The Gamification of Work E-Book

Emmanuelle Savignac

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 363

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

Despite the traditional opposition between play and work, games and their structure are increasingly used in workplaces. This phenomenon of using game elements or mechanisms in other contexts than games is named "gamification". In workplaces, the gamification is supposed to abolish the separation between work and leisure or between constraint and pleasure. This book reviews a century of game theories in the social sciences and analyzes the uses of games in workplaces. We critically question the explicit functions (learning, experimentation...) which are supposed to be conveyed by games. Finally, we show that game, understood as a structure, could have efficient social functions in the workplace.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title

Copyright

Introduction: Journey to the Heart of the Gamification of Work

I.1. Ludification and managerial practices in the “fun work environment”

I.2. A socioeconomic context favorable to the emergence of gamification

I.3. Managerial uses of games in organizations

1 Prelude: Fun, Play, Game, Ludus… A Survey of Game Theories

1.1. Animal play, human play

1.2. Theories of human play

1.3. Play as potential and intermediate space

1.4. The concept of play today

2 Games in Business

2.1. Relations between games and work: an apparent incongruity

2.2. The game in business: returning to a typology

2.3. On the field of games in business: simulation and role-playing games

2.4. …Is it a game?

3 Performativity of the Game: Games and the Structuring of Experience

3.1. From the reality of work to the fictionality of games

3.2. A role to play

3.3. Asymmetrical reversals: what happens to social relations in the game?

3.4. The game as an operating structure and the performativity of the game

Conclusion: From the Territory to the Map

Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

Guide

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FOCUS SERIES

The Gamification of Work

The Use of Games in the Workplace

Emmanuelle Savignac

First published 2016 in Great Britain and the United States by ISTE Ltd and John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms and licenses issued by the CLA. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside these terms should be sent to the publishers at the undermentioned address:

ISTE Ltd27-37 St George’s RoadLondon SW19 4EUUKwww.iste.co.uk

John Wiley & Sons, Inc.111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030USAwww.wiley.com

© ISTE Ltd 2016The rights of Emmanuelle Savignac to be identified as the author of this work have been asserted by /her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.Library of Congress Control Number: 2016958348

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication DataA CIP record for this book is available from the British LibraryISSN 2051-2481 (Print)ISSN 2051-249X (Online)ISBN 978-1-78630-123-9

IntroductionJourney to the Heart of the Gamification of Work

The precursor to what we today call “gamification” within work organizations, the first so-called “business” game (game of competitive simulation), began in Switzerland in 1926, in what was called the “house of fictional commerce” of Galliker. What we will later call business games developed in the 1950s. According to Kaufmann et al. [KAU 76, p. 17], the first business games, designed to train senior managers, actually appeared in 1956–1957, “from the efforts of the American Management Association (AMA) and of the Mac Kinsey Co.”. Little by little other forms of game emerged, whose field expanded from purely commercial simulations to include team building, management training, recruitment and evaluation of staff or their emulation.

But one of the (surprising) avant-gardes of management games and the gamification of work was Soviet Russia. The American researcher Mark J. Nelson [NEL 12] reports Lenin’s valorization of “socialist competition”, a principle which Stalin would take up under the term “socialist emulation” (Nelson indicates that this lexical change signaled the wish to not put the workers in competition but to push them to do their best). With this principle, performance was encouraged in mills and factories with the aid of points and medals (for example the Order of the Red Banner of Labor). These competitions did not allow or award bonuses or material gains (considered too reminiscent of capitalist principles) but to displays “of encouragement and recognition”. Nelson reports that in Soviet Russia, the aim of the game was not to encourage productivity alone, but that also sometimes, games might be organized around “the elevation of the cultural level of the worker” or sporting contests. He finally stresses the “mandatory” dimension of such games whose goal was to stimulate productivity and whose participants, although coerced, were supposed to “voluntarily” achieve “ever higher production quotas” [NEL 12, p. 26].

