Why Does It Make Sense to Turn Project Management Into Games?

Let’s look at the reasons why it makes sense to turn project management, among everything else, into fun games.

The order below feels right to me right now (note: it’s not hierarchical), but you are free to read these reasons in the order that feels most appropriate to you. Each paragraph is a reason. I numbered these reasons for your convenience.

Please note that this list is not exhaustive.

1. Projects are the building blocks of our professional and personal lives. So, to live joyfully, we also need a joyful approach to our projects.
2. Drama falls away in games. If we look at what we want or have to do as a game, then the stakes are not that high, are they? It’s just a game, isn’t it?
3. We are less reluctant to start playing a game than we are to say “yes” to a real-life project.
4. We are less critical of ourselves in games. In a computer game we don’t dwell on the fact that we just bumped our car into a wall. Instead, we notice what happened, reverse, turn the car around, and move on. We can do the same in our real-life “games” (including projects and project management activities).
5. We are less afraid of failure in games. In fact, failures in games are often not considered as such, but as steps on the way to winning. Which is especially true for game design. Discarded game designs are rarely regarded as failures. They are scarcely analyzed for why they “failed” at all. They are just steps on the natural progression towards the successful design.
6. When you see and treat whatever you are up to as a game, you can better deal with fear and anxiety. Self-Gamification and its three components can help you to address and bypass fear and anxiety, which are as present in project management as any other activity in which we want to succeed. The more we want to succeed, the bigger the fear, of both failing and succeeding, as well as what people might say in either of these scenarios. But if what we do is just a game, then the fear diminishes considerably, and we are more willing to try again or try something new.
7. In games, you don’t stay upset for too long. If you do, then you stop playing the game. To continue playing, you need to put your upset aside and focus your attention on the next move in the game. Or to another game. Imagine how much easier real-life projects can become if you proceed with them in the same way. In real-life projects, you can do the same: acknowledge the upset and move on.
8. When you no longer spend so much time on upsets and complaints, you save an enormous amount of time. I observed this consistently in many projects I turned into games. What happens then is that the projects or tasks are completed with much less effort than anticipated, and often before the deadline (or at least on time). So you also save money in the process. And thanks to the great atmosphere in the project, and better results than expected, you might even get referrals, not only from your customer, but from your customer’s customers too — all as a result of awareness, small steps, and gamefulness.
9. When we see and treat our projects like games (which we both design and play), then we can stop seeing the challenges the project poses as a hardship, but rather as something fun, to be addressed with curiosity and creativity.
10. You might even become curious about something you previously resented. You might find you are suddenly eager to start work on the project now, just like you couldn’t wait to try out a new (or old but newly rediscovered) toy or game when you were younger.
11. It is much easier to be present and give our best in games. If we enjoy a game we don’t try to get it over with. And if we don’t have fun playing it, we either leave it for another game (or something else), or modify the design so that we do enjoy it.
12. As a game designer, you feel in control; you can be that in project management too. Because as the designer of your projects and project management games, you can adjust one or both of the following: the way you approach them, and the way you record your progress.
13. Game designers are utterly resourceful. And you can be that too, in an instant, if you become aware that you are both the designer (or co-designer) and player (co-player) of your project games. If you consider anything you do as a game, of which you are the designer and the player, then you immediately become resourceful on how to adjust the flow of your work so that it becomes fun for you and all involved. With gameful practice, resourcefulness becomes effortless and extremely fun.
14. Empathy is more natural in games, and we judge our partners in games less than partners and customers in projects.
15. Turning your life into games allows you to treat yourself as your best (customer) player and at the same time, your favorite game designer, to whom you gladly give your feedback to make your favorite games even better. And when you treat yourself like that, you will also treat others with kindness more consistently, and vice versa, since people tend to mirror our behavior toward them.
16. In games, we don’t resent having to record or document our progress: in fact, we love it. Because, with each move of our figurine on a leaderboard, we get closer to winning the game. If you despise writing reports or creating and updating checklists, project (or business) plans, road-maps, and others, then seeing them as your project game feedback system can help. And then modifying these in a fun and creative way will help you put your resentment aside with almost no effort.
17. Gameful Project Management enables low-budget, effortless, enlightening, and fun optimization of all facets of your project management. You might frown at this sentence, but this is precisely how the management of your projects and your time can become when you turn them into exciting games and treat yourself as if you were both the designer and the player of your project management games.
18. Turning project management into games will not require you to buy a new software system or hire new personnel. Instead, you can concentrate on improving your project management activities with what you already have at your disposal, and with little additional effort. With a self-gamified attitude to project management, you will become aware of what you need for your work (and even life in general) and make conscious decisions on what to do next. You will also acquire gameful resourcefulness and motivation in any situation, including tight deadlines when increased motivation is hard to achieve but often needed.
19. Games and game design are an endless well of creative solutions for project management. “The design and production of games involve aspects of cognitive psychology, computer science, environmental design, and storytelling, just to name a few. To really understand what games are, you need to see them from all these points of view.” — Will Wright in the foreword to Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster. So why not tap into such a multidimensional and fun discipline for inspiration?
20. Since games are fun and contain elements that contribute to our happiness, why not approach all our projects and activities in such a way that they become fun, engaging, and entertaining for us, in the same way that games do? If we use fun as the goal, compass, and measuring tool in our projects, along with awareness and progress in small steps, then quality, excellence, success, improvement, productivity, efficiency, and all the other criteria of a successful project and business will come naturally as by-products.
21. Any project is already a game; we just don’t always see them that way.

From Gameful Project Management: Self-Gamification Based Awareness Booster for Your Project Management Success.

Thank you for reading! Can you think of any other reasons to turn project management into fun games? Let me know your opinion in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

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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.