You've Been Played

English language

Published Sept. 19, 2022 by Basic Books.

ISBN:: 978-1-5416-0017-1

(1 review)

How games are being harnessed as instruments of exploitation—and what we can do about it

Warehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be fired. Uber presents exhausted drivers with challenges to keep them driving. China scores its citizens so they behave well, and games with in-app purchases use achievements to empty your wallet.

Points, badges, and leaderboards are creeping into every aspect of modern life. In You’ve Been Played, game designer Adrian Hon delivers a blistering takedown of how corporations, schools, and governments use games and gamification as tools for profit and coercion. These are games that we often have no choice but to play, where losing has heavy penalties. You’ve Been Played is a scathing indictment of a tech-driven world that wants to convince us that misery is fun, and a …

How games are being harnessed as instruments of exploitation—and what we can do about it

Warehouse workers pack boxes while a virtual dragon races across their screen. If they beat their colleagues, they get an award. If not, they can be fired. Uber presents exhausted drivers with challenges to keep them driving. China scores its citizens so they behave well, and games with in-app purchases use achievements to empty your wallet.

Points, badges, and leaderboards are creeping into every aspect of modern life. In You’ve Been Played, game designer Adrian Hon delivers a blistering takedown of how corporations, schools, and governments use games and gamification as tools for profit and coercion. These are games that we often have no choice but to play, where losing has heavy penalties. You’ve Been Played is a scathing indictment of a tech-driven world that wants to convince us that misery is fun, and a call to arms for anyone who hopes to preserve their dignity and autonomy.

3 editions

starchy reviewed You've Been Played by Adrian Hon

You've Been Played

4 stars

I appreciated Hon's willingness to avoid oversimplification in favor of accepting nuance throughout the book, which otherwise could have come across as an extended TED talk. I found the chapters on workplace and educational gamification particularly relevant and galling, and thought the exploration of ARGs as an insight into Qanon was fascinating.

One minor source of eye-rolling is Hon comes back a bit too often to his own small business as a counterexample for how gamification can be resisted or done well. His bona fides were established early in the book, so it could have gone a long way to have some more variety in the "Do" column.

Lists

Techtonic Reading List