Real Life Gaming

[oceantheorem]

I recently decided that I needed more motivation to do stuff I should really be doing on a daily or weekly basis. Apparently "being good" is not a motivator for me. At all.  

So I've kind of developed a (largely arbitrary) system of points and rewards. I get a point for doing each thing I should be doing (I have a spreadsheet with about ten different columns for specific tasks), and can spend the points on stuff I really shouldn't be doing. For instance, if I leave for work in the morning before 7:40 (I usually leave around 8:20, but I really do need to get out of the house earlier), I get a point. If I leave for work before 7:40 four days in a row, I can spend $10 (and 10 points) on anything I want from Etsy.

The rewards all cost some number of points, which helps force me to choose which things I want to spend my money on (instead of getting sushi once a month and buying yarn once a month and trying to save up money for a spinning wheel, I now have to choose - sushi with these points? yarn? or save those points for a wheel?)  and also takes away all that nagging guilt I constantly have about doing "fun" things. Now I know I've earned them.

I felt pretty ridiculous about this system (what am I, a third grader? I have to bribe myself to leave for work on time??), so I wasn't planning to tell anyone at all about it, until I heard a radio interview on NPR that reminded me of a TED talk I watched a couple months ago... and then, two days after I heard the NPR interview, I read an interview on a gaming blog I follow. All three were starring the same person, Jane McGonigal, who just published a book called "Reality is Broken". Her thesis statement is that games are useful to society and to human culture, and that gamers are a vast, untapped resource, a population of people who are very very good at solving problems and are not afraid to fail. Her work also touches on the concept that video games are a lot of fun, and reality isn't, and there should be a way to change that - to make reality more fun, more engaging, and more rewarding - and to make failing less of a risk in real life. It's an interesting set of concepts. She posits that if we could turn real life into a series of games, we'd all be happier - and a lot more productive.

This idea isn't totally new, either. There is a game called FoldIt I've been aware of for a couple of  years. It's a game designed by biochemists to help get solutions to the protein folding problem (which is, basically, how do all the proteins in your body know how to fold up into precise, perfect 3-dimensional structures, every single time? especially when the desired conformation is not always the lowest energy?). Players learn a little bit about the basics of protein folding, then play the game to help solve more difficult conformations. 

There's also a website called ChoreWars. The basic concept is that a family can sign up, and each person gets to choose an avatar (something D&Dish, like a ranger or a druid or whatever). As each person does chores, they earn experience points and treasure. I thought about signing up for this, except I don't have anyone to play against...

Jane also talks about a game where anyone in the world could parse through data coming out of Haiti just after the earthquake, to determine relevance and origin of location of text messages and other information, to help find and help survivors. Really! People from all over the world sorted through this information in order to directly help other people! Games can be very meaningful, in addition to providing entertainment. 

Entertainment and happiness shouldn't be looked down upon, though. It should be okay to enjoy games. Life in general should be more enjoyable. It shouldn't be weird for me to strive for a streak of early mornings or to encourage myself to bring my lunches instead of buying them, and to be rewarded for accomplishing those things.

I listened to this video this evening while gathering herbs in Deepholm (the realm of earth elementals, underneath the world of Azeroth). I was also chatting with my boyfriend, who was taming raptors (while sitting in a semi truck in another state).  I think the story at the very end, about why games were invented in the first place, and how they're serving the same function now, is particularly interesting (skip to about 37 minutes in if you just want to hear that bit).

Because I stayed up and listened to this, I didn't get a point for going to bed by 11. But if I make it out of the house by 7:40 tomorrow, I'll still hit my 4-day streak and get my reward. 

What are your thoughts?

Comments

[amagi82.livejournal.com]

Interesting... she is absurdly Californian, and pretty amusing, but I have to admit, she makes a pretty good point. We do spend our lives worrying about all sorts of things that don't matter in the great scheme of things, and while I still don't necessarily think games are the most productive way of spending our time, they are a hell of a lot better than the stream of rubbish spewed from corporate America and the major media, which serve to bombard us with capitalistic dogma and mindless rhetoric about how we should spend our days. We spend so much time maintaining our system that most of us never consider whether or not our system should even exist- is it making us happier and more fulfilled? Is the price of our current civilization such that most of us spend only a tiny fraction of our lives truly happy?

Honestly, we can't lead happy, fulfilled lives if we live in a constant financial struggle and do nothing but get up, go to work, come home, eat dinner, and go to sleep just to do it all over again. What's really painful to know is how unnecessary all of this stress, anguish, suffering, and pathetic posturing is. We have the basic technology and ideas necessary to build a society where we all live in relative affluence working only a few hours each week, but we're so stuck with the status quo, so imprisoned in this framework of modern society, that the few people who do think outside the box can't get anyone else to even listen, let alone act.

Anyway, concerning your new "life game", I have to admit I found it a little silly at first, but if it makes you feel accomplished, by all means, go for it. That's the sort of thing that could never work for me- it's too structured. I really like the idea of turning real life into a game though. Our problem solving ability in games is a lot healthier than it is in modern society.

