Gamification brings an extra boost to work and life

“When work becomes more rewarding and free time more productive, it means an additional boost for the economy and society in general,” says Professor Juho Hamari.

Parents try their best to limit their children’s gaming, but it might not be worth it. Gamification professor Juho Hamari believes that game literacy is increasingly important in our society.

Working life is becoming gamified and more and more things are done through gamification guide.

– Working life is becoming gamified and more and more things are done through gaming. Games have been shown to have cognitive, emotional and social benefits. These good experiences are believed to lead to work motivation and well-being if used in the right way, says Hamari.

The professorship of gamification was originally established under the Tampere University of Technology, and Juho Hamari, whose game research is well known in scientific circles around the world, was named the first holder of the position at the end of 2016. 

Now Hamari works at the University of Tampere, where he leads the Gamification Group, a research group.

One of the members of Hamari’s research group is doctoral candidate Mila Bujic, who has arrived in Tampere from Serbia.

Bujic opens the door and solemnly announces:

– This is the university’s game and relaxation room.

Those who studied at the university in past decades rub their eyes. A game room?

One wall has many shelf meters of gaming literature. A library of computer games requires almost as much space.

They have a large screen in front of them. No one in this room is blessing the perversity of video gaming.

– My research area is related to the power of games and virtual reality to generate empathy and cooperation. I am currently writing a dissertation on the subject, Bujic says and puts on virtual reality glasses.

When asked what the benefits of video games are, Bujic answers:

– They help to increase the cohesion of the work group while they teach to recognize emotions. It’s no wonder that more and more workplaces are starting to have break rooms where employees can use consoles and computers for gaming. 

The game increases creativity

According to Professor Juho Hamari, gamification is, on the one hand, the desire to make the organization like a game, and on the other hand, the fact that more and more practices throughout society are influenced by game cultures.

– In one of our extensive field experiments on the gamification of organizations, we were able to observe that when the work community is divided into competing teams and there is cooperation within the team, this way of working is motivationally better than a way based on competition or cooperation alone.

Hamari says that the game experience is believed to produce creativity and happiness at its best. Playing can increase problem-solving ability, emotion regulation and perseverance.

– For example, in live role-playing games, people try out different roles and step into other people’s shoes. Play is not just a way of passing time, but a central element of human development. 

Gamification and gamification shape working life as well

Working life is becoming gamified, but it is also being gamified against the person.

– Gamification refers to a wider, slowly but surely generalizing game-likeness through the levels of society, culture, technology and economy. Games are becoming an increasingly important part of people’s everyday lives. Playful practices are becoming more common both in working life and in other parts of society, says Hamari.

– Apps with gamification, on the other hand, is an active and intentional activity in the direction that organizations, services and systems produce similar experiences and skills as games at their best. 

According to Hamari, when working life is gamified, it is not so much about making the members of the work community play video games or other games. Rather, it is about modifying and changing the structures of working life.

When creativity, self-directedness and innovation are emphasized more and more in working life, in Hamari’s opinion, this can be achieved through playful or even playful methods. 

Mirroring is not only limited to organizations or work communities. Today, gamification is sought for help in, for example, service planning and customer interaction.

Work also becomes more entertaining

The research group led by Hamari has received a substantial grant from the Business Education Fund for the GAMEORG project, which studies the development of emotional skills in working life using gamification methods.

In Hamari’s opinion, work and free time are always getting closer to each other, while work becomes more entertaining.

When work becomes more rewarding and free time more productive, it means an additional boost for the economy and society in general.

– The full-time overlapping of work and free time is one of the most central broad techno-social lines of development of our time, at the forefront of which is gamification as a phenomenon.

– When work becomes more fulfilling and free time more productive, it means an additional boost for the economy and society in general. In the future, it may happen that the boundary between work and free time disappears and we are constantly producing value that increases our well-being.

So maybe parents should really check their attitude towards their offspring’s gaming.