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Sverre Spoelstra, portrait image.

Sverre Spoelstra

Professor

Sverre Spoelstra, portrait image.

“You just Earned 10 Points!” : Gaming and Grinding in Academia

Author

  • Nick Butler
  • Sverre Spoelstra

Summary, in English

This short paper explores the gamification of an online academic conference. At the conference, digital gamification was meant to stimulate increased levels of participation among attendees. Instead, it resulted in a series of unintended consequences. Precisely because it was all too easy to score points and ascend the virtual leaderboard by means of machine-like grinding, the “Conference Challenge” posed a moral dilemma for its players: each participant had to determine for themselves where the border lay between playing the game and gaming the system. We use this case to raise questions about the ethics of game-playing in an academic context. In particular, we suggest that the Conference Challenge is a distorted reflection of what’s already happening in the broader “publication game” in the university.

Department/s

  • Organizational Studies

Publishing year

2024

Language

English

Pages

720-730

Publication/Series

Organization

Volume

31

Issue

4

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Topic

  • Business Administration

Keywords

  • Academic conference
  • game-playing
  • gamification
  • publishing ethics

Status

Published

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 1350-5084