Can Suffering Be Gamified? The Answer May Surprise You.

I played Pippin Barr’s Let’s Play: Ancient Greek Punishment for precisely the required amount of time. Even that, however, was tedious. Yet in spite of how boring and unplayable I found it, I knew I wanted to write about it. Why? Because it challenges a lot of the ideas we’ve talked about this quarter: art games, playability, procedurality, choice and freedom, failure, control, difficulty, ethical gameplay, and (my focus in this post) gamification.

Gamification entails transforming content not typically associated with fun, diversion, or gaming into something more “interesting” by introducing ludic elements. AGP’s content appears to be suffering, an activity not associated with fun, diversion, or games—and thus, it would seem, prime material for gamification. However, this content in particular resists the status as a game, at least as we would usually categorize it. Consider three of the most fundamental components of a “game”:

1) parameter(s)

2) mechanic(s)

3) goal(s)

Let’s think point-by-point. Barr’s project contains explicit parameters: a finite environment and a controllable, singular character. Check. It also includes explicit mechanics, e.g., “Rapidly alternate the ‘G’ and ‘H’ keys.” Check. However, the third criterion—a goal—is noticeably lacking. Not to say that the project overall has no function, or that Barr had no goal in mind in designing the project, but that as a standalone, playable product, Ancient Greek Punishment doesn’t seem to meet the definitional requirements for gamehood.

But does Barr successfully gamify suffering? Still, the answer is (in my opinion) no. AGP comes as close as anything could—but the bottom line is despite parameters and mechanics, there is no payoff, no goal, no reward, and no objective beyond “playing the game.” We could call it an interactive artwork, a programmed experiment, a multimedia project—but a game? Not unless we frame it as a metagame played between the designer and players; even then, though, we’re talking about a system greater than the product. Arguably, AGP does have didactic properties: from an educational perspective, each episode succeeds (within perhaps thirty seconds) as an expeditious illustration of Zeno’s Paradox or the mythical dooms of Sisyphus, Tantalus, Prometheus, or the Danaids. But this in and of itself is not enough to make the work a “game.”

An illustration of Zeno's Paradox, in which an object moving from point A to point B can never theoretically arrive since travel consists of an infinite series of "half-way" progressions.

I wonder then whether or not a project can “gamify” without ever becoming a “game.” The conditions of suffering per se seem to defy basic game design principles, but further reflection leads me to think that reframing the subject as “futility” might be more accurate and useful.

In this case, I think we can argue that this project does successfully gamify futility. This gamification, however, is unique to this instance. In other words, this is not identical in form to other instances of gamification; instead, it exclusively gamifies futility. This special exemption is due to the fact that futility itself necessarily lacks achievement: one cannot “succeed” in being futile, but rather persists under conditions of futility. There is no arrival or completion. And for this reason, in order to accurately treat its content, any gamification of futility must necessarily comprise only two of the three components listed above.

Ancient Greek Punishment, for a (brief) time at least, is enjoyable. But enjoyment is not a criterion for gamehood, and guarantees no such status to Barr’s project. Despite this, AGP does successfully gamify the conditions of futility—and that, I think, is a suitable paradox.