You've Been Played

"A call-center worker patiently troubleshoots a customer's broken printer, while a cartoon character in a corner of his screen chides him for sounding too unengaged. An exhausted Uber driver needs extra cash, so she accepts a pop-up Quest on her app: drive another three trips to get a $6 bonus. At home, her partner spends hundreds of hours combing through obscure forums about the QAnon conspiracy theory: uncovering clues and drawing connections feels just like a game. This isn't a dystopian fantasy: points, badges, achievements, and leaderboards are slowly creeping into every aspect of modern life. In You've Been Played, neuroscientist and game designer Adrian Hon provides a blistering takedown of how corporations, schools, and governments are using games to coerce and control workers, students, and all citizens. Although this trend-called gamification-can sometimes work for our benefit, Hon shows us that, in fact, it is more often a high-tech means for behavioral, physical, and emotional exploitation. These are games that we often have no choice but to play, where failure isn't met with a cheery "try again" but with very real financial and social penalties. Hon shows how gamification exploits our new fixation on mindfulness; why massive companies like Amazon and Uber are so keen to adopt gamification as fast as they can; why the dangerous QAnon conspiracy theory is deliberately designed like an "alternate reality game"; and why augmented reality could turn our entire lives into a hellish game we can never escape. Hon writes chillingly about the gamification's dire consequences, but more importantly, he shows us how we can marshal it as a force for good. You've Been Played is a scathing indictment of a tech-driven world that wants us to think misery is fun, and a call to arms for anyone who hopes to preserve their dignity and autonomy, at our jobs and in our lives"--