One aspect of contemporary life that I find striking is the gamification of our world. To be sure, I am speaking of the Western world, with our computer connections and high-speed internet, and the ease of transmitting information about people through online bulletin boards. There is a great deal of controversy about the term and the practice. For the purposes of the present discussion, gamification will look at the ways in which contemporary businesses try to leverage their customers for marketing purposes through various means. It should be remembered that there are business purposes for these efforts, rather than entertainment, as gamification is not the creation of games, which is also fairly rampant in contemporary society, many of which are designed to make money through encouraging people to buy imaginary improvements in order to improve the gaming experience, leading real resources to be squandered in the virtual world.

At work a few days ago, I on a list of people who were able to pick up two stars, one for each of the two years I will have worked at my present job in August of this year. I reminded the person passing out the stars that she was about three months early in giving them to me, but I took the stars anyway and put them on my nameplate, since like the Lannisters I am not one to turn down what is offered. Of course, every time I look at those gold stars on the silver background of my nameplate, I will have cause to think of the humor of how honors and badges are bestowed in a seemingly random and haphazard fashion. One of my coworkers, who has been with the company for four years, was mock-upset at being neglected for her four stars, since she appears not to have gotten any during her time here. As I said, there is room to reflect on the randomness of how people are recognized and rewarded sometimes, and that randomness makes life interesting, but also a bit arbitrary at the same time.

In some areas, badges are given in an automatic fashion. This is especially true with many corporate websites where users are leveraged as tech support for other users, thus lowering the expenses that are paid on tech support and allowing customers to further a company’s bottom-line. In one particular product for which I am my company’s subject matter expert [1], I have acquired every single badge in the company’s user community, a task that required being friendly, somewhat well-liked, creative, and competent at solving problems. To my knowledge, I am the first user to have received every single badge, though a few others are not far behind. It is curious, though, that companies should find that people would be motivated by such honors even though they have no tangible value outside of a very small community. Yet people are motivated by such honors, to a greater degree than is entirely rational. I am no different than others in being motivated by recognition in the various worlds I happen to inhabit.

Whether we like or dislike a great deal of personal attention, many of us are susceptible to appeals to honor. As I have written on more than one occasion, everyone wants respect. We all want to be valued, to have our thoughts and feelings and perspective valued and appreciated. This is true regardless of our age or superficial appearance or any other factor. By and large, we tend to treasure the company of those who give us signs and tokens of appreciation, be they a figurative or literal hug or pat on the back, or badges, or titles, or stars. If we are all aware of the extent to which we desire honor for ourselves, it puzzles me that we are often slow in giving honor and respect to others. Sometimes even the shiny baubles become a substitute for genuine respect and regard, rather than being a token of them. Yet we are motivated anyway, in the hope that others may triangulate from our trophies and badges some sense of the value of the work and the expertise that went into those achievements, even if there is no way that we can earn what we seek from others. Like so much else in life, the respect and honor is something that must be given, whether in a rules-based system or in a more arbitrary and haphazard way.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/04/17/founding-members/