Turning toward serious games and in a direction which we might call more “mechanistic”, of transferring game activities into work activities in the form of games that are no longer directly social but mediated by machines, again the process has relatively ancient roots if we consider the genesis of “Learning Machines” reported by Bordeleau [BOR 99]. The first patent for one of these machines – which were not, he explains, originally games – was filed in 1809 in the United States by H. Chard for a mode of teaching reading involving two rolling strips of paper. There followed an attempt by Edison at a Home Teaching Machine based on the phonograph. In the 1920s, an American psychology professor named Pressey proposed a Drum Tutor (1924). This machine was presented as an automated quiz that functioned by the validation of successive stages. The following decades saw educational schemes using radio, television and subsequently computer programming. Bordeleau identifies the formulation of a ludic principle linked to these machines as early as the 1950s with the cybernetician Gordon Pask, who argued that “a sort of dialogue must be established, a sort of cooperative game between the student and the machine, which must adapt to the student’s answers and not the reverse. The machine must take account equally of the student’s poor responses and their good responses, of the type of error made and of the response time; it must vary the difficulty of the questions based on these data” [BOR 99, p. 13]. It was finally in the 1970s that the first conceptualization of the serious game appeared in its current use and definition [ABT 70]. In effect, Abt proposed designing simulation games for teaching purposes, initially not exclusively in computing, although he had himself, as Alvarez reports, “worked on the design of TEMPER, a computer simulation game used for Cold War training” [ALV 12, p. 94]. For Abt, all kinds of games can be included among serious games, whether company role-playing games or even outdoor games [ALV 12]. Their primary goal is not amusement, as he explains in the introduction to his work, but education: “We are concerned with serious games in the sense that these games have an explicit and carefully thought-out educational purpose and are not intended to be played primarily for amusement” [ABT 70, p. 9].

I.1. Ludification and managerial practices in the “fun work environment”

Concerning the increase in the use of games in enterprises, it seems to coincide in France with the new modes of management appearing in the last quarter of the 20th Century; a phenomenon linked to the democratization of higher education and gradually individualized demands for more freedom, creativity and authenticity in work relations [BOL 99]. Demands for emancipation, pleasure in work, and creativity in ways of performing one’s own work were raised by more and more qualified individuals, and could now be mediated by games and the dimensions of pleasure in play. These uses of games would lead to what would be called the “ludification” of the universe of work, ensuring a festive, convivial environment within which games would have their place. By ludification we do not intend what would be a French translation of “gamification”, but a wider meaning as suggested by Bonenfant and Genvo [BON 14] and Picard [PIC 08] referring to the increasing importance of the ludic (incorporating celebration, leisure, games, media, etc.) in society. Ludification leads to the “more general trend where games (not only video games, which are certainly a factor, but games in general, the ludic) take a more and more important place in today’s society” ([PIC 09] cited by [GEN 14]). The traditional concept of a game which must take place in a space and time separated from those of work has been gradually supplanted by a thought where the distinction between the two categories play/work is no longer so clear, and according to which a ludic, festive dimension may be useful to work, as permitting knowledge-sharing, relaxation, and motivation. The time and space of work have become ludified. If communication within some organizations has led to the development of areas or times for play in order to relax employees (flipper tables, ping pong, go-kart racing, network games within the company, etc.), we thus speak of ludification.

The main objective of ludification in the immediate context of work is “fun” or amusement, which prevails here over the question of learning. These initiatives would be observed in the United States, then in France, as early as the 1990s, beginning with the so-called “new economy” sector (digital start-ups, Internet, video games) and in entertainment1. What North American human resources departments define as a “fun work environment” would consist of: “a fun work environment intentionally encourages, initiates and supports a variety of enjoyable and pleasurable activities that positively impact the attitude and productivity of individuals and groups (…) a fun work setting is created through actions, including funny, humorous or playful activities, that publicly communicate management’s belief to the employee that the personal and the professional accomplishment he or she has achieved are valued by the organization” [FOR 03, pp. 22–23]. Nelson speaks of “funsultants”, meaning management consultants who promote ludification: that is, working toward the development of a work environment that combines celebrations, games and relaxation. The breakdown of the traditional work/leisure distinction, underlined by Boltanski and Chiapello [BOL 99], will thus take place in a professional universe that has become compatible with personal fulfillment, amusement and relaxation among employees, in the aim of efficiency at work.

