Systems Based Gamification Volumen II: Complex Systems

Systems Based Gamification: Play, Complex Science
and Strategy
Part Two: Complex Science
By Eugene Sheely
© E V Sheely 2014
In this section I'll argue some key points:
• Complex Adaptive Systems theory should be adopted
into gamification
• Emergence should be part of our gamification design
process
• Playing and designing games are rewiring our brains in
order to better manage complexity in the real-world
• Gamification will better enable us to cope with
managing complex systems in enterprise
A lot of my ideas here are inspired mainly by the founder of
Cognitive Edge Dave Snowden. There’s a lot of positive
insights we can gain from understanding games, but
gamifications needs to also deeply understand the real-world.
As for game-based learning I believe that as designers we
need to understand complex systems in order to develop

games that create tacit knowledge and better enable us to
cope with the real-world.
Ann Pendleton-Jullian has an amazing Ted talk where she
describes this process. Playing games, and becoming game
designers changed the brains of her students which made
them better performers in their careers. This is a tacit skill,
and a very necessary one for our volatile world.
So please keep in mind that this is a very brief introduction
where I try to stress the value of understanding these
scientific concepts for gamification and game designers alike.
If you like them be sure to contact and research the authors
I mention.
Sub-sections:
1.Systems Thinking
2.Emergence
3.The Re-wiring of Our Brains
4.Management of Complexity
Systems Thinking
1

Both games and the real-world are based on systems. We
live in political and economic systems. Our family, group of
friends, work environment, etc are systems. If we're going to
be merging game systems into the real-world systems we
should then understand how systems work.
There's two basic types of systems, these types are:
Closed systems: These are linear and predictable. A
real-world example is the factory conveyer belts processes.
Efficiency is key. Managerial approaches like Six Sigma are
used. In video games the plot, levels and player challenges
are already designed. It's a causal system, meaning that if
you do the same thing once, it will have the same results if
you do it again.
Open systems: These are nonlinear and unpredictable. Most
human systems fall in this category. Effectiveness at expense
of efficiency is key. Managerial approaches like The Lean
Startup are used. In video games the plot is not
predetermined. Open Ended games and sandboxes fall in this
category. It's noncausal, if you did one thing it may or may
not work a second time.
The business world has already began to divide management
styles to accommodate these two basic types of systems

within organizations There's at least two Harvard articles on
this. One is titled: The Ambidextrous Organization, the other
one by Dave Snowden is A Leader’s Framework for Decision
Making.
As Snowden points out, complexity is a well established
management tool, not some outliner theory. You discover
what type of system you’re in (open or closed) and apply
different management processes to accomodate.
I argue that gamification should also do the same by
establishing separate principles for the closed and open
systems. This is especially necessary in enterprise since we
should try to enhance the existing system we are working
with. Applying linear game design principles on a non-linear
open system in business can be disastrous and viceversa.
2
Jobs at close systems tend to be boring and repetitive. In
order to manage them you need to have defined goals,
defined processes and lots of quantified metrics. Extrinsic
motivators work in close systems because there's usually no
intrinsic motivation to do the job.
Close systems are what a lot of the enterprise gamification
literature is referring too when they want to make work fun.

They rely heavily on points, badges and leaderboards (PBL)
in attempts to create extrinsic motivators. These work
excellent in closed systems as many case studies show, but
based on my experience with management these techniques
mostly work in closed systems.
Applying them to open systems can have negative effects.
The reason is that it constrains behavior too much in a
system that requires improvisation. With PBL you're usually
rewarding predetermined behaviors. It may also destroy the
intrinsic love for a job as Snowden points out was the case
in health care with the pay-for-performance program.
3
Jobs at open systems are filled with novelty. They're about
exploration and learning. The most extreme example is
working at a startup, you can't predict what's going to
happen next. You're running safe-to-fail experiments and
applying Eric Ries Lean Startup method. There's probably
already strong intrinsic motivation to do these jobs and they
may be stressful but they're fun!
Wall Street traders us a phrase that says “F-your money!”
An answer referring to how much money a trader would
take to quit his job and retire. The point being that they
love their job so much that no amount of money would pull

them out of it. Now that's engagement!
In his book Enterprise Games Michael Hugos bases his game
mechanics on those of Massively Multiplayer Online games
(MMO's). His ideas are aimed at using information
technology in a way that imitates the dashboards inside
these nonlinear online games:
Image used with Michael Hugos Permission
It's not necessarily about making the job fun, but through
these systems the corporation becomes agile. Michaels
process is a bit different than the traditional “gamification”
material:

Image used with Michael Hugos permission
This process was developed through supply chain
management operations. What's significant here is that
Michaels method is emergent but the rules bounds that
emergence into business specific goals. You can quickly
adapt and move your business forward or pivot when new
opportunities arise.
4.
There's an article in the Huffington Post that I highly
suggest reading by one of my favorite authors Robert Greene
titled: Google and the Napoleonic Model: Business in
Revolutionary Times. In the article Robert writes that having
technology is useful but you should also work on finding

innovative ways in using it. The way our business models
are organized will affect our agility and strategic maneuvers.
There’s a need to be decentralized, adapt quickly, get
feedback, etc. These claims aren't new but Robert gives it a
fresh perspective, but like many articles it stresses a need
but doesn't give specific practical advice. It’s very thought
provoking but it’s not a “how-to” manual.
Michael Hugos books Enterprise Games seems to me a more
detailed account on how to organize a company into this
“Napoleonic business model” Robert Greene coins.
Traditionally the corporation was hierarchical and the boss
had to bark orders in a centralized fashion. Robert Greene
compares this model to Microsoft and IBM:

