7 ms·

Soviet gamification

40 points by networked 14y ago

alive-or-not 14y ago
Author doesn't seem to know exactly how successful the Soviet Union was with this tactic. In four years - 1929 to 1933 - it transformed from an agrarian country, devastated by wars, to world second industrial power. Just a few years later USSR was capable of outproducing in many areas the whole of Europe under fascist control. As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements".
- mjn 14y ago
  True, that's the pro argument (I'm the author of the linked essay). I think it was clearly unsuccessful at the bit where it was supposed to drive intrinsic motivation and worker autonomy, though. The USSR did manage to pull off a crash industrialization, but was it really "socialist competition" or game-like? Part of my argument, though I make it more clearly in an expanded, short-paper version of this essay [1], is that the "gamification" part devolved into just regular old Stalinist command-and-control: production quotas and such, with a thin facade of worker autonomy and "voluntary" competition spread across it. That's one of the things people worry about with modern gamification as well, that a "game" that's a mandatory part of your job is not really much of a game, and more like old-fashioned, top-down control than the gamification consultants' uplifting rhetoric would like you to believe (e.g. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/19/local/la-me-1019-lopez-disney-20111018 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/19/local/la-me-1019-lop...). [1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115483 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115483
  - alive-or-not 14y ago
    The Soviet economy was based on money a lot less than US or even socialist Denmark. An average family would have enough savings to buy pretty much everything they wanted (excluding luxury stuff, like holiday abroad or a limousine), but the only place they were legally allowed to buy most stuff were state-owned companies. A family would have to wait say 15 years in a queue to buy an apartment, 7 years for a car and a couple of years for a TV, vacuum cleaner or a washing machine. This is one place where a high achiever could "cash" on his hard work, as he may be allowed to buy stuff w/o waiting. Generally reputation, favors, networking played a bigger role in Soviet economy and hard work could help with those. Nice article BTW ;)
- networked 14y ago
  >As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements". Considering how token economies [1] are generally successful as motivators (HN karma, anyone?) I'd say this has less to do with idiocy and more with the "human nature". BTW, if anyone wants a good, quick introduction to the criticism of gamification I can recommend the Errant Signal video on the subject [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_economy [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfMjQKXZXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfMjQKXZXk
  - caf 14y ago
    I'd say military decorations are a particularly convincing example.
    - robinh 14y ago
      Would in-game achievements also count?
- kostya-kow 14y ago
  > As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements". Idiots make an overwhelming majority of population.
  - avmich 14y ago
    Idiots include also that vocal part of population longing for - and getting - Nobel prizes. One ought to realize how different SU was in 20s, 50s, even 70s from Russia today. People in SU thought about themselves and their country very similarly as it is in US now - the most progressive country, and of course, the smartest and overall best people. Little doubt about that. Tokens were much more serious then - in US one says "if you smart, you should be rich", in SU it was "if you're good, you can perhaps show an Order" - and they weren't easy to get. Imagine the life in the South, pictured in "Gone with the wind", without slavery - because almost everybody was in the same conditions - and stimulus responses will be different. Again, what use would be for a pile of cash in SU? Not much - you can't buy proportionally, since the whole economy is targeted to "regular people", and you'd get people looking at you funny pretty soon.
    - tatumizer 14y ago
      "if you're good, you can perhaps show an Order" ??? Is it your wild guess? Who told you this nonsense? Gamification was executed so badly - it was complete absurd. It was anti-motivation rather than a motivation. Everything was fake, everybody ridiculed it, no one ever taken it seriously within my memory (since mid-60s).
- elteto 14y ago
  At what price? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
- Zigurd 14y ago
  Re "only an idiot would care about made up 'achievements'" Napoleon said about military medals: "With such baubles, men are led." And yet, even in this forum, you will probably find some people eager to explain how that's not the same at all. In designing any system of incentives you have to figure in, or be fortunate to get right, how irrational people are about incentives. The market is a darwinian engine for optimizing irrational responses. Sometimes that's brilliant, and sometimes it isn't.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
CleanedStar 14y ago
"Of course, the Soviet economy is not widely held up as a model of success." I agree with you. The country went from a civil war and foreign invasion (including by the US, something I'm sure 99% of Americans don't even know) and then 25 years later were invaded by an alliance of Germany, Finland, Italy, Hungary and other countries. Followed by a Cold War against a nuclear armed opponent and its western European allies. Yet during the 1930s, when starving veterans were being shot dead in the streets of Washington DC, when unemployment in the US and Europe was over 20%, the Soviet economy was booming. Massive steel factories were erected in places such as Magnitogorsk, and factories building tractors to send to industrialize agriculture. The US said Russia stole all technology from the US - until Russia launched Sputnik. You can't blame the adversary for stealing IP when they're doing things you can't do. China also was a rural backwater, dominated by Europeans and Japanese until the 20th century. Under the leadership of the politburo of the communist party, its economy has been growing 10% a year since the early 1980s. People say that is unsustainable, but they've been saying that since the late 1980s. I'm sure their growth will slow down eventually, but they're already the second largest economy in the world by GDP. Of course, the politburo is not as left wing as it was during the height of the Cultural Revolution. The USSR economy did stagnate when Stalin died, and people like Molotov were sidelined. Capital spending decreased, policies like detente were enacted, and the economy stagnated. The economy did very well before this change in policy though. American and European workers and firms went to the USSR in the 1920s because there was work and contracts in their growing economy, while the US economy went off the hinges. Kind of like the current US unemployment rate which is higher than anything since the mid-1980s.