Keeping employees amused at work by providing them with space for games or sport, or time for celebration, is therefore part of this ludification, and its direct objective is team bonding and supposed “well-being at work”, which is argued to foster the creativity and confidence conducive to taking initiative [SAV 03]. Indirectly, it promotes longer hours spent at work [BAL 09], a good internal as well as external image for management, and in particular attracting new employees [FOR 03] or even a reduction in absenteeism and turnover2. The issues for “funsultants” are motivational, and aim to act on the context of work – to build emotional ties between the employee and their colleagues as partners in play and at their place of work, to leave no room for boredom, to channel stress3 – rather than to act on their skills as such as, for example, serious games attempt to do. There is however a secondary goal to this motivational goal: the possibility of intervening in people’s behavior at work and in particular, according to the oft-repeated formula, improving their “know-how-to-be”: energy, smiling and “positive emotions” may also be spread within a business, but also to partners and customers [BAL 09, KIN 00, ALF 03, FOR 03]. Baldry and Hallier stress the insufficiency of previous managerial strategies to get workers committed, not to their work, but with respect to their organization: “(…) these efforts have failed to develop substantial levels of workforce commitment, but also employees generally have seen the contrasts between employers’ messages of mutuality and the short-term, hard HRM reality” [THO 03, BAL 07]. Far from a willingness to accept management accounts, most employees have either deployed a resigned, often skeptical compliance, or they have attempted to mimic management’s own “rhetorics in order to protect their positions by appearing to be ‘on side’” [COL 97, HAL 04, BAL 09 pp. 14–15]. The organization of games, entertainment, and the creation of spaces devoted to relaxation, to friendliness or to leisure embodies the rapprochement, desired by management as well as by employees, between elements that could be considered in opposition: work and relaxation, hierarchy and proximity, competition and pleasure. Above all, by displaying the concern of leaders for individual well-being at work – today renamed “quality of life at work” – they center the individual and their development; an individual in not only their professional aspects but also those relating to “not-at-work”.

Baldry and Hallier underline the congruence between the development of open spaces and these activities: “team competitions and fancy dress days can only be made to work in a non-hierarchical open plan work space” [BAL 09, p. 19]. In addition to the already-noted goal of communication, there is a collective dimension to the ludification of the environment that should be considered. There is a social dimension to these ludification activities that is central to the motivations of the organizations putting them into place. Playing together allows not only getting to know each other but to appreciate each other, and favors a “good atmosphere” at work, supposed to encourage investment and productivity.

Gamification, ludification and ludicization

As distinct from ludification, what we will call “gamification” brings the structure and mechanisms of games (role-playing games, Kapla, Lego, board games, video games, etc.) not into spaces and times dedicated to leisure within work organizations, but for the purposes of carrying out work: training, education, sales, management, etc. Gamification, defined by Deterding et al. [DET 11] as “using game design elements in non-game contexts” explicitly refers to game structure. It is this game structure that is imported into contexts other than that of play, including pedagogy (quizzes, crosswords etc.), research (for the purposes of, for example, deciphering the structure of an enzyme in the framework of research against AIDS on the crowdsourcing site Fold.it, by means of a game developed by the University of Washington), civic activities such as road safety (for example the “speed camera lottery” experiment in Stockholm, where drivers obeying the speed limit go into a draw to win prizes financed from speeding tickets), or finally work. Other authors, such as Zichermann and Cunningham [ZIC 11] define it, as Bonenfant and Genvo report, “as a process consisting of using the state of mind and mechanics of game-play to solve problems and to involve users, the basic design principles of games being applied in different contexts” [BON 14]. But note that what Zichermann and Cunningham understand by “state of mind” refers, in particular, to questions of the player’s engagement in the game. Games would be expected to foster, shall we say spontaneously, this engagement, which makes them interesting to use, according to these two authors, for the purposes of marketing. We are here dealing with what we could call the “mechanical” dimension of games, and those of its functions that are inherent in its structure: rewards, indicators of progress, degrees of difficulty, etc. Zichermann and Cunningham thus speak of “reward structures, positive reinforcement and subtle feedback loops alongside mechaniscs like points, badges, levels, challenges and leaderboards” [ZIC 11].