Image used with Michael Hugos permission
The volatility of our world requires that we abandon this
model and take a more decentralised one, but yet there are
still rules that guide this decentralization . This is what
Robert Green calls the “Napoleonic Model” used by Google.
Michael Hugos explains how this can be achieved by
gamifying IT as an open system:

Image used with Michael Hugos permision
This system becomes ideal in the network age as connections
between different departments begin to emerge organically:
Used with Michael Hugos Permission
But never forget that there is still leadership in these
organizations. There are some “experts” who claim that we
are seeing a new egalitarian age with the rise of networks,
they're deluding themselves. There will always be informal
power structures, and spontaneous organization isn't going to

work. The role of the leader as the visionary and strategist
still applies, read a history of Apple. The French Revolution
would have been doomed without Napoleon. There is some
truth to “the great man” theory of history.
But the leader isn’t all. There also must be rules in which
the group of people organizes itself, game design can better
help us achieve this in corporations.
Leaders must not only tell organizations what to do, but
more importantly they must “design” the rules the
organization operates by, which is no different than
designing a nonlinear game. Just like Napoleon Bonaparte
designed his military for adaptability 200 years ago (read
Roberts article for more details) we need to begin adapting
our corporations for agility. This is necessary for developing
a “Complex Adaptive System” (CAS) which I'll explain
below.
If we are to manage open systems, a new game-based
managerial approach can have much to offer, but we must
remember it’s not about fun. This style of “gamification” is
similar to the branch of behavioral economics that was
developed by American think tanks to fight the Soviets
during the cold war called “Game Theory.” The strategists
were inspired by different games to come up with their
strategic models. But they did make some mistakes:

1) That people behave rationally (an economist's view point)
2) The world can be predictable since they believed it was
mechanical (great movie and novel A Clockwork Orange
makes a philosophical argumet against this)
This new “Game Theory” or “gamification” bases itself
strongly in the foundations of Complex Science that are
being developed by Cognitive Edge and others. I’ve also
added interdisciplinary approaches of my own such as tricks
from diplomacy and game design. But the foundation is not
to create fun or happiness, is to better navigate the world
and solve problems in competitive settings. “Fun” latter
come running after us when we’re dominating our
field/market. If we’re not making an impact, we’re not going
to have fun.
The 2005 movie Revolver is a good metaphor for this
different “gamification” approach. In the movie a master
con artist and a grandmaster chess player combine their
expertise and develop a new theory on how to succeed in
the real-world.
5
We must realize that when you apply extrinsic motivators

into jobs inside open systems you’ll kill the intrinsic
motivation the employees had.
Snowden mentions a new process that appeared in healthcare
called Pay-per-performance that does a great job in
illustrating the effects PBLs can have in business. Just like
many of the enterprise gamification processes out there it
based itself on quantified metrics of success (even though
this was not a gamification design). The goals were clearly
defined. When they achieved these goals they had the
extrinsic reward of a cash prize.
The literature on the results is mixed, but most agree that it
destroyed the intrinsic motivation of the staff to help people
and instead they were only focused on making points. This
could be one of the risks in applying points, badges and
leaderboards into open systems.
Another danger (explained by Snowden) is that open systems
are highly contextual. You can't predict all the little
subtleties needed to be done. A points system in open
systems can be dangerous because it may restrain adaptation
to different contexts. A big point of emergence is
serendipity, making positive discoveries you didn't plan for.
Too many rules and you'll destroy this ability.
We all have experience this in our social life. You have to

have subtle changes depending on who you talk to. Who you
are with your mother is not the same person you are with
your close friends. The type of text message you send to
your spouse is not the same as your clients. You can’t apply
a fix set of rules to interact and measure success in these
different social contexts.
But points, badges and leaderboards work wonders in
monotonous boring jobs. It's the only novelty the employees
get! And quantified metrics are great since engineering a
closed system is possible. This means that in a close system
we CAN repeat successful practices again and again so we
CAN find the one best way of doing things. Best practice
works here so our feedback systems should reflect this.
But this doesn’t mean that points systems don’t work in
open systems. Michael Hugos Red Cup Game depended on
points. You have to pay attention on how its affecting the
system as a whole.
Emergence
1
Dave snowden invented something called the Cynefin
framework:

This model is brilliant and should be mandatory for every
gamification designer to understand. I'm not going to fully
explain it so if you're interested Google it yourself. But here
are the basics:
The simple and Complicated boxes are linear and therefore
casual (you can do the same thing twice and have the same
result). This is where engineering principles work. The
simple model can be understood by anyone, think about a
water pump. In here universal principles can apply, thus it's

