Chapter 1 (10.06.20)

How has gamification been explored in the fiction and popular culture of Cyberpunk? Who are the protagonists in fiction and how do they react to a gamified world? How is technology employed in health gamification in these made-up worlds? And finally, what lessons can we draw to better inform ourselves of these worlds?

Living a Gamified Life

Gamification in our Cyber Health is particularly important today, for we are in the initial phases of its incorporation into our lives. In the COVID-era of health care, we see an increasing number of devices and analytics being pulled into our daily lives with the much-touted promise of benefit, and not-so-well proclaimed cost to our privacy; the latter accordingly lost in the name of safety.

As we see technology being used for heavy data collection, be it contact tracing to identify potentially infected individuals for a Coronavirus confirmation or trying to keep our blood pressure lower, data and tech are quickly moving into our health care in unique and advanced, system developing ways. This includes a new approach for employers and healthcare providers to add incentives in the workplace to achieve greater health benefits, lower costs, and reduce our individual privacy. One of the nation’s largest multinational health care services providers is even asking whether or not the medical profession should create entirely new career positions within the field to coincide with the digital app space and gamification of health.

Lessons from Popular Culture

With all these advances, human society can seem ill-equipped to handle the issue. However, as is often the case, our literature and popular culture often tackle such issues in advance, albeit in most cases to the extreme. Despite this, they provide an interesting point of introduction and critical reflection to see what the extremes of these systems taken too far might entail. To these ends, it is worthwhile to examine pop culture and explore what is available regarding gamification and technology when pushed to an extreme.

There are two examples of gamification that are rightly suited to this discussion from the world of cyberpunk that jump right out: one, the aptly named, Gamer, and the other, The Running Man (#CommissionsEarned). Both films are reminiscent of each other for good reason, they both reflect a gamified world built on the elements that champions of gamification employ to push its adoption; the concerning part is that this is the same in the real world today. Both films highlight how adding technologically enabled game elements to daily life can take advantage of “competition, achievement, collaboration, and charity” to produce some health benefits.

Gamer

In the 2009 film Gamer, the concept of gamification was taken to the extreme when people are enabled, using technologically advanced game systems built on “nano-cells,” to take over other people’s minds. Ultimately, placing convicts into a battle-based game world.

These battlefield environments built on a physical world controlled by electronic means deliver us, the viewer, to a convict who is taken over by a skilled gamer. The combo must then live through thirty game sessions to earn their freedom.

Despite being valuably derided for misunderstanding the gaming community, the film did do one thing very well: it demonstrated on a grand scale how adding game elements to real-life scenarios with real people can have extreme effects on the human condition and produce a malevolent situation for society more generally. The debut of the film even spurred a real-world reaction at the time of its release toward increased critical user involvement in the media regarding games of the day like Quake, the Sims, and Second Life.

Getting into the details, the film features Gerard Butler who plays and is played as, convict John ‘Kable’ Tillman. Wanting to return to his wife and daughter despite serving a death sentence, Kable is put to a game system that seeks to offer charity (winning his freedom) if competition and collaboration lead to the ultimate achievement. In this world, slayers attempt to wipe out each convict before the convicts can win several battles and earn their freedom. As creator of the game world and chief antagonist, Ken Castle puts it, “Every one of our slayers is a death row inmate…stay alive for thirty sessions you get set free! That’s not a bad deal.”

As Kable struggles through different battle scenarios, the main plot unravels around his relationship to his user, Simon, as they attempt to “work” together to gain Kable’s freedom. Ultimately, in an overly simplistic plot device, Kable must convince Simon to set him free so that he might win his freedom; ultimately needing to make his way to the location of the game’s creator and take his freedom back by force.

The system presented here is the most important part of what we are focused on. It is the allegory that counts. Summarized and reflected on neatly by the games creator Ken Castle when he exclaims “I think it, you do it. You’re mine boy;” control is the point. As within all systems, the ones with control have the upper hand. The question for us users, then, is before we enter the game world itself, are we willing to yield control? And if so, in what fashion? And, to what extent?

Despite the hyper-stereotypical representations of gamers and oversimplified plot structures, the film clearly demonstrates a specific vision: the addition of gaming elements to our daily lives, when taken to hysterical ends, can also use charity, competition, collaboration, and achievement to yield highly malevolent and violent ends.

The Running Man

Another example in High-Tech, Low-Life film that brings this critical nature of a gamified world to our doorstep is Arnold Schwarzenegger’s 1987 release The Running Man. In this edition of an eerily similar plotline, an America lost to dystopianism sees a wrongly convicted Arnold, try to earn his freedom by being forced into a game world of runners against stalkers: again, convicts try to earn their freedom in a battle of wits and physicality.

Ben Richards, Arnold’s character, goes from opening scene hero to convict to fan-favorite one-liner champion in the games where different stalkers slowly kill of each one of his technophile friends. In the end, much like in the film Gamer, it is only when Ben is left to his own devices of wit, force, and individuality that he is able to overcome the system and find his freedom.

Implication of Technology

Both characters too struggle against technology seemingly employed to make the world better. Each are outfitted with different types of physical trackers and many characters in both worlds are benefitted/affected by body modifications and health altering elements, not to mention deep fakes and a host of other technology. In fact, The Running Man may very well be the first iteration of an honest deep fake example in popular culture.

Where We Go from Here…

Each of these stories illustrates gamification in the extreme, but nonetheless still develop their central themes along the same lines that we see companies and wellness practitioners offering society today: add game elements to our natural inclination for competition, achievement, collaboration, and charity and all will benefit. Is this really the case though? Even before COVID many of the world’s journalism outlets were examining this exact question from the BBC to The Atlantic.

Did each of these film forbears not offer charity (reprieve from criminal wrongs) in return for a collaborative effort (Arnold and his crew against the stalkers; or the convict/gamer tandem in Gamer) through competition (fighting for their lives) and achievement (survival)? Each tale tells of a world that is now. A world that is coming to fruition right before our eyes, maybe not with the muscle-bound superheroes but with the tech enhancements, game systems, and attempted control that is professed in each film.

Critical Health Thinkers

There is no doubt that life often imitates art, and the potential for gamified environments is simply that they can go terribly wrong. This implies that for those of us with a critical eye on society, we must be ever informed and engaged users. Otherwise, the possibilities could be quite detrimental. So the next time our employer offers us the great benefit we can gain for adding their health games to our lives, maybe we should think twice and at least ask a bunch of questions and examine the system for ourselves.