- nine_k 14y ago
  A former Soviet citizen here. > Yet during the 1930s, when starving veterans were being shot dead in the streets of Washington DC, when unemployment in the US and Europe was over 20%, the Soviet economy was booming. Oh yes. The US and Europe credited the Soviet Union well, and the Soviet Union paid in gold. At the same time, Soviet authorities robbed its own people, partly by putting hundreds of thousands to forced labor camps, partly by just taking away their possessions. The great hunger of 1935, with massive human casualties, has happened because grain was expropriated from peasants to be sold for gold, and the gold was spent to build massive steel factories and weaponry plants, using American and German expertise. With regard to shooting people dead, USSR was not shy of action at all. Massive death sentences in 1935-1939 witch hunt campaign plus cruel oppression of several riots against expropriations and hunger account for hundreds of thousands of deaths. (If you can't look this up in Wikipedia yourself, I'll gladly help you.) Trust me, this is not a model of growth you'd enjoy. Regarding gamification — yes, that was one of brighter ideas. Too bad that real competition was often replaced by a fake that made bosses happy, using massive falsification of results. You want a competition between producers? Have you tried the so-called 'market'?
huhtenberg 14y ago
For what it's worth the "socialist competition" was widely regarded as a fake and ultimately laughable construct by pretty much everyone in the country. Sure, there were enthusiastic supporters, but they were few and far between and they weren't actually looked up to by the unwashed gray masses. They were regarded more like people who were really, really proud of their boyscout badges. (edit) Reading other comments - I should clarify that what I said relates to the 1970+ period, not the earlier years.
- alive-or-not 14y ago
  That was probably true in the 80s, but from what I read back in the 30s, 40s, 50s the workers in USSR were a lot less cynical. In those days people could very well see the socialist economy improving their standard of living, education, health care, etc.
  - frozenport 14y ago
    In the 30s, 40s, early 50s, workers were a lot more DEAD! I still have family who remember Stalin's purges, starvation and WW2. The same people say life in the USSR was only reasonable under the later leaders like Brezhnev. Nobody likes Gorbachev, but they would be first to admit that the differences in their lives in the 1940s and 1980s were vast.
    - moxie 14y ago
      During the purges of the 30s and 50s, the most dangerous place to be was a member of the central committee. Ordinary workers were not affected by the bulk of the purges (and to some extent did not even realize they were happening), with the notable exception of Jews during weird Stalinst manipulations like the Mingrelian affair. As recently as 2009, 60% of Russians preferred the Soviet days (with older citizens that number is as high as 80%). And even for eastern bloc states like the Ukraine, 46% of the population regrets the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
      - samatman 14y ago
omonra 14y ago
Author might want to learn about soviet laws about mandatory work & punishment for 'absenteeism' "On 8 January 1939, the government made clear that an unauthorized lateness of 20 minutes (or taking a break 20 minutes too long, or leaving 20 minutes early) counted as absenteeism, grounds for mandatory dismissal (Pravda, 9 Jan 1939). Transportation breakdowns (a common event) were no excuse; a doctor's certificate was required, and doctors who gave certificates too easily themselves faced prosecution and prison. Some workers still found it worthwhile to be absent and force a mandatory dismissal, so that they could seek work in a place where labor books were not closely read. Stalin put an end to this with a remarkable law, Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, 26 June 1940 "On the Transfer to the Eight-Hour Working Day, the Seven-day Work Week, and on the Prohibition of Unauthorized Departure by Laborers and Office Workers from Factories and Offices2" This replaced the civil sanctions of the 28 Dec. 1938 decree with mandatory criminal penalties: 2-4 months imprisonment for quitting a job, and 6 months of probation and 25% pay confiscation for an unauthorized tardiness of 20 minutes. Both managers and prosecutors were themselves subject to criminal prosecution if they did not enforce this law strictly." Russian - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BC%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%BC#.D0.9F.D1.80.D0.B8.D0.BD.D1.83.D0.B4.D0.B8.D1.82.D0.B5.D0.BB.D1.8C.D0.BD.D0.B0.D1.8F_.D1.82.D1.80.D1.83.D0.B4.D0.BE.D0.B2.D0.B0.D1.8F_.D0.BF.D0.BE.D0.B2.D0.B8.D0.BD.D0.BD.D0.BE.D1.81.D1.82.D1.8C http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%... English http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/labor-discip.html http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/labor-discip.html
- mjn 14y ago
  (I'm the author.) What makes you think I'm not aware of those? The essay is in effect an attempt to express skepticism about gamification by pointing out that it looks awfully similar to something that was tried in the '20s/'30s in the USSR. Admittedly I make that point more clearly in the expanded paper version of the essay (linked at the bottom), where I discuss the descent of the '20s / early '30s gamification experiments into late-'30s Stakhanovism. I think there is overall (including today) some pretty strong internal difficulty when claiming to "gamify" work but still retaining the context of a hierarchically controlled workplace where work is mandatory, with penalties tied to the "game". Then it devolves into just another method of workplace accounting & control.
orbitingpluto 14y ago
I remember reading an article about Soviet nail factories competing against other nail Soviet nail factories. To boost production everyone ended up creating worthless pin sized nails: one point per pin. To correct this they shifted to production by weight, leading to crude low quality heavy nails. Gamification doesn't work unless it actually means something.
- mjn 14y ago
  As an academic, this sounds remarkably like what's going on with our own "gamification" of academic publishing, with impact factors, citation counts, h-indices, acceptance rate targets, journal points systems, etc. People do strange things which happen to maximize ("game", as it were) those metrics.

