You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All

by Adrian Hon

Overview

How games are being harnessed as instruments of exploitation—and what we can do about it 

Warehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be fired. Uber presents exhausted drivers with challenges to keep them driving. China scores its citizens so they behave well, and games with in-app purchases use achievements to empty your wallet.

Points, badges, and leaderboards are creeping into every aspect of modern life. In You’ve Been Played, game designer Adrian Hon delivers a blistering takedown of how corporations, schools, and governments use games and gamification as tools for profit and coercion. These are games that we often have no choice but to play, where losing has heavy penalties. You’ve Been Played is a scathing indictment of a tech-driven world that wants to convince us that misery is fun, and a call to arms for anyone who hopes to preserve their dignity and autonomy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781541600171
Publisher:	Basic Books
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	1,070,338
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Adrian Hon is the CEO and founder of independent games developer Six to Start and the co-creator of Zombies, Run! He previously studied neuroscience at the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, and the University of California, San Diego. He lives in Edinburgh, UK. 

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 The Rise of Gamification 9

Chapter 2 Level Up Your Life 33

Chapter 3 Grind and Punishment 55

Chapter 4 Doing It Well 87

Chapter 5 The Gamification of Games 109

Chapter 6 The Magnificent Bribe 129

Chapter 7 "I've Done My Research" 163

Chapter 8 The World as Game 185

Chapter 9 The Treasury of Merit 213

Chapter 10 Escaping Softlock 227

Acknowledgements 243

Notes 245

Index 291

Editorial Reviews

★ 05/30/2022

Hon (A History of the Future in 100 Objects), CEO and founder of game developer Six to Start, warns in this convincing outing that gamification—using “ideas from game design to make difficult or dull activities more fun”—has “become the twenty-first century’s most advanced form of behavioural control.” Tools purportedly designed to motivate students or increase worker productivity actually have insidious psychological effects, he suggests, often resulting in covert wage decreases, as employees are pressured into working more for no increased pay. Myriad examples bolster his case: he describes classroom behavior-monitoring apps that function as an “on-ramp to Foucault’s panopticon,” games used at Amazon that incentivize “returning from break faster,” race-against-the-clock timers that gives McDonald’s managers leverage to “discipline and punish poor performers,” and the “veritable bonanza of quests and bonuses” at Uber, “all to entice drivers into working as long as they possibly can.” Hon ends with detailed, practical steps to combat this trend: designers ought to “act ethically” and accept responsibility when their games cause harm, and legislation should be passed to mandate transparency regarding business productivity quotas and to protect workers’ privacy. This passionate survey is a wake-up call for workers and political leaders alike. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

You’ve Been Played not only catalogues the rise of a sinister and pervasive trend, it also functions as a primer on the psychological and philosophical implications of games themselves… This expansive, fascinating study, equal parts dismal and dizzying in its implications, is a valuable testament to the era we’re in, and an aid for unravelling the spirit of competition that runs through our culture, and which we are so often sold as self worth.”—Irish Independent

“Game designer Adrian Hon delivers part searing social indictment and part psychological deep dive in You’ve Been Played, a book about the gamification of our everyday. It’s a fascinating, if at times rather dire, read.”
 —Gizmodo

"Illuminating and persuasive."—New York Times Book Review

“This passionate survey is a wake up call for workers and political leaders alike.”
 —Publishers Weekly

“[Hon's] well researched book peels back the layers on how corporations, app creators, schools, and workplaces are tricking people into completing tasks or offering private information with the hopes of earning badges, points, and other rewards.”

—Booklist

“An expansive view of how gamification permeates modern culture.”—Library Journal

“A must-read examination of the rise of gamification and how technologies that subtly interface directly with our minds are being deployed in ways that are exploitative and dehumanizing.”
 —Martin Ford, Martin Ford, New York Times-bestselling author of rise of the Robots

“You’ve Been Played manages to be as addictive, infuriating, and strangely gratifying as the games (and gamification) Adrian Hon writes about. Honestly, reading this book felt like switching on a light: I’ll never be able to look at my smartphone the same way again.”
 —Anne Helen Petersen, Anne Helen Petersen, author of Can't Even

“The urgent wake-up call we need to the dangers of the gamification run amok, where manipulation masquerades as fun, and politics and profit are the only real winners. Essential reading for lovers of games, human freedom, and anyone who still believes that playing should be fun.”
 —David Sax, David Sax, bestselling author of The Revenge of Analog

“Hon has written a wonderful book about one aspect of our glide towards a soft-lock dystopia, as techniques that were supposed to be cheerleaders and coaches turn out to make more money for their deployers when they are transformed into taskmasters and grifters.”
 —J. Bradford DeLong, J. Bradford DeLong, University of California, Berkeley

From the Publisher

07/01/2022

As a trained neuroscientist and game developer, Hon (A History of the Future in 100 Objects) takes a detailed look at how gamification is permeating every aspect of people's lives. After examining the incentives behind wildly successful videogames like his own Zombies, Run!, he explores gamification's use by companies like Amazon, Uber, Peloton, and Apple. He argues that the reward system that motivates people to complete tasks in daily life (such as a double star day at Starbucks) is manipulative and often ruins tasks at work, in schools, and within the larger geopolitical system. The examples are topical and include COVID, China's social credit scores, and QAnon. After thoroughly studying society's compulsion loop, Hon refrains from introducing the word "addiction" to his argument, settling instead on a status of "softlock" (an area of stalled progress) to describe the current relationship between gamification and society, leaving readers to wonder whether it is really their responsibility to humanize the gaming industry and its influence. VERDICT An expansive view of how gamification permeates modern culture that lacks a strong conclusion.—Tina Panik

Library Journal