“best practice.” The complicated model is also linear, but
requires deep analysis or experts to understand it. Think
about the engineering problem of building a bridge.
The complex model is nonlinear. If you're familiar with Eric
Ries method this is a similar but richer approach. Probes
would be Eric Ries's minimum-viable-products. These are the
tests you perform to measure the reaction of your potential
market in order to see if your first ideas are going
anywhere. If it works you scale, if it doesn't you pivot. But
it’s also used for exploration, discovering the
“unknown-unknowns.” If you discover these, you might
become the black swan Nassim Nicholas Taleb warned your
competition about!
This last method in the complex box is crucial because it's
an emergent property. Most of the world is a complex
system and we can't predict the future.
Designing your whole gamified/business process from
beginning to end without interacting with the real-world can
be disastrous. Eric Ries developed an engagement process
with a game-as-a-service, there’s a lot these types of games
can teach other industries.
But not only are the product design methods for these types
of video games useful in other industries, but also their

community management practices. These have already
successfully been applied with great success. Look up the
Youtube video “Community and Communication in
Games-As-Services” by the speaker Robin Walker, his talk is
BRILLIANT. I think his techniques have the potential to
become mainstream the same way the LeanStartup was.
Check him out.
Robin Walkers engagement with customers in the games
community creates a “metagame” which means it’s “a game
on top of a game.” This is what the metagame does:
• Drives engagement and loyalty to the game
• Creates free marketing in the “mouth-to-mouth” sense
• Provides valuable feedback that allows the game
company to constantly tweak and offer products they
didn’t initially thought about but that the users love
So it creates a scalable long-term adaptive process that
engages customers and it's feedback changes the business
services. It’s a co-evolutionary approach. The community of
users activities and insights in the metagame are constantly
impacting the game companies content and vice-versa. This
should also be mandatory in gamification.
As Snowden points out you have to figure out where you are
in terms of resources but also the culture and structure of

the organization, then you see where you can evolve from
what you have. You don’t imagine a future state and try to
reach it as gamification is mainly advocating.
2
If you're the designer of any product or service you come to
the table with your hypothesis on what the users want.
Sometimes you're designing a product or service you yourself
would want to use. This approach could be really powerful
and effective since you're literally able to understand the
customers needs since you're one of them. Or it could be a
disaster, since your interests aren't shared by a large enough
market and no one cares for what you have to offer.
As a designer you will begin to gain a feel for what works
and what doesn't. Steve Jobs followed Henry Fords maxim of
“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have
said faster horses.” Just asking people what they want
doesn't work, you have to analyze them in a scientific
approach. This is the basis of Eric Ries's book The Lean
Startup.
There's sound theory on this. Dave Snowden explains that
most human systems are complex, and by the nature of this
system you can never know in advance what will work and
what doesn't by “researching the market.” You have to

interact with the complex system by running safe-to-fail
experiments. This is pretty much the summary of Eric Ries
book (also mandatory reading in gamification).
What's interesting about Eric Ries's book is that he came up
with his method of design by building the social video game
IMVU. So far the game has been really successful. So a lot
of the principle from The Lean Startup directly correlates to
any gamification design since Eric was working to create a
game-as-a-service that was fun.
Any hypothesis for a gamified program can be based on our
personal tastes or patterns we've seen with other people. In
gamification its necessary that you understand the theory
behind what makes something fun, so it's useful to get
acquainted with the works of experts in the field like Raph
Koster, Gabe Zichermann, Jesse Schell, etc. There has to be
a sound basis for these hypotheses also! Knowing the theory
will save you precious time and resources. But also be aware
that the hypothesis may be entirely wrong and having it
may screw you up, you u should also be ready to look at
the world with fresh eyes.
But as Dave Snowden says: If you don't understand why
something works (theory), you can't scale a design process
for your specific context.

Case studies only work to a point, know the science behind
your field.
3
A great example of emergent game-based learning is that of
Constance Steinkuehler. I highly recommend you study her
research in detail. It shows how you can’t entirely plan a
fun process before interacting with the students, but you
need to constantly adapt to the engagement patterns your
users are experiencing. Constances experience is almost
identical to Snowdens “Childrens Party” metaphor where he
explains how complex adaptive systems work. so my
conclusion is this: You can’t design an engaging process
without understanding complex systems theory. There’s many
examples that show this. Snowden is mandatory reading.
Constance ran an after school program where the plan was
to use the video game World of Warcraft to teach literacy
skills to teenagers. Parents heard about this program and
began sending their kids to her before she officially
announced it, they were all boys.
Her initial objective was to turn this program into a “third
place that bridged school and games.” This makes sense!
(P.S. Eric Ries says that when something makes sense like
this, its probably going to fail. Don't be seduced by a logical

plan). The idea was that the kids would play the games and
do all sorts of intellectual activities around the games like
building their own website, reading and writing game-based
texts, using multimedia, etc.
After a month she concluded that this approach wasn't going
to work, the kids were just not engaged. So she used
another strategy: Instead they just let the kids play the game
while the staff played along with them. When they found
something the kids got interested in while playing, they
worked to encourage it. For example: Some of the kids got
interested in World of Warcraft comic books, so the staff
brought a big stack of these comics into the class and the
kids started reading.
They discovered though, that reading a textbook and reading
a game based text from the online game communities had no
difference in comprehension from the students (these kids
where falling behind their reading grade level). So a “fun
theme” doesn't work. It wasn't until they offered game based
text that reflected a specific problem that the kids were
trying to solve in the game that they began to engage in
reading the how-to content from the forums. From this
something fascinating happened: These same teenage kids
with a reading level determined to be 4 years behind were
reading college level texts with perfect understanding.