These are indeed the components of games (or some of them, and we can ponder the selection made) which are used. This same concept of gamification is found in the texts of the American game designer Jane McGonigal [MCG 11], when she proposes four elements that she argues to be common to all games: a goal, rules, a feedback system and voluntary system. Picard [PIC 08] for his part underlines the importance of storytelling and narrativity in these transfers.

We thus distinguish gamification from ludification along the axis of the English language distinction, largely taken up by theoreticians, between game and play, but also ludus and paidia [CAI 67]. These categories in effect embody the distinction between the structure of games, inherent for example in chess just as in game design, and “playing”, or the attitude or posture, even the state of mind of the player. Attitude, state of mind, posture, may obviously be combined with a game structure or a game objective, but may also be external to and occur independently of a game structure or objective. If, for example, I amuse myself by spinning a pen balanced on my finger and trying not to let it fall, I am playing, without a game structure and also without any objective which could be called a “game”, and it is probable that I get some pleasure from it. As Stéphane Chauvier [CHA 07, p. 18] argues, the game is “detachable” from the player, as opposed to the ludic attitude: “We must be careful as to the difference between playing with a rubber band and playing the rubber-band game®”. Play is autotelic, in that the aim of the game is solely to play it, while a game thought of as something existing in and of itself – like chess, rugby or hopscotch – is heterotelic, in the sense that it leads the player to figure out and apply certain rules or objectives. The arbitrariness of play is thus reduced in a game which remains linked to “features which structure and constitute it”, that is, “a structure of practice” [CHA 07, pp. 83–84]. This dichotomy between play and game thus establishes ludification and gamification as distinct practices for management which embarks upon them, the first leading to benefits derived from its autotelic dimension, such as a good atmosphere, or indirect benefits (for example, getting to know one’s colleagues), and the second leading to structured practices. Introducing such ludic principles as, for example, points or game levels into the process of work, training or marketing leads to gamification.

A third term, not widely known yet, adds a third typology to this definition of concepts linked to games: ludicization. It was coined by Genvo, who defines ludicization as the process according to which “an object which was not seen as a game becomes to be perceived as such, and whereby this change of perception may also lead to changes in the meaning of the term ‘game’” [BON 14]. In cases of ludic imports into business, we can thus speak of ludicization in the case of “challenges” through which the employee is led to achieve what in current management language are called “objectives”4.

Fulfilling objectives within time constraints is a way of working with which certain businesses are very familiar: salespeople in shops or customer service workers in call centers, for example. Transforming time constraints and quotas into a game results from this somewhat ludic “framing”. This latter, supposed to reduce coercion, may be accompanied by praise for the best employees, earning points that can be redeemed for rewards (consumer goods, a food basket, etc.). We could also speak of ludicization when it comes to “exercises” in training or recruitment sessions, presented today as games as in certain “simulations”. The question, however, remains of the perceptions of stakeholders in the race toward the objectives which has become a game.

Researchers have until now thought of gamification according to the principles of “game design”, or in direct reference to video games. We could argue for extending this concept to the formal dimensions – structures – of other games that are brought into the work situation. Thus, introducing the theatrical format as a way of working with principles of managerial operation or the organization of work could be thought of as a type of gamification, as much as the serious game that borrows its structure from video games for purposes of training professionals. It is in this broader perspective that we will conduct our study on the gamification of work.

I.2. A socioeconomic context favorable to the emergence of gamification

Some authors hold a very critical position with regard to the contemporary tendency toward gamifying work. Thus, Bonenfant and Genvo [BON 14, p. 5/7] write: “Again (…) under the guise of a game, a vision is promoted of an economic system based on accumulation, efficiency and productivity”. The two authors speak of “logics (…) of rationalization of activity through the addition of the constraints inherent in ‘games’”. Rewards, graded objectives, feedback on so-called “progression”, encouraging competition between colleagues through counting points, importance of speed and rhythm are equally elements of game design that justify a priori the analysis of an intensification of cadences as much as an intensification of normative control and constraints. If this is quite clear from the reading of elements borrowed from video games, we might wonder if it is also present in games not borrowing from game design, such as role-playing games, business theater or the more carnivalesque forms of role reversal. What is the interest in games brought into the working context, in the case of those that do not use the techniques of points, levels or competition? What interest for management and, consequentially, what managerial meaning do these games have? What does the game, as a game, allow, produce or engage, with respect to work and its organization that encourages its continued, even increasing, use in contemporary organizations [FOR 03, ALL 15]?

