Gamification

The gamification of politics makes me mad. 

I first heard the term gamification a few years ago from my daughter, who was writing her master’s thesis in occupational linguistics — the theory and mechanics of teaching language. She was collaborating with a professor of computer programming to develop ways of teaching language by turning it into a game. Students earned points for mastering skills and advanced through levels by solving language puzzles. Learning, she explained, was enhanced by play.

Ever since, it feels as if everything in our lives has been gamified — especially through our smartphones. Gamification activates the same dopamine circuits as addictive behaviors like gambling. (There’s a reason casinos prefer the word gaming.)

Of course, none of this is entirely new. “Game theory” — the study of strategic decision-making — has long been applied to mathematics, politics, economics, and psychology. Even Monopoly was designed to illustrate how the capitalist system that dominates our waking days is essentially a game of acquisition.

Lately I’ve been thinking of my grade 10 art teacher, who took our class of creative misfits to see a show at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts by the great Canadian filmmaker and installation artist Michael Snow. Afterward, we had to write a review. During our discussion, the teacher kept probing me for a reaction. Each time I offered an impression, he’d push me further until finally he said, “It’s a game. What Snow wants us to see is that life itself is like a game — full of rules and systems we only discover through interaction. Once you understand the rules, new layers of perception open up.”

At the time, I barely understood what he meant.

These days, though, it feels as if life’s been reduced to just a game — stripped of Snow’s depth and turned into something mechanical and shallow. The algorithms don’t invite discovery; they compel reaction. We’re no longer playing the game — it’s playing us.

It plays us through our phones. Amazon makes shopping feel like a slot machine. Interest in sports is largely driven by betting odds. News outlets cover elections like horse races.

But Parliament or Congress isn’t the NFL. Political rivals aren’t avatars in a video game. Politics is supposed to be about negotiation, compromise, and crafting laws that serve the public good — not racking up points against opponents.

Yet the media frames every issue as a scoreboard: who’s up, who’s down, who ‘won’ and who ‘lost’. That framing cheapens the issues, demeans the politicians, and insults the voters. 

Watch the broadcast interviews with supporters at a political rally, the flag wavers and sign carriers. When asked to articulate the reasons for their support it’s rarely impressive, let alone coherent or comprehensible. The impression one gets is akin to asking a football fan why they wear their colours. There is no reason. It’s emotional and performative. That’s fine for football. Not politics.

And yes, people on the right, the MAGA team are particularly egregious. But ‘No Kings’ didn’t fill me with any great confidence that they had much more sophistication in their political discourse either.

Gamification has ‘flattened’ and dumbed-down the public discourse all around.  

Politics shouldn’t be about winners and losers. It should be about the issues, values, governance, accountability, and competence.

When we gamify everything — even our democracy — we reduce it to spectacle and scorekeeping. And in that version of the game, we all lose.