Constance explains that therefore it wasn't that these kids
were falling behind due to a cognitive problem, they were
clearly smart, but it was an engagement problem. What
happened was very obvious, but seems to be forgotten in
schools. If the kids were interested in the text they would
auto-correct themselves twice as much compared to a text
they didn't care about. So if they read a sentence and it
wasn’t perfectly clear to them, they would read it again
until they got it's meaning. They're now engaged in the text!
Constance called this “Interest-Driven Learning” where you
discover what the kids are interested in and serve as a guide
to find more resources on those interests. So if you think
about it this is a sort of emergent style of gamifying in an
educational program. This emergent approach is fundamental
for engagement since the theme of the text wasn't the cause
of the kids engaging in it. Fun mechanics only worked if the
context they were presented reflected an interest of the
student.
Constance had started the program by giving the students
texts she thought they would like which were directly from
the game communities. The reading levels were exactly the
same as the schools texts. It wasn't until she discovered the
particular problems trying to be solved in that game by the
students that she was able to get very specific texts for
those problems which caused the kids to engage in reading.

Also important to note that she looked for the hardest texts
in the community (above their grades reading level), which I
already mentioned the students understood perfectly.
So again: You need the sound gamification theory on what
makes something fun, which is explained by experts in the
community, but you will also need to engage in your
particular problem and find out the context. Remember we
are dealing with complex social systems and we can't
understand it without engaging in it. Buy a copy of The
Lean Startup and check out Dave Snowdens material on
design. Learn to design through emergence and stay open for
new insights, aka serendipity.
4
I've read some gamification designs that go like this:
“We've divided our corporate training courses into 30
seminars. Each seminar is like a game level. You have to
take your basic courses in order to level up. And it's social
because you have to take these courses as a group. Isn't that
fun!?”
Bah! No. First of all this is assuming that explicit knowledge
is the only type of knowledge (or the one worth learning).
Second of all sitting down to watch a seminar isn't play. It's

still a dull lecture! Just adding points to it won't make it
fun, in fact seems like an insult to your employees
intelligence, it’s really condescending (which is a problem in
gamification). This “gamified lectures” are still a passive
activity, and just because it's a group shared experience you
won't change that. In fact they'll probably be bored out of
their minds and look for ways to distract each other.
I'm not saying that seminars are wrong just that it's unlikely
that you can directly gamify them. You should instead create
some kind of platform for play on the side where they can
immediately apply their knowledge.
For example: If you have a talk on how to deal with angry
clients, have them act it out after the seminar as a group.
No complicated points and leaderboards, keep it simple. That
way the explicit knowledge from the seminar sticks into
their memory better and they develop a tacit understanding
from participating and watching others participate in the
reenactment.
5
Games tend to be non-linear. Think about this: Can you
truly predict all the moves in a chess game from beginning
to end? No. It's emergent. There's basic rules but those rules
always develop new patterns between the players moves.

Games are like an ecological system, not a linear engineering
system. Works like this:
Whites make their first move and the entire board game
(ecology) is altered. Now blacks have to make a smart move
based on the opening of whites. They move. Now whites has
to work with his initial move and that of blacks. Whites
actions affects the boardgame (ecology) but the positions of
the pieces in the boardgame also affect the way whites act.
The emergent properties between the white and black pieces
are co-evolutionary. They emerged based on their own past
moves, their opponents past moves and how this has
changed the boardgame.
In complexity science this is what's called “evolutionary
potential.” Once the chess game has started there's patterns
that have been established. These patterns can't be taken
back. If one of the players made a stupid move he or she
can't just take it back, the player must manage the
evolutionary potential from whatever present conditions he
finds himself in. It's an emergent property based on the
boundaries of the game! This is how complex systems work.
Gamification designers have to manage the evolutionary
potential of the conditions they're working with.
Think of yourself as a tinkerer. You have to find innovative

solutions to drive up engagement based on the resources at
hand. The movie Apollo 13 has an excellent scene where
engineers have to come up with a way to block a carbon
dioxide leaking and make a “square peg fit in a round hole”
with random materials found in the shuttle.
6
Emergent systems allows for a greater use of the brain. First
of all tacit knowledge can't be passed down from one person
to another, it has to be experienced by the individual. You
have to start thinking in new terms. If you have a game
where you want your students to learn skills (an actual game
like minecraft, not a seminar with points) you have to view
it has a petri dish. John Seely Brown explains this concept
in his book A New Culture of Learning (also mandatory
reading!).
Second, what they learn at a tacit level will be very hard if
not impossible to measure. This means that if the patterns
developed in the brain aren't transferable into the real-word
then it's a waste of time. It's hard to tell if it's been a
success of not. Virtual simulations may be a waste of time
since they don’t reflect the complex subtleties of the real
world, but casual games like Dual-N-Back may boost
performance in complex tasks. It’s just very hard to tell for
sure, I won’t go into more details on the complexities of

this.
Third, there's a new theory in cognitive science that
separates the brain not in “left vs right” (emotional and
creative vs rational and organized) but in “top and bottom”
(strategic AND analytical). I'll explain this theory in more
detail below. But the point I want to make across is this:
with real play, not a passive seminar, you're actually
engaging in whole-brain learning.
Fourth, The seminar example is an activity with points
systems. This isn't play. Specially if there's no emergent
properties.
It's the emergent properties that make something fun! A big
part of the dopamine release from games comes from
surprise. If you go to a seminar there rarely is a surprise
(and if there's no interest in the subject adding points won't
drive engagement), this seminar is a linear process and
they'll win by just showing up.
If you dump a bucket of legos into a kids feet he'll be
amazed at all the different objects he can build which he
didn't plan for, but emerged through his tinkering with the
plastic blocks. That is play. It’s both psychologically
stimulating and good for business.

