Game Access

Andrew Jeavons of Survey Analytics writes about Gamification and how crucial play is to our learning and development:

With over 25 years in the market research industry, Andrew is a frequent writer and speaker for various publications and events around the world. He has a back ground in psychology, statistics and software development. Andrew is Executive Vice President of Survey Analytics LLC

There is a lot of talk about “gamification” at the moment in Market Research circles. As well as the proponents there are quite a few detractors. They seem to see research as a “serious” subject not to be trivialized or polluted by “gamificiation”.  The problem is that they fail to understand the power of games. They also fail to understand how fundamental games are to human thought. Far from being trivial, games are a fundamental necessity for us in our cognitive development.

The importance of games for children came to the fore with the work of Jean Piaget, whose work on cognitive development in children touched off a revolution in education methods in the 1960’s. Piaget was interested in how children developed thought and knowledge. While many even now still refer to him as a psychologist, Piaget would always refer to his work as ‘genetic epistemology’. The work ‘genetic’ means ‘the origin of something’ and ‘epistemology’ means ‘the study of knowledge’. Hence he was interested in how knowledge was formed by a child. Piaget observed young children playing and he concluded that the very first steps we take towards adult cognitive processes are found in play. Children play with objects to obtain knowledge about them.  He believed that the physical actions of play were the first forms of knowledge that we have. While much of Piaget’s theories are now seen as old and outdated, the idea that play is crucial to the development of a child’s mind is still very much believed by many.  Piaget’s theory was that we develop internal cognitive processes by transforming our physical play into internalized actions, which is the basis of thought.

It isn’t surprising to therefore see that playing games of many forms in adult life are important. For instance team games can be an important process in adult socialization. How often have we heard the advice that when we move to a new town or are we are in a new organization that joining some sort of sporting team can help us gain new friends? We can develop social networks using games. Role playing games are a commonly used technique in management training to allow people to understand other people’s points of views.

Some of the biggest uses of new computer technology are games. Significant developments in computer systems, for instance the Kinect system developed by Microsoft, were developed specifically for game use. The history of computers shows what games are always in evidence when there is new technology available.

We use games to explore the world around us, or new environments such as software systems. Gaming is therefore not anything new to us as adults; it is the basis of our process of thought. It therefore seems strange that gamification seems to be greeted by some parts of the Market Research industry as something alien and frivolous. Playing games allows us to become comfortable with situations, such as a new town or company. It allows us to practice using new objects such as a Kinect box. It’s interesting to note that soon after the Kinect was introduced as a 3-dimensional interface to a computer game, a raft of more “serious’ real world applications were quickly developed using the Kinect technology.

Playing games is important to everyday life, so why shouldn’t it be important to M.R? Is it that traditional M.R is too self important and can’t see how they would benefit from Gamification? In the end, it’s all a game…