I didn't like the conclusion that the article hinted at which seemed to imply that work should be more like games so that people would do their work instead of games. I'm horrified by the thought of providing artificial rewards for real work done. I guess that makes me a Marxist.
Actually, unless you are against rewards
in any form you are more of a capitalist by resisting
artificial rewards
I like this article, because I became addicted to the (excellent) game Flotilla, along with a housemate. You play as a captain 'with 7 months to live' and travel around from planet to planet meeting absurd things such as crazy space crocodiles, crippled flamingo traders and the feared reindeer empire. Quite often you engage in simultaneous turnbased fighting, which is simple but complex enough to be compelling every few hours or so. What I like about the game, however, is that although it has a leader-board, the story mode is completely random and you
die after a set number of turns: you had only 7 months to live so die of natural causes, regardless of how well you are doing. By having so much random stuff the game keeps taunting you to try again, but with the 7 months limit you are forced not to take it too serious - if you loose your big new ship you know you did not have that long to live anyway.
It is a strange 'happy nihilist' way of thinking - death is the end, so we can go out with a bang.
Thing is, the game is enjoyable because I do
not get anything in return - the leaderboard is an incentive, but I die after 7 months and start a new adventure afterwards. This makes anything you do non-persistent. So there is no reward, just the fun of the matches themselves. It completely subverts the normal 'closure' of storytelling and the 'prize' of fighting.
(Actually, you win a piece of cargo if you go to a planet where the game informs you you competed in a competition and won the intergalactic karaoke champion contest!)