Well, it's time for me to get to sleep, something I should have done 3 hours ago.

[oceantheorem.livejournal.com]

Interesting feedback!

Yes, the game IS silly, but I couldn't think of any other way to make myself get up and leave the house on time. This also serves to concretely control and help me document all types of spending for fun, which I worry about since, y'know, we're poor. The game format does help a lot, and the concept of striving for a streak of early mornings and getting rewarded for them is much more likely to get me out the door on time than the idea that my boss disapproves or even the idea that I could get more done at work if I spend more hours there. It feels a bit like my brain is wired to work better on a gaming sort of system, which does make me think that Jane's thoughts about how society is broken are correct.

Okay, I've got ten minutes to finish getting ready for work or I won't complete my streak for the week. :-)

[oceantheorem.livejournal.com]

I also wanted to add that so far this system has produced some measurable results. Instead of buying lunch yesterday and today, I attended a seminar I've been meaning to go to for a couple months (they were serving free lunch!), so not only did I get free food, I also learned about Hedgehog signaling, which is something my lab actually studies. I also made lunch last night for today. So that's a savings of abut $10 right there!

I also also wanted to say that I keep tweaking the requirements and the points values. I had to push the "leave for work" time back from 7:45 to 7:40 because 7:45 created unpredictable work arrival times due to the structure of the shuttle schedules...
I also had to change "play with cat" from >20 minutes to ~5 minutes, because the cat actually gets bored after about 2 minutes and 20 minutes was impossible to achieve.
And on the reward side, I originally had $20 worth of yarn valued at 20 points, but once I realized I was going to be earning 30-40 points per week I bumped that up to 75, and then added in some bigger ticket items for larger quantities of points to encourage myself to save them instead of spending them as I get them.

And in case anyone is curious, WoW is neither a way to earn points nor a way to spend them. I'm trying to keep it completely separate from the entire game, since it's not something I want to encourage myself to do more of, and it's not something I want to charge myself points for (because I'd just play anyway, whether I had points or not, and then my game would be broken).

2 Cents

[tryptonique.livejournal.com]

I like your idea. I think far too many people beat themselves up over their ideas of how life *should* work in their minds versus how it really does. I'm talking about sentiments like, "I felt pretty ridiculous about this system (what am I, a third grader? I have to bribe myself to leave for work on time?" I certainly understand those sorts of feelings. After all, it isn't glamorous to admit that sometimes asking people to make virtue be its own reward exclusively is just really really hard. Like any behaviors, virtuous ones and not-so-virtuous ones are conditioned through repetition and activation of the reward system in the brain. The reason why your system works on third graders is precisely because of this. The reason why we often can move away from that "gold star" or "points" system when we're adults is because we've adequately conditioned ourselves into regularly engaging in the socially desirable behavior (like being potty trained for example). Once that conditioning has been set, as long as we keep those positive patterns reinforced, we can reap the natural rewards from positive actions (like getting a promotion because you're always early to work) and start valuing virtuous action for its own sake as well (as opposed to valuing for any artificial additional value you heap on). The thing is, lot of people want to rewrite their own history and give themselves credit for "good character" when chances are there was a parent or teacher who used either carrot or stick based conditioning to solidify some particular virtue. I think it takes guts to realize you need improving in certain areas and to tackle those areas in a rational and intelligent way. Kudos to you, K-Rizzles. :)

Re: 2 Cents

[oceantheorem.livejournal.com]

That's a really interesting point! I didn't think of it in that context before, but I think you're right. I definitely need to be trained to do this subset of things, because they've got to get done, and I just don't have the mental framework in place to make myself do them.

The really interesting thing is that several of the things I'm giving myself points for doing are things you'd think I'd be doing anyway - like "knit for 1 hour". You'd be surprised how often I'll mess around on the internet or just waste time instead of sitting down and working on a project I'm interested in. It seems very strange that I have to give myself incentives to do this subset of things I actually want to do anyway...

[krisology.livejournal.com]

I am totally with you. This is one thing I am doing, especially with losing weight - at each weight milestone, I get a treat. They increase in value the closer I get to my goal weight (i.e. my goal weight treat is getting to book a flight to England, my first 10 lbs loss is something small like a hair cut.)

I signed up for Chore Wars and so did Nate but we only did it for like, a day. I would play against you if you want. I have all these goals and things I am starting on Monday - I had plans to do them all at the beginning of the month but then I got smacked in the face with another lung infection courtesy of my husband and son grrrr.

[richtergasse.livejournal.com]

Interesting.

I think that's why Weight Watchers works well for so many people (including myself) - the almost game-like aspect of figuring out how to get the most for points, and earning more points through exercise.

I too find myself wasting time not doing what I would be doing if the task I was procrastinating were already done. This button is my friend: http://www.merlinmann.com/rightnow/

I am really impressed your game has a tie-in to something tangible (money). I've known you to knit for points before... ;p