Both commercially and critically, videogames command respect as a part of mainstream culture. This activity once relegated to dank and secluded arcades is a now a past-time to be enjoyed by everyone. Mom does yoga with Wii Fit and tends to her virtual crops on Farmville. Dad gets his adrenaline pumping on Modern Warfare or relaxes to a round of Civilization IV. Even jocks—the natural enemy of nerds, the old guard of videogaming—will spend untold hours in front of their latest copy of Madden. And who doesn’t have a pair of plastic guitars tucked away by the TV?

Even with videogames being more diverse in scope and audience than ever before, there is a common thread throughout: achievement systems.

Regardless of age, sex, or religious allegiance to console makers, we are all equally susceptible to the insatiable drive of collectable badges, leader boards, and point systems. We are all human, and thus become slaves to the steady drip of dopamine these systems deliver to the pleasure centers of our brain. It’s an addiction, albeit a virtual one.

With such incredible influence over players, it’s no surprise that this trend is catching on. Xbox LIVE awards Gamerscore points for completing achievements in hundreds of games. Valve builds achievements into games like Team Fortress 2 and Left 4 Dead to create a compelling meta-gaming experience. And lest we forget casual gaming, Zynga was recently given a $5 billion valuation (take that for what you will), following the success of games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars, which are little else other than achievement systems.

Loved by some and derided by others, achievement systems are nonetheless as essential to the fabric of videogaming today as power-ups were from the days of Contra, Super Mario Bros., and MegaMan. It is a trend unlikely to go away anytime soon, given not only its commercial viability, but—perhaps more importantly—its grounding in human nature.

It’s not just fun and games, though. I believe that this is a matter of immense significance to the role of technology in our daily lives, with far-reaching implications into human morality in this brave new century.

Ubiquitous, Disposable Technology

In his 2010 D.I.C.E. presentation, Jesse Schell asks us to consider the future of achievement systems in conjunction with another trend: disposable technology. As a consequence of Moore’s Law, Schell explains, it becomes less expensive to produce more powerful computers with each passing year. “If anyone here ever bought a Furby, the Furby costs $20, $30. It has more technology in it than they used to put a man on the moon. People have now thrown out their Furbies because it’s kind of dumb. It’s disposable technology.”

If this rate keeps up, we can expect everyday objects to become increasingly self-aware. Sensors, tiny embedded computers, video displays, and touch interfaces; they all exist today, and will be orders of magnitude cheaper in just a decade—cheap enough to put in anything and everything.

For instance, it’s not far-fetched to imagine an internet-enabled toothbrush (an example Schell uses in his talk). Oral hygiene is just one of those things that people don’t think about too often. Even if you brush twice a day, chances are you brush for under a minute, less than the recommended two or three.

However, if your toothbrush was more self aware… Brush your teeth for 3 minutes? +10 points! Oh, you brushed and flossed every day that week? +100 points!! Want to share this on Facebook? Hells yeah!

Before you discredit the possibility of imaginary points impacting your brushing habits, consider that virtual crops have caused kids incur massive debt, ruined careers, and ended relationships. All because of virtual crops on virtual farms.

Shoes will award points for regular exercise, pillows for getting a healthy amount of sleep, and reading lights for getting through those books you’d been putting off. Badges will be issued for biking rather than driving to work all week, or eating healthy home-cooked meals instead of fast-food. Toilets will give you a virtual thumbs up for each time you remember to put the seat back down.

Yet the implications are far greater than encouraging better habits. Those same ubiquitous sensors afforded by disposable technology and necessitated to keep track of your progress in achievement systems will end up recording your every action. This is Schell’s concluding point in his talk:

“These sensors that we’re going to have on us and all around us and everywhere are going to be tracking, watching what we’re doing forever. Our grandchildren will know every book that we read. That legacy will be there, will be remembered. And you get to thinking about how, wow, is it possible maybe that — since all this stuff is being watched and measured and judged, that maybe I should change my behavior a little bit and be a little better than I would have been? So it could be that these systems are all crass commercialization and it’s terrible. But it’s possible that they will inspire us to be better people, if the game systems are designed right.”

In our post-religious society, achievement systems stand to become a prescriptive moral entity comparable to God. Instead of promises of heaven in exchange for doing good deeds (+10 points!), going to church (+50 points!), or partaking in the sacraments (+1000 points each!)1, we are watched, judged, and awarded points by a technological deity.2

1 Depending on your particular interpretation of salvation 2 Sacrilege: -100 points!

The comparison to religion is apt, I think. When computers gain a certain level of omniscience, people will change the way they behave. It is karma, only undoubtedly real.

Slowly, the line between videogames and life will blur, and then vanish. In a postmodern world, achievement systems will provide the meta-narrative absent in our everyday existence. When life is the ultimate sandbox game, those collectable achievements are what keep you playing. This is all to say, when life becomes a videogame, achievement systems may not seem so gimmicky after all.

Photo Credit: Kimonomania