7
Read the book by Stephen Kosslyn and G. Wayne Miller Top
Brain, Bottom Brain. The notion of people being left brain
or right brain oriented is actually not founded on any sound
science. If you hear any gamification “guru” claiming to
understand human motivations based on the left vs right
brain dichotomy, ignore him and move on to someone else.
Instead your brain works like this:
The bottom part of the brain is where implicit knowledge is
located. It's also used to analyse and understand the world
through your long-term memory and immediate feedback
from the senses. The top part focuses on organizing some of
this knowledge and planning out strategies you'll act out.
When you gamify education in a linear system you're only
focusing in the bottom part (passive experience, like a
gamified seminar). You need play (taking action in an open
system) to engage whole-brain learning. This way you
practice on analyzing the environment (bottom brain) and
strategize to act on it (top brain). And in fact it's this
whole-brain disposition that is needed to manage a complex
system.
Some people tend to be top brain oriented (strategic but not
capable of analysing the world effectively) so are always

making plans but are so detached from the real-world that
they rarely work. You see this in “wanna-be” entrepreneurs
all the time.
Others are bottom brain oriented which means they can
understand (or think they do) the world properly, but aren't
able to make any strategies to navigate in the real-world.
These people may be good at lectures or writing books but
don't take their advice on how to act.
Other's don't have neither brains working properly. These
people tend to be really fun to be around with actually, they
can be spontaneous and carefree. Others are complete idiots,
best to leave them alone in their bubble of delusions.
Finally you have individuals who have both brains working
properly. These are usually successful leaders. They
understand the world deeply and accurately, and know how
to make and act out complex strategies based on this
information. They can be Machiavellian though (Kevin
Spacey in the TV series House of Cards comes to mind)
A whole-brain individual is the only one that can understand
the complexities of the world because they're also action
oriented as well as analytical. Has Dave Snowden points out
we can't understand a complex system unless we interact
with it. No amount of analysis or observation will give you

the necessary insights into understanding a complex system.
In some cases it's about the relationships between different
components that must be understood at a tacit level.
If your employees are to be trained to understand and
manage a complex system in business, a seminar won't work.
But authentic play does. Look at the work of the CEO of
IDEO Tim Brown for more details on this.
8
This doesn't mean that all training should be turned into a
game. The apprenticeship model should be reinstated and
interaction in the real-world is key, but some simulations
and games can be beneficial in the right context.
A distinction should be made while using simulations
between a complex and complicated system. Since a complex
system is always changing and has too many variables that
can't be programmed for, we can't replicate an actual
complex system from the real-world into the virtual-world.
What virtual worlds can do though is teach us how to better
navigate a complex system. To learn how to learn. But we
have to remember a virtual simulation is limited!
“the map is not the territory” Alfred Korzybski

But a complicated system (linear) is excellent for virtual
simulations. The military has been using the to train pilots
in flight simulators for example. There's a linear cause and
effect in operating a plane in the real-world that can be
recreated in a simulator (pulling a handle, pressing a button,
etc). Skills in this area are directly transferable to the
real-world, plus they're excellent for building up myelin.
Training with complex systems can be like learning comedy:
It's very context dependent just like a complex system, you
can rarely have canned material that can work all the time.
If the same people hear your joke you'll fail to produce the
same effect and different people have different styles of
humor so there's no universal joke. But watching and
reading comical material makes a person funnier. If a person
is funny (which is a tacit skill) he will be able to adapt to
contexts quickly and keep people in his group laughing, or
quickly adapt to strangers sense of humor and make them
laugh.
Therefore learning complexity in virtual environments can
transfer to the real-world, but its exaptive in nature, not
adaptive (see the next section for an explanation of these
terms). Read the IBM study done on their managers who
play World of Warcraft Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders. But
remenber virtual worlds are limited. Spending too much time
in them will cognitively cripple you since you’re always

learning the subtle complexities of the world implicitly. If
you don’t interact in the real world, you’ll have a false
“mental map” and fail.
Re-wiring our Brains
1
We have to realize that there's two types of knowledge
transfer from games that occur either through adaptation or
exaptation:
In biology if a animal evolves a trait for a specific purpose
its called adaptation. If it evolved a trait for a specific
purpose but uses that trait for something else in a novel way
then its called exaptation. Dave Snowden explains that the
evolution of technology and knowledge works in the same
way. I've adopted this view for games:
I call a knowledge transfer adaptive when the game is
specially designed to transfer a particular set of skills. This
is the example of the flight simulators in the military. The
game was designed to teach the soldier how to fly and only
how to fly and that's what it does.
Exaptation is a skill gained in one area and then used in
something else. Playing the game Monkeyball in Nintendo's

Gamecube is proven to increase surgeons hand-eye
coordination in the operating table. So the skill of
navigating a virtual monkey in a video game transfers into a
surgeons operating skill. The game isn't designed to help
surgeons, but the skills of navigating its 3D environment
with a game controller improved their performance in the
operating table.
In order to understand complex systems in the real-world
this exaptive properties of games seem to be extremely
beneficial. Playing games that seem to have nothing to do
with the real-world changes our brains in ways that
enhances our ability to interact in it.
I'll give a detail example below, but think about how
doctors are recommending that the elderly play games in
order to prevent them from going senile. Playing simple
casual games will change their brains in ways that will
enhance their interaction with the real-world in every
possible way imaginable.
2
Ann Pendleton-Jullian has mixed game designed thinking
with complexity science. She explains that games are:
• Rule based.

