jane McGonigal illustrated that they have at least one feature in common.

They provide satisfying work.

Below are just a few of many enlightening thoughts from chapter 3, which illustrate this.

We want to be given more satisfying work.

Satisfying work always starts with two things: a clear goal and actionable next steps toward achieving that goal.

What if we have a clear goal, but we aren’t sure how to go about achieving it? Then it’s not work — it’s a problem. Now, there’s nothing wrong with having interesting problems to solve; it can be quite engaging. But it doesn’t necessarily lead to satisfaction. In the absence of actionable steps, our motivation to solve a problem might not be enough to make real progress. Well-designed work, on the other hand, leaves no doubt that progress will be made. There is a guarantee of productivity built in, and that’s what makes it so appealing. WoW offers a guarantee of productivity with every quest you undertake.

The real payoff for our work in WoW is to be rewarded with more opportunities for work. The design of the work flow is key here: the game constantly challenging you to try something just a little bit more difficult than what you’ve just accomplished. These microincreases in challenge are just big enough to keep sparking your interest and motivation — but never big enough to create anxiety or the sense of an ability gap.

Motivation and reasonably assured progress: this is the start of satisfying work. But to be truly satisfied, we have to be able to finish our work as clearly as we started it. To finish work in a satisfying way, we must be able to see the results of our efforts as directly, immediately, and vividly as possible.

— Jane McGonigal, Reality is Broken

I could continue quoting, but I will limit the quotes to these five, in addition to those before them in this article.

What struck me while reading this chapter was that Self-Gamification — uniting anthropology (awareness and non-judgmental observation), kaizen (progress in small steps), and gamification (and all things playful and gameful) — also provides for satisfying work.

The difference is that it happens not in a game but real life. Wow!

Here is another aspect of Self-Gamification that helps even more and which the games created by others don’t have. That is the fact that when you turn your life into games, the Self-Gamification way, you are both the designer AND the player of your self-motivational games (= projects and activities turned into games).

Thus if something is not working for you as a player, you as the designer can tweak it in such a way that the project or activity you are turning into a game (or a collection of games) becomes enticing and fun for you to engage.

If you struggle to see how Self-Gamification provides for satisfaction and satisfying work in real life the same way as successful games do in a game environment, then let’s look at five of the possible criteria of games that make the work satisfying in games. I took them from the quotes above. This list might be incomplete, but it is telling:

1. A clear goal,

2. Actionable steps,

3. Guarantee of productivity,

4. Microincreases in the challenge,

5. Ability to see the results of our efforts directly.

To summarize what Self-Gamification is about, I will replicate here its game flow (since turning a project into a game is a game too), which I introduced in this article:

Here is the main Self-Gamification loop:

1. Become aware (assess) → play the “Anthropology of Now Game”;
2. Take the small step → play the “Kaizen Game”;
3. Appreciate (celebrate) it → play the “Appreciation Game.”

And the first step of awareness, or the “Anthropology of Now Game,” has a gameplay loop of its own:

1. Become aware of your starting point: your circumstances at this moment, how you feel, and the state of your mind.
2. Remind yourself of your goals and dreams for each task. What is the win-state there?
3. Identify the smallest and most effortless step that will take you on the path from your starting point towards the goal of your challenge, project, or activity “game.”
4. Recognize at any given moment the fun ways or elements to take and appreciate both small steps (that bring you experience points, for example), the intermediate goals (the levels in your games), and reaching the goal (the win-state).

The Self-Gamification game is a “game designer’s game.” So, when you turn something or anything into games and follow the game loops above, you will be able to provide for all the five criteria listed above and more.

• As an anthropologist, you will identify the goal and actionable steps based on kind, honest, and helpful observations of yourself, the world around you, and your internal and external reactions toward it. (Criteria 1 and 2)
• Your kaizen skills will provide for your productivity and microincreases in the challenge. (Criteria 3 and 4)
• Your non-judgmental, open-minded, and utterly curious study of games and their design will help you — together with awareness and kaizen — to develop feedback systems that will provide for seeing your results for each tiny bit immediately. And not only that but also to make them fun and enticing to use. (Criteria 5)

Thus, the fantastic synergy of anthropology, kaizen, and gamification can “fix” reality, which we might have perceived as broken before we started turning our lives into fun games.

Thank you for reading!

— Victoria

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About the author:

Victoria is a writer, instructor, and consultant with a background in semiconductor physics, electronic engineering (with a Ph.D.), information technology, and business development. While being a non-gamer, Victoria came up with the term Self-Gamification, a gameful and playful self-help approach bringing anthropology, kaizen, and gamification-based methods together to increase the quality of life. She approaches all areas of her life this way. Due to the fun she has, while turning everything in her life into games, she intends never to stop designing and playing them.