The arrival of the seventh series of Black Mirror on Netflix and a fun mobile game, Thronglets, from the warped mind of Charlie Brooker is a key entertainment highlight for any nerd and tech lover. The launch of Thronglets also had us asking the question, what happened to gamification? The art of adding game techniques to working and training processes.
Black Mirror 7 starts with a grim example of the use of ad-based cloud subscriptions and ventures further into how terrifying the prospects of cloud, digital memories, AI and other popular subjects are. But, it’s the Thronglets game that sparked the question.
Playing in the Black Mirror
Players start off with a single furry yellow creature requiring the basics of food, play and cleaning. But soon there’s a whole herd of them, and they threaten to take over your life while bringing out your inner manager, encouraging you to find more ways to efficiently control the pack, and unlock the game’s higher achievements.
In the real-world, gamification never really went away, it has been added into many areas of business from corporate training, onboarding and as motivation for sales teams. However, these technologies are now part of the landscape and rarely noticed as anything special.
On the consumer side, Duolingo remains the undoubted master of gamification, with multi-lingual benefits for pupils. Many other apps have taken their cues from this and mobile games like Candy Crush. While there’s no Black Mirror-style story of gamification taking a horrible twist, there are still risks users face. And we’re pretty sure Charlie Brooker would be secretly pleased at how fast modern reality is catching up with the ideas explored in his many salutory tales.