• These rules are static.
• Yet gameplay is dynamic, improvisational and it offers
infinite possible alternatives in the moves you can make.
Every move in the game is a choice. Your choices
affects the ecology of the game, changing the system as
the game develops. Games are ecosystems.
Another interesting thing about games Ann says is that
they're logical and mathematical, but they operate around a
system of narrative. The real-world operates the same way.
This is putting on top the mechanical and technical aspects
of an organization the cultural ones. By culture I mean the
relationships, hierarchies and identities and the stories
people tell each other, this way we can understand these
social relationships within groups and better design for
engagement and emergence.
Note: I believe gamification should be subdivided between
engagement and emergence. It’s one thing to make people
do something they would usually not want to (traditional
gamification). Another design business practices as mentioned
above with Michael Hugos that allows better organic
structures that quickly adapt to a volatile world based on
game-like feedbacks and practices.
Ann's description of a game are the characteristics of open
systems. Games are emergent and the relationships between

agents and narratives affecting the players is very similar to
Dave Snowdens description of complex systems in enterprise.
We can better understand these real-world complex systems
through games, books and lectures can't really ground us in
it. This is why game-based learning done properly is so
indispensible. It’s not necessarily about fun, but to develop
tacit skills for navigating complex systems…
3
Ann Pendleton-Jullian was teaching an architectural class at
the Knowlton School when she began using game mechanics
in her class. She set out at the beginning of the semester to
start playing games, then designing games and then moving
into complex architectural projects.
When asked to define an architectural studio she said: “An
architectural studio is both a space but also a community of
practice.” A community of practice seems to be an accurate
description of most professions, and that's why I believe that
the community management techniques described by Raph
Koster from games-as-a-service are so valuable in the
gamification arsenal.
“Is it a game?
It's a SERVICE. Not a game. It's a WORLD. Not a game. It's
a COMMUNITY. Not a game. Anyone who says, "it's just a

game" is missing the point.” The Laws of Online World
Design, at http://www.raphkoster.com/gaming/laws.shtml
In the class students began playing a game called Quoridor.
The complexity of this game is theoretically higher than
chess. At first there was no correlation between the game
and the architectural projects they were also working on in
the studio, but after a few weeks Ann discovered that some
students began to exhibit new tacit skills she had never seen
before. Students were beginning to deal with the
complexities of the architectural problems in very innovative
and interesting ways.
In the second phase students had to design their own games.
At first this was carried out individually. The games were
usually awful when designed in isolation. There were too
many rules, the narrative sucked, etc. But then they were
put to work as groups to design a game. This completely
changed the dynamics from the games being designed,
students began to share ideas, perspectives, test the games
as a group, etc.
The result from all this was the creation of amazing games.
They don't explicitly understand how it's created, it emerges
through a tacit understanding. Similarly to The Lean Startup
methodology, they're getting immediate feedback on their
designs and adjusting it based on the positive or negative

feedback.
Design for gamification should therefore be social, dynamic
and emergent, not linear like an engineering method.
Remember the example of Constance Steinkuehler. When
designing a game there's an element of playfulness when
discussing ideas, but the execution part can be very hard
and frustrating. Designing fun isn't always a fun process, but
it's very satisfying when you're finished. Remember that as a
game/gamification designer.
Ann Pendleton-Jullian explains that by playing and designing
games students had their brains re-wired to understand and
manage complexity. All this happening at a tacit level. If
this is true then the importance of gamification is seriously
amplified, and its main value isn't about fun, but of
developing tacit skills that transfer directly to the individuals
careers.
Game design thinking changed the way students designed
their architectural projects, making them more effective.
Therefore we have to pay close attention on the tacit
element of games. So if we want students and employees to
improve their performance in complex systems we need to
have them not only play in games, but become game
designers also. Therefore we can say that game design
becomes a necessary “game mechanic” in game-based

learning.
You don't need programming skills to develop simple video
games. For children I recommend a free MIT program and
community called Scratch. Also a lot of AAA games have
level design options in them as in GTA V and Tony Hawk.
The online game Counter Strike takes this a step further
where you can have more flexibility with the rules in your
level. But more specialized games like SimCityEDU are
entering the classroom. My favorite is Unreal Engine 4 which
charges $19 a month which is the one I personally use.
For adults I believe that simulations closer to reality could
begin building domain specific long-term memory patterns
that can be used in the real-world. An example I've used
before is SCM Globe, students have to design their own
supply chains, and many times plug in real-world data
themselves (costs per unit, factory production, transportation
costs, etc) this requires the students to do online research on
real businesses and apply them to the game.
An interesting thing about gamers is that they usually play
games related to their careers. Those in sports play sports
games, those in the military play military games, race car
drivers play racing games, etc. I've been told before (by
possible investors for one of my current startups) that
developing games for people in a particular career won't