We have spoken of the context conducive to ludification, explaining the managerial turn in the 1980s and 1990s. Boltanski and Chiapello [BOL 99], analyzing managerial discourse during the 1990s, have shown how the massification of access to higher education has led to qualified workers endorsing a so-called “artistic” critique, stemming from the social movements of the 1960s, demanding more autonomy, creativity and recognition at work, or a humanization of working relations. This demand is no longer categorical but individual: to be recognized in the workplace as an individual. In consequence, there has been a growing refusal of the status of a mere operator and the goals of graduates have smoothly moved from climbing the social ladder to finding interest in their work or even becoming accomplished in it, like an artist realizing their creation. In a period of full employment and the legacy of the emancipatory political demands raised in May 1968, this demand was recognized, or we might equally say recycled by management – what Boltanski and Chiapello call “the new spirit of capitalism”. Individualizing and psychologizing work relationships had the double effect of responding to the demands of qualified workers and “motivating” them – since work thus becomes comparable, in terms of a path to accomplishment, to leisure or a “passion” – all the while diminishing union collectives, through individualization linked to the subject taking charge at work. Contemporary management wields power, according to these authors, through this sleight-of-hand: the social criticism demanding recognition of the individual at work is satisfied and, in doing so, the demand is individualized, even isolated. This in turn impacts traditional social relationships at work based on the contradiction between bosses and unions, or a collective – a union – facing managers. It is this double operation coupled with new forms of organizing work (project management, flexibility, individual evaluation, “lean” processes) which might partly explain the isolation of individuals at work and the diminishing of collectives, as much as the decrease in cooperation [DEJ 98, GAU 05] observed throughout the last third of the 20th Century.

Management in the 1980s and 1990s moved wholly toward the idea of the development of individual well-being at work. Nelson points out two reasons for this managerial trend: “The first is more mercenary: some in business hope that there exist non-monetary incentives that can elicit additional labor, thereby motivating workers with things that are ‘free’ (such as internal competitions and points), rather than having to pay out as many monetary incentives, such as traditional performance bonuses. The second worry is that certain kinds of productivity are simply impossible to monetarily incentivize, and instead require somehow producing intrinsically motivated, happy workers” [NEL 2, p. 24].

“Fun” and “play”, like “game”, in relation to ludification and gamification are always – and logically – linked with the goals of work: competition and performance in primary logic are equally linked, paradoxically – it might seem – with the goal of a good atmosphere. It is no accident if these techniques emerged originally in the leisure and service industries. For the latter, many authors underline their importance in view of the quality of service delivered: “well-managing employees’ emotions and moods should be considered equally critical for a hospitality business’s success” [YOU 13]. As in hospitality, and in call centers, or even in amusement parks, these must be, with respect to their clients and the services offered, nothing so much as “smile factories” [VAN 91]. For some of them, such as the Disneyland park studied by Van Maneen at the beginning of the 1990s, an individual’s investment for the benefit of the product being sold occurs not only through their knowing-how-to-be but also through their body – as he puts it, taller than average, slimmer than average, young, with healthy teeth “and a chin-up, shoulder-back posture radiating the sort of good health suggestive of a recent history in sports” [VAN 91, p. 12]. Ludification and gamification relate through the regularity of performance that they encourage, to the sporting competition dear to contemporary organizations, to bodies which perform.

A question of generation?

