This document discusses using gamification and game mechanics to encourage bottom-up citizen engagement with government. It proposes that citizens could incentivize government representatives and entities through scoring their optimal behavior, rather than the other way around. Some examples given include citizens scoring the performance of the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government. The document argues that bottom-up citizen-led gamification of government could make democratic participation more compelling and rival big donor influence. It suggests social networks could be used to directly engage with politicians and track social metrics like Twitter followers and Facebook likes. The goal is a "cooperative multiplayer democracy" where game mechanics foster understanding of social interactions within the democratic system.

1. Engagement
with Government
through
Technology & Gamification
Lewis Shepherd
lewiss@microsoft.com
@lewisshepherd

2. The phenomenon,
not the word
Commenter "Neil" on a blogpost about the
trend/buzzword “gamification”, Oct. 14 2010:
"I really hate the word itself.
The suffix is twice as long as the root!
A lexical disaster."

3. Gamification derives from a game-
designer approach, “game mechanics”
• Rules-based
• Attempt to architect optimal behavior
& activity, through scoring
• Multiple layers of feedback-loops and
positive/negative reinforcement;
Maslow!

4. In Enterprise settings…
• traditional approach extended to
enterprise use: BlueShield, Coca-
Cola, hundreds of others
• just as used in software
games, extended to software
companies:
– Microsoft, SAP, IBM

5. In Government settings…
• Attempts to apply term & concepts
to government have often followed
that enterprise model –
– “behavioral economics”

6. “Nudging” from the top
• Top-down, authoritative, prescriptive
• Author Ian Bogost has written:
– "Gamification is Bullshit"
– It’s "exploitationware" designed to manipulate
and lie, in age-old ways.
– Extrapolated to government, runs counter to Tim
O’Reilly’s original expression of Government 2.0 as
a Platform

7. TJ letter about the kind of government
where "every man … feels that he is a
participator in the government of
affairs, not merely at an election one day
in the year, but every day."

8. Taking the reins which
citizens already hold
What about understanding &
extending the democratic,
bottom-up paradigm?
Instead of government incenting
citizens, citizens incent
government… and those who want
to govern.

9. Citizen scoring of optimal behavior by
government entities/representatives
• In political campaigns: already active in implicit
ways
– Debate participation: 2012, 27 Republican primary
debates
– Tracking polls
– No different from counting your Facebook "Likes" –
the same exultation 
• How many of us admit to posting something
(photo, book reference) primarily to shape your
external reputation or image?

10. “Gaming the System”
• Pandering politicians!
– The more babies you kiss, the more votes you
earn
– The Larry Sabato rule of "How to work a room"

11. What are the analogues for citizen-government
implementation of traditional Gamification
techniques?
• Incentives/Rewards
• Competition
• Progress Feedback
• Goal hierarchies

12. Executive government
• Federal level (i.e. President)
• Local (e.g. mayors of San Jose, San Francisco)

13. Legislative government
• National/local blend within a representative
republic; tie to the constituent (voter=scorer)

14. Judicial government
• Citations
• 5-4 vs 9-0 counts
• appeal/overturns statistics (9th Circuit)
• Laughs per term!
• Oddity of lifetime appointment; results?

15. Judicial government
• Traditional critique demands televised
sessions
– Public commentary on Affordable Care Act
(Obamacare)
– Electrified national debate
• But little feedback loop on government via TV
– Argentine model instead
– Positive/negative reinforcement on court actions

16. One traditional critique of
Gamification
• "Difference is, life is hard, real world can't be
gamified"
– Success is easily structured/designed for the
gamer, and achieved by the gamer
– Real world success is heavily random and hard
• In traditional government use of Gamification
(topdown), same thing
– only used in tangential areas (the public urinal)
because of complexity, difficulty

17. More promise in bottom-up citizen-
government gamification
• Complexity is inherent and a central part of
the response
• "Finger on the pulse of the nation"

18. What would explicit supportive actions to
encourage Bottom-Up Gamification be?
• Using gaming mechanics to make the citizen-
control-of-government a more compelling
experience
• Explicit rewards
– Until now, largely financial;
• Lincoln Bedroom sales;
• Ambassadorial appointments;
• Solyndra

19. Using technology for government
gamification from below
• Social network sites
– Direct engagement with politicians on Twitter
– Politicians/Agencies keeping track of Twitter
follower numbers, Facebook likes

20. Recognize distinction from actual
Gaming world between 3 types of games
• PvP, competitive player games (global leaderboards, etc.)
– This is where much enterprise "gamification" has focused;
ranking, badges etc
• Single-player games (challenge scales to evolving/learned
skill of the user)
– This is where small-ball government "gamification" has focused
(social steering)
• Cooperative multiplayer games (MMOGs)
– Gamification mechanics require deep understanding of the
social interactions within the system
Among these 3, I'm talking about
“Cooperative multiplayer democracy”

21. The Invisible Hand of Politics
• Adam Smith on "invisible hand" controlling
macroeconomics
– Milton Friedman, Nobel Prize winner in
economics, called Smith's Invisible Hand "the
possibility of cooperation without coercion"
• Macropolitics controls Government; the hot
breath of the people
– The Founding Fathers were game
designers, particularly at the Constitutional
Convention
– Constitutional Amendments are merely game
versions. We're now up to “version XXVII.0”

22. We need many more game mechanics
for democratic control of government
• something that rivals "big-donor reward
system,” for the hot breath of the people
– Already the system responds – usually – to
incentives like
• GDP growth
• Unemployment rate
• Murder/Crime rates

23. “Politics is a good thing.”
popularized by Prof. Larry Sabato, University of Virginia
Followup:
lewiss@microsoft.com
@lewisshepherd

24. Engagement
with Government
through
Technology & Gamification