If you have read our post about What is gamification? more or less you can get an idea of how it works and what can be done thanks to it. But are there limits to gamification? Can society be gamified?

Leaving ethics aside, gamification is a possibility of action that could extend immensely to any area of our daily life.

According to the blog of "Futurist Thomas Frey", civics is one of the topics of our routine that could be gamified with a system of ratings towards citizens. Every positive action you take during your day-to-day life would add points, however, each action that is considered "illegal", "punishable" or "politically incorrect" would subtract points. This would eliminate the current system of fines and penalties.

The social class would no longer depend on the studies completed, the job, income or family to which it belongs, but would be conditioned by the attitude of people during the day to day. The granting of mortgages, job interviews, pensions, admission to social or sports clubs ... These would be some of the situations in which the score of the person in question would be taken into account in order to make a decision.

Not only would the State be in charge of scoring its citizens but it would be a collaborative system. The society would be valued among itself to get a fair score and that way everyone will do their part to "comply with the rules." There would be no excuse for "I run on this road because I know there is no radar", "I cross a red light or I make an infraction because there is no police". We would all be in charge of maintaining civility and therefore keeping the system standing.

Parts of this idea of civilized gamified society can be seen reflected in one of the chapters of the series Black Mirror .

All this creates a lot of debate about the extent to which this is constructive or not for society, if minimum ethical standards are met about how we humans are.

But what is most impressive is that gamification can be carried on a scale as broad as the gamification of the whole society.

Although it seems impossible, China has applied, on a smaller scale, some of the concepts mentioned above and has led the gamification to a scale to which we are not accustomed.

China has initiated a pilot test in which it combines purchase behaviors and social networks with citizen behavior to assign a scoring system with a commercial purpose. In this way it is rewarded with prizes or incentives to encourage good behaviors. At the moment, it is only a pilot test, although it is expected to be mandatory for all Chinese citizens in 2020. Columnist Samuel Osborne said in the Independent that "China has made obedience to the State a game", even though the laws Chinese allow this type of data control by the State,

Independently that this seems to us to all light an intolerable intrusion in the freedom of each individual and of the total of the society, we have written this article to see the maximum scope of the gamification. If we can get to this, do not you think we can generate more leads or improve your buying process?

¿Qué podemos gamificar?