Authors studying the fun work environment insist on the generational dimension of the populations involved. If, as we shall see, gamification tends to be extensive and to move from the professional worlds of entertainment to more traditional professional domains (hospitals, consultancies, etc.), ludification and gamification took hold originally, as we have seen, among digital and multimedia start-ups in the 1990s [SAV 03], in businesses recruiting en masse those who were designated by different North American and later European authors as “Generation Y” or “digital natives”. This expression denotes people born between 1975 and 1995 who grew up with many inventions in the domains of media, telecommunication and high tech: computers, consoles, video games, CDs, MTV, smart phones, Internet, augmented reality, etc. [PAU 01].

In our ethnography of digital start-ups in the 1990s, we noted the specificity of newcomers to the labor market and to this new sector of the digital economy, graduates gifted with a knowledge of the practices and use of computers and games not shared by their elders holding higher decision-making roles. This inversion of the poles of experience, linked with the euphoria of the Internet bubble then taking place, promoted a festive atmosphere and the encouragement of the egos of young people seen as prodigies or, at least, more pragmatically, possessors of knowledge useful to the development of new markets.

One might think that, 15 or 20 years later, this asymmetry of knowledge no longer so clearly applies. Initially stemming from managers, consultants and media, the expression of generational specificity has however gradually been introduced to the scientific literature. It is in these terms that many English-speaking or French authors, originally on questions of marketing [PAU 01], then on management (for example among the most cited: [MAR 05, EIS 05, TAP 08, PRA 09]), then today on games in work organizations [GIN 13, ALL 15], describe these qualified workers now in their thirties: the “Y-ers”.

The description of the inhabitants of this generation, despite their supposed indiscipline and volatility, seems to be the answer to management’s prayers: the “Y-ers” are said to seek the same engagement with work that they find in the digital world [TAP 08]. Spontaneously as well as expertly using new technologies, they are autonomous, independent, flexible, networked, opportunist, creative, and “lean” methods seem to be made for them [MAR 05]. Their supervisors are advised as follows to manage them well: to consider them as people; to coach them like teachers in their quest for new learning; to give them wide flexibility in their use of time, projects and careers; to provide them with constant feedback and to give them praise, recognition and bonuses [MAR 05]. These are generational characteristics and these last two points lead Tascott [TAS 08] to say that gamification is a solution in the workplace for this generation. Note moreover that fun, for them, is more a prerequisite than a benefit [GIN 13].

More than a generational reality, in business, the “Y-ers” would be taken to refer to a group of highly qualified and executive personnel [PRA 09] and to the demand of those personnel, as Boltanski and Chiapello recalled earlier, for more autonomy and creativity at work. Pichault and Pleyers [PIC 12], very critical of the analytical methodology arguing for a Generation Y, show in a study carried out in Belgium over more than 850 employees, not all of them qualified, that it is not so much a matter of managerial specificities as of human resources orientations that individualize and promote collaborative work, which meet a demographic cohort: “The constitutive dimensions of this ideal type are not unrelated to certain important theoretical developments in the field of human resources” [PIC 12, p. 40], they thus note. Here, it is not a matter of employees “naturally”, one might say, adapted to present-day managerial logics, but more ways of thinking about management as well as contemporary demands, such as – they mention – the importance given to “individual affirmation” [PIC 12, p. 44]. Some of the supposed specificities of “Y-ers” are in reality shared as far back as the baby-boomers, such as the meaning given to work, its utility, recognition, autonomy or creativity – old and recurring topics in motivational texts. Pichault and Pleyers’ study shows how, in the postwar period – and we can assume this to be linked to new forms of capitalism – employees have gradually come to think of themselves as only being able to rely on their own resources, ceasing to think of their work organization as a landmark or a stable future. However, those whom the authors of “Generation Y” call “opportunist” show a strong aspiration to cooperation, solidarity and team spirit [PIC 12, p. 46].

Rather than a Generation Y to whom managerial responses of the fun work environment and later gamification are directed, it is a managerial doxa to which we must turn to try to grasp what happens when capital is reconciled with labor… and when work becomes a game.

