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You’ve Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All
Maybe someday
32
/100
I Index Overall Rating
Readers
25/100Critics
40/100Scholars
Author:
Adrian Hon
Publisher:
Basic Books
Date:
September 20, 2022
Points, badges, and leaderboards are creeping into every aspect of modern life. In You've Been Played, game designer Adrian Hon delivers a 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.
What The Reviewers Say
Hon slips easily between the perspectives of expert, enthusiast and critic. An education in neuroscience informs his explanation of the behaviorist underpinnings of gamification.
It’s refreshing that Hon comes from the UK tech scene rather than California’s, and he has not bought into Silicon Valley’s values of disruption and data-harvesting. Instead, he is quietly incisive, sceptical of ‘charismatic technologies’.
While Hon warns of the dangers of gamification, his book is not entirely a tech apostate’s account. For all his caution, he believes in ethical gaming.
Anyone in the tech world and human resources will find this book helpful in making decisions about gamification..