attract them because people want to play games to forget
their jobs. This is the exact opposite, people tend to play
career related games.
Eve Online is a very complex MMO that can take up to 3
month before you start “getting it.” Gamers in the
community joke that the game doesn't have a learning curve,
but that it's a learning wall. But many of the players tend to
go into areas of the games economy that reflects their own
real-world careers. For example those who decide to become
manufacturers in Eve Online tend to work on that industry
in the real-world. They have told me that they do believe
the game improves their skills in their career.
4
Gamification is not some soft luxury where we design for
fun just out of a love for pleasure, its a survival skill for
the 21st century!
Lets this sink in your head:
The world is becoming more and more complex every day.
And it's not just because there's more people in the planet.
The internet has added this new abstract dimension where
we operate through these fluid networks. Everything is
interconnected with everything at a global scale. In order to

understand the world we have to understand the
relationships between the different agents in our ecology.
But academia has been preparing us to do exactly the
opposite. In it's attempt to make the world scientific and
measurable it has removed narrative and implicit learning
from teaching. This movement began during the 60's were
the social sciences were trying to gain credibility as a “real
science.” The cultural movement demonizing Western
literature also had a lot to do with it.
Academia has also done another thing: Different university
departments rarely talk to each other. You study to become
a specialist and rarely talk about the interrelationships
between other fields of study. This initially made sense since
to specialize in one department can take decades, but in
order to navigate the world you need to be a generalist
making connections, not a specialist isolated in one field.
Charles Hills devised a course at Yale called Grand Strategies
precisely to address this problem. He began to teach
would-be diplomats who would need to focus on
international affairs by introducing them to the humanities.
It's the reading of literature he says, that will prepare them
to understand the complexities of the world.
I explained that stories are a form of play that creates

patterns in the subconscious through implicit learning. This
is what literature does: It's narratives explain how politics,
economics, warfare, culture, leaders personality, etc all
influence each other. Literature and games are crucial for
our cognitive development. They're also valuable for
developing our theory of mind which is basic for our social
skills and strategic ability.
And finally, good literature brainwashes you into thinking in
higher mental states. It's not that superficial everyday
conversations, but it adds depth to your perspective. Stories
are beginning to again be introduced in schools as a
teaching tool, gamified education can also benefit from it. It
might not be that we directly tell a story, but games are
math with a narrative on top. Chess isn't just moving some
pieces and doing math, you're moving pawns, bishops,
knights, etc in order to capture the opponent's king. But the
introduction of literature and history as general reading in
schools would be something I would welcome. They must be
connected to the students lives in order to drive engagement.
6
The fun elements of games are necessary for the learning of
complexity, as I mentioned before complexity requires
implicit learning, and dopamine enhances this type of
learning. But this should not be taken as an excuse to justify
laziness. Play is just one element for learning a complex

task, there will still be grunt work (which will never be fun
unlike some gamification “gurus” claims). The learning
benefits of fun should not be an excuse to quit when things
get hard, since deliberate practice is still necessary for
mastery (don’t confuse deliberate practice with the game
concept of flow. This is a present mistake in gamification I’ll
write about in the future).
I'll end this section with a quote from one of Ann
Pendleton-Jullians Ted talks. In it I hope to clarify the
exaptive nature of games and game design can have in
improving our tacit knowledge in dealing with complexity in
the world. Her talk was a big catalyst for an educational
gamified process I call “Intrinsic Based Gamification.” The
idea is that games are temporary training tool to develop
specific problem-solving skills that will be used in the
real-world. Once this happens a persons career becomes the
2.0 version of the game they love. It’s “gamification without
gamification” since an employee will enjoy their job without
the need of a gamification designer to “turn it into a game
and make it fun.”Enjoy :
“What is interesting about this is that while I started it not
quite understanding what I was going to get, what I got was
a lot. Had I told the students starting out that I was going
to get them designing complex, dynamic, emergent systems
they would have said “forget it, I'm not taking the studio,

I'm going somewhere else this is way too difficult.” The
issue is that by doing it through game play in a way that is
actually fun they were able to develop a tacit skill to do
this thing that then fed back into the design project. Like I
said I never said “take the design, work from the game and
then translate it into the architectural project” I merely
gave them an architectural project and because their brains
have been re-wired [from the games and game design at the
start of the semester] they began operating in a very
different way.” -Ann Pendleton-Jullian
Managing Complexity
1
When designing a game we learn how to create a system
that has a layer of narrative on top. Business management
has began to embrace complexity theory as a valid
alternative. The argument goes that if we live in a world
that operates on complex systems, our organizations should
be structured in such a way that thrives in these systems
(read harvard article Embracing Complexity or A Leader's
Framework for Decision Making for an quick reference).
Steve Jobs was quoted in the his biography by Walter
Isaacson as saying “I discovered that the best innovation is
sometimes the company, the way you organize the

company” Let that quote sink in your head.
Proponents of applying complexity science in the
organization claim that since the world is a complex system,
business organizations should be structured has complex
adaptive systems (CAS). CAS lay in the middle between
really structured systems (order) and complete unstructured
systems (chaos). Dave Snowden is my favorite author on the
subject and I can’t stress it enough: read his works!
CAS in human systems have sets of rules and narratives that
control their behaviour and allow them to evolve in
particular directions (“evolutionary potential”). They interact
and change the ecosystem they're a part of while being
flexible enough to also adapt to changes in that ecosystem.
2
A little logical argument for adopting complexity in
gamification:
• If business is in fact a complex system then we can
assume that a complex adaptive system is the best
model to organize companies
• If the understanding, navigation and management of a
complex system depends on tacit knowledge like Ann
Pendleton-Jullian said, and games are miniature complex