I.3. Managerial uses of games in organizations

We will present our research in three chapters. The first will be devoted to presenting our theoretical framework and to the choices made, in regard to our field of endeavor, among game theories. The second will be devoted to the question of games and the encounter between games and work. Considering the (rich) theorization of games and the numerous discussions over the last century on this complex concept, do the elements of our field, which we aim to describe in this section, correspond to a game? The last stage of this writing will deal with the plural dimension of games. In the relevant literature, it is a question of framing, of translation from the real to fiction. In our field, it is a question of roles, of simulations using the devices of fiction, inversion, substitution or changing places. The term “game” is thus used in its mechanical dimension: a space between several frames, of movement, the margin of action or even, might we say, an augmented reality. We will study these aspects of the game to try to describe the spaces, times, margins and actions to which it refers in work organizations.

Finally, we will consider why to use games in work organizations. Beyond fun alone, since with games it is a question of structure, of devices, of rules: what are the expectations of management concerning it? How does it operate and what are the functions linked to work and its organization that might be its own in the field of games studied?

1

Note that the survey conducted by Ford

et al

. [FOR 03] among more than 500 organizations would show that these management methods would be more widely used in business than in the “non-profit” sector (NGOs, associations, administrations, etc.), and in particular games. This is the same if the employees of these businesses are less unionized; the higher the rate of unionization, the less competition between employees and the fewer festive activities take place [FOR 03, p. 26].

2

Studies by Kinnie

et al

. [KIN 00] on the practice of games in two call centers show their effectiveness in reducing turnover (moving from 25 to 10% for one and from 30 to 8% for the other). This is one of the “benefits” identified by managers interviewed in the study by Ford

et al

. [FOR 03]. We will also suggest this argument for a

reversal day

event in a hotel chain.

3

“Enthusiasm”, “group bonding”, “satisfaction”, “creativity”, “friendly working relations”, “reduced anxiety and stress” and “confidence with one’s colleagues” are the benefits highlighted by Ford

et al

. in their study of businesses practicing a “fun work environment”. Note that these terms are not used by the employees themselves but by their managers, in reference to what they believe such a management style brings to their subordinates.

4

Reference is made to the use of challenges by management in Stéphane Le Lay’s text [LAY 13] studying such “games” in a call center, contrasting them to games initiated and organized by employees at work.

1Prelude: Fun, Play, Game, Ludus… A Survey of Game Theories

Several researchers have underlined two salient aspects from which we can embark upon research into games. First, they indicate the extreme complexity of elaborating a theory of games. A first generator of complexity in game theorization consists of the great difficulty of thinking of it as a global object: how to think the similarity between playing with a rubber band between one’s fingers without letting it fall (see [CHA 07]), playing a game of chess or playing a role-playing game, for example?

In the second place – and the second salient aspect of game research – we have the poverty and very relative interest brought to the field in French research communities, outside the interest of children’s games by educational and psychological sciences. In fact, well-behind Anglo-Saxon game studies, research on games only really developed in France during the last decade. It is strongly marked by the development of video games (videoludic practices) and new technologies, which tends to give second place to the study of non-digital games. Yet, these were investigated previously by some avant-garde (though isolated) figures in game research such as Roger Caillois in the 1950s and Gilles Brougère today. In the United States, though there exists a field entirely devoted to “game studies”, these researches concern themselves, as their name indicates, primarily with games (their rules, principles and structures) and not with play (the ludic attitude). We also find an interest in games among researchers into folklore, and this diversity and partiality in game research contribute to the difficulty of envisaging it as a global object.

Historically, as starting points for reflection on games, we could cite, on the one hand, research into animal games and, on the other hand those – as we stressed, a handful – on specifically human games (without restriction to the domain of childhood alone).

1.1. Animal play, human play

Karl Groos (1861–1946), a German psychologist, wrote “The Play of Animals” [GRO 96], then later “The theory of play” in “The Play of Man” [GRO 08], where he argued – on the basis of his observations of animal play – that play functions as preparation for later life. His research would later be seen as relating to a functionalist theory: play has a function, it serves a (biological) end, a heterotelic principle that might be controversial in theories on human play. As another point of discussion, many criticisms would be made of research into animal play, dealing with the acceptance of the word “play”: what a human calls “play”, is it play for the animal? Is there not an anthropomorphic bias in thinking about animal behaviors in the image of human behaviors?

