Name: Total Engagement
ISBN: 9781422146576

Byron Reeves

J. Leighton Read

The strong psychological power of games can have both positive and negative consequences for the workplace. That's why it's important to put them into practice correctly from the beginning--and Reeves and Read explain how by showing which good design principles are a powerful antidote to the addictive and stress-inducing potential of games.

Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete

Total Engagement

Nelson Zagalo

I was truly deceived. I know past work from the authors, and I was expecting more. I was expecting in depth analysis of engagement, not gamification creed!!! The author’s intentions were to present the benefits of transferring MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online games) social and hierarchical organisation to regular business work. The premisse, apart its flaws, could be interesting but the authors failed to convince us.

To be fully respectful of the authors I must say that "Total Engagement" was the first book trying to present a perspective on the subject of gamification. This said, we must acknowledge that there was not enough discussion in 2008 to debate approaches to the subject. So this is a first one, and it should be judged having that in mind.

Okay, to start we can easily understand that they don’t know much about games, and even less about complexer games as MMOs. This is explicitly demonstrated when they resolve to present what they consider to be the 10 Elements of Great Games, 

"1) Self representation with avatars
2) 3D environments
3) Narrative Context
4) Feedback
5) Reputation, Ranks, Levels
6) Marketplace and Economies
7) Competition
8) Teams
9) Parallel Communication Systems
10) Time Pressure"

This list is not wrong, and can serve people knowing nothing about games, but it’s too much surface centred. The authors fail to analyse core game design that makes these items possible. As an introductory list of features, it would be acceptable, but doing an entire book on this?!

Then comes the lightness with which the authors treat the transferability of social game interaction into real world work interaction. Reading “Total Engagement” we get the sense that business would not only gain in adopting game systems and metrics, but that it would be astonishingly easy. We feel it’s more a matter of will than anything else. For the authors, the academic view of play as not opposite to work, can be translated into a corollary saying that "work is equal to play", which is plain wrong.

In the end, a book that can be interesting for people unaware of the gamification discussion, don't expect much else.

Total Engagement Using Games and Virtual Worlds to Change the Way People Work and Businesses Compete

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