It’s a metaconspiracy (but is it a game?)

I’ve got a confession. I am a member of a secret organization that has been promoting a genuine conspiracy theory, about conspiracy theories, called the metaconspiracy. Under the cover of darkness this last Monday, I was hanging posters promoting our conspiracy theory along with hundreds of other acolytes around the world. I’m merely a messenger, of course, the true masters behind the conspiracy (I sold my soul to them for a deck of critical thinking cards) are the brains behind the schoolofthought.org.

The idea behind metaconspiracy.org is to create a fictional conspiracy theory about conspiracy theories to intrigue people enough to “take the conspiracy theory test” – an online experience. It is a fun little test, you should take it and pass it along (thus, I continue to promote the conspiracy). Is it, though, a “gamification” as the designers claim it to be?

The problem (I’ve been told…) with critical thinking and skepticism is that you can’t really turn them off.  So when I read that the school of thought had “gamified” their test – I started thinking, but, did they, though?

We’ve been (properly in my view) skeptical of “gamification” on PAXsims before.  When people ask for something to be “gamified” that is usually shorthand for “this is boring, make it fun, like a game, so people will learn it”.  The thing they are trying to tap is the thing that gets us coming back to very good games – they are fun models of the world imbued with riddles, puzzles, problems with complex solutions, places where we can experiment and social spaces. Essential to all of these features is making choices that matter. Experiences have some of those features – we talk about them afterwards to process them – but when we’re on the rails experiencing what has been laid out for us – we are never making strategic choices.  That is what differentiates the two.    

Take the test yourself.  In my opinion, the conspiracy theory test is a fun experience, but not a game – apart from the choice of scenario at the beginning and then surveys (which we’d want people to answer honestly) there are no strategic choices. I wouldn’t say it has been gamified.  There is a “score” but it is a simple little algorithm that can be “gamed” (in the way that stats are gamed, though interesting use of the word) by simple setting your initial plausibility as low as possible and then increasing it throughout the experience.  Comparing scores is sometimes interesting, but, as we know, scores often don’t really mean anything, even in real life, let alone games.

I’ve realized this is also the problem with recent “games” like Pokemon Go or Monster Hunter Now (MHN) that I wanted to like.  They are AR experiences that accompany real life experiences of a nice walk / hike, but they have no strategic action / choice – you ALWAYS capture everything you can in Pokemon Go and kill the monster in MHN – the result for MHN is basically playing a butcher of really pretty to look at monsters that you remove from the world and your normal walk turns into a bloody abbatoir.  The only strategic choice I have is now I don’t play it so the pretty critters can live.

So, I posit that the difference between experience and game is strategic choice.  Are there other features? Are you building experiences or games?