adaptive systems, then developing skills in game systems
will help us understand, navigate and design complex
systems in the real-world
• And if playing and designing games are essential for
these skills, then gamifications role in enterprise and
education arise from a need to manage complexity in
our volatile world
This would mean that game design thinking in the
gamification community should also focused on managing the
systems of the real-world, not just try to induce dopamine.
But the dopamine triggers must be understood, since
dopamine enhances implicit learning which helps us
understand complexity.
Michael Hugos book Enterprise Games focuses on the need to
manage systems. His background is in IT and gives a very
unique perspective on applying game mechanics to
information system. See my article at Gco titled How
Gamification Improved Supply Chain Efficiency.
Michael predicts that the only way to manage the volatility
that will come in the near future with big data and the
adoption of sensors everywhere is to adapt business
dashboards and business practices to look like those inside
MMO's.

3
Following this logic my assumption is that the future of the
“gamification expert” should be linked to knowledge
management. Gamification shouldn't only be about fun for
pleasure's sake, but fun as a tool for creating tacit
knowledge. Our modern problems are complex, gamification
designers could be managing this complexity has a bridge
between game mechanics and real-world systems.
If we know for a fact that play supercharges pattern creation
in our brains with the intention of understanding complexity,
could it be that if IT and big data is gamified like its
described by Michael Hugos that this will supercharge the
creation of real-world business-specific patterns in our
subconscious? Think about it: Game mechanics inside the
business operations could be the best way to create tacit
knowledge in an organization.
“When it comes to serial processing, computers win every
competition
between man and machine. They are quicker and less prone
to error. But
for complex tasks that resist resolution through an extensive
series of rule
applications, the human brain still takes the prize.” Leslie
Paul Thiele

Maybe the value of big data is to organise it like a game in
the aims that our subconscious brain will make sense of it?
In order to understand the above quote we need to put it
into context:
“The conscious mind is like a serial processor that addresses
tasks
sequentially. It is inhibited from taking on more than one
job at a time.
The unconscious mind works more like a parallel-distributed
processor.
It addresses numerous complex tasks simultaneously by
funneling multi-
ple independent sources of information through multiple
information-
processing units. To the extent that we engage in
“multi-tasking,” the
unconscious mind has to take over. As much of our lives are
charac-
terized by multiple demands on our attention and multiple
sources of
information, it is unsurprising that implicit cognition plays a
very large
role in our ability to function effectively.” Leslie Paul Thiele
So far a lot of our education and business training has

focused on the conscious mind, but this is an educational
design flaw. Gabe Zichermann and Steven Johnson has
pointed out that research shows that humans have began
having a compound increase in fluid intelligence. The reason
for this is believed to be our entertainment, both video
games and complex TV series (not sitcoms but shows like
Game of Thrones). Our entertainment IS currently making us
smarter.
The objective should be to tap into how those mechanisms
work and affect our brains, and use it to amplify human
intelligence. Computers aren't going to replace human beings
any time soon because they can't effectively deal with
novelty and context. Gamified systems could be a way to
enhance human intelligence with technology, not an attempt
to replace it (something Snowden stresses a lot, but he
doesn’t link it to gamification. I have no idea what he
would think about such a notion). Computers are great in
closed predictable systems, not in open systems.
4
Using your subconscious doesn't mean you're in a sedated
dumb down state of mind. We've all seen people that seem
to lack any conscious thought and operate automatically
through habit, this is not the same as diminishing
consciousness to allow subconscious areas to make decisions

as Thiele suggested in the above quotes. Remember you have
to be using your top brain and bottom brain! The fact that
a chessmaster is using most of his brain in a subconscious
state during a game (as opposed to conscious state in
novices) doesn't mean he's sedated! I think a great metaphor
is the movie Rain Man:
If you haven't seen it it's about two brothers who find each
other as adults. One is played by Tom Cruise who is this
player guy with lots of social skills. His brother is played by
Dustin Hoffman who is an autistic savant with no social
skills what-so-ever. Think of Tom Cruise has your conscious
brain and Dustin Hoffman like your subconscious brain.
In the movie Hoffman is able to see all these different
patterns that Cruise is obviously unaware off so Cruise takes
his autistic brother to Vegas. Hoffmann is able to tell Cruise
the results of these patterns while counting cards in the
casino, which then are used by Cruise who can actually
navigate the real-world and make decisions in order to make
money in Vegas. We need to start designing whole-brain
educational programs to develop whole-brain individuals that
can solve the world's complex problems.
5
Fingerspitzengefühl is a German word that translates into

“fingertip feel.” I first came across it in the book The 33
Strategies of War by Robert Greene which defines it has the
ultimate state of a strategist. It's a sort of intuition you get
in your field of practice after years in it. This intuition is
not available to our consciousness, ideas just flow into your
head, decisions are made on gut feelings, you just seem to
have a sixth sense.
If we can discover how to use game mechanics to
supercharge pattern building in our employees subconscious
brain while they work we'll start developing massive
fingertip feel as a company. This notion might be taken with
society as a whole. We will become a culture of strategists
able to navigate the worlds complexities.
“Similar cases regarding the learning of complex skills with
little or no awareness of their mechanisms are well-
documented. These capacities, though learned, remain
unavailable to introspection.” Leslie Paul Thiele

Systems Based Gamification Volumen II: Complex Systems

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