These questions would further continue in anthropology, where some researchers such as Hamayon [HAM 12] underlined the great variability of what might be understood as relating to “play” in the populations studied, or again, in a more general questioning, such as Geertz [GRE 80], who called for critical examination of analogies with play and game.

Beyond these controversies relating to the ontology of “play”, these researches however bring to light a common element in animal play and in the activity of human play (ludic as well as artistic, moreover): behaving “as if”, pretending, the “not for real”; as in the example of puppies play-fighting, fighting “not for real”. Research in ethology [FAG 81, IMM 80] show that not all animals play. Practices called “play” have been identified mainly in mammals. Birds, for example, do not play (with the exception of corvids: ravens, magpies, jackdaws, etc.) and animals, according to which species they belong to, do not play the same games.

Three types of games have been categorized among animals. Ethologists speak of locomotor games and rotation games, play with objects and social play. Pierre Garrigues, a researcher in anthropological ethology, thus describes locomotor and rotation games among animals:

“Most locomotor games are distributed in a fairly uniform manner among the various animal species: running, running in a circle, jumping, bouncing, kicking, rolling, sliding. Others are more common, or alternatively, more original. Thus, the behavior “jumping in the air” has the widest distribution. It is found among non-human primates, cetaceans, rodents, carnivores and artiodactyls (including the hippopotamus). To this repertoire, some animals add their own specialties: chasing their own tails, as in domestic dogs or minks, or even hanging upside down, as in gibbons, red pandas or ravens. Some locomotor and rotation games involving the whole body or parts of the body, like those of young chimpanzees, have become popular in descriptions made by primatologists, whether young chimpanzees repetitively climbing up and sliding down their mother’s body, their acrobatics between tree branches, or improvising pirouettes while walking” [GAR 01, p. 12].

As for play with objects, one critical doubt arises (in the absence of the ability to question the animal about what it is doing) between observation/exploration by the animal of the object, use of the object as a tool, and playing with the object. As Garrigues [GAR 01] says, there is no firm line between the three activities. “In fact, at what moment does playing with an object become the discovery of a tool?” [GAR 01, p.13], he asks. Playing with objects covers different activities such as picking up, carrying, shaking, biting or pinching, pulling to pieces, throwing up and catching, throwing away as well as pushing [DES 06].

In 1976, Egan described the behavior of a cat (quoted by DES 06, p. 52]: “typically, an object begins by being sniffed at or batted with a paw. The nature of the object determines whether it will be bitten or not; furry toys are those most commonly bitten. If it is bitten, the object may be kept in the mouth, shaken and tossed (behavior that helps stun live prey), or carried (to a corner where prey could be eaten in peace, for example). For the other type of object, an initial small blow with a paw might make the object roll, in which case it will lead to squatting and pouncing (the movement being the triggering stimulus for these two behaviors) which, as for prey, has the effect of immobilizing the object”. Games with marbles, jump-rope and playing with a ball (outside of the game structure present, for example, in a soccer game) could be seen as play with objects in the human setting. This latter here has a clearly ludic function. This goes even more for objects with which one prepares to play: balancing a pen on one’s finger, etc.

As for the last category of play, the social, it is very distinct among animals from human play and we seem to meet here again the difference between game and play. Animal play, when social, seems to refer only to the latter category, as opposed to human games, which socially structure play: tennis, soccer, or monopoly, for example. By social play, we mean in ethology – still according to a functionalist reading – the fact that play allows members of a group to get to know each other and to be able to agree. In addition, play explores social positions (who is dominant). Play, by promoting interactions, reinforces links between the members of the group.

Social play among animals involves fighting, agility (primates sliding down their mother’s body, for example), pursuit or possession, serving either biological or social purposes. Ethologists note that social play among animals is mainly a game of simulation: simulating aggression, defense or mating. Klaus Peter Köpping thus says of play that it is a “pivot” category, “linking the social and the natural” [HAM 12, p. 298].

If in these theories play has a function in the development of the young animal, this is greatly emphasized for children’s games [PET 84, MIL 79, WIN 80].