Meson Press, Hybrid Publishing Lab, Leuphana University of Lüneburg, ISBN13: 9783957960009, English, 346 pages, 2014, Germany

Gamification is a term that originally referred to a process in which games were understood as essential for society and culture. After the exponential growth in popularity of video games through multiple platforms (especially mobile phones), the term has more recently been appropriated by corporate and marketing firms to describe the “implementation of game features” in corporate-specific (internal or external) dynamics. More often than not, the consequence is a reduction in the complexity of a game and its enabled relationships to a banal scheme of stimulus/response. This book aims to critically redefine ‘gamification’ once more, through the work of a number of scholars and researchers investigating a variety of different interrelated aspects of this phenomenon. They write about the current meanings explored in its own domain (Foursquare, customer loyalty programs’ mechanisms, the difference between ‘participation’ and ‘engagement’); about the historical and social roots of gamification (the ludification of culture, games in social life, religion and economy, the use of behavioural practices); and the critical theories of this process (Vilém Flusser, Jaques Henriot, counter-gamification, eudaimonic). As such, this anthology exhaustively discusses a lot of strategic aspects of a crucial phenomenon in game culture, providing a sophisticated critical and multifaceted enquiry into gamification. This is the first book by new Meson Press – an outcome of the Hybrid Publishing Lab in Lüneburg – that guarantees an Open Access monograph, with a free PDF download for individual chapters.

 

Mathias Fuchs at Rethinking Gamification Conference in Lüneburg