40 points by networked 14y ago

Author doesn't seem to know exactly how successful the Soviet Union was with this tactic. In four years - 1929 to 1933 - it transformed from an agrarian country, devastated by wars, to world second industrial power. Just a few years later USSR was capable of outproducing in many areas the whole of Europe under fascist control. As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements".

mjn 14y ago
True, that's the pro argument (I'm the author of the linked essay). I think it was clearly unsuccessful at the bit where it was supposed to drive intrinsic motivation and worker autonomy, though. The USSR did manage to pull off a crash industrialization, but was it really "socialist competition" or game-like? Part of my argument, though I make it more clearly in an expanded, short-paper version of this essay [1], is that the "gamification" part devolved into just regular old Stalinist command-and-control: production quotas and such, with a thin facade of worker autonomy and "voluntary" competition spread across it. That's one of the things people worry about with modern gamification as well, that a "game" that's a mandatory part of your job is not really much of a game, and more like old-fashioned, top-down control than the gamification consultants' uplifting rhetoric would like you to believe (e.g. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/19/local/la-me-1019-lopez-disney-20111018 http://articles.latimes.com/2011/oct/19/local/la-me-1019-lop...). [1] http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115483 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2115483
- alive-or-not 14y ago
  The Soviet economy was based on money a lot less than US or even socialist Denmark. An average family would have enough savings to buy pretty much everything they wanted (excluding luxury stuff, like holiday abroad or a limousine), but the only place they were legally allowed to buy most stuff were state-owned companies. A family would have to wait say 15 years in a queue to buy an apartment, 7 years for a car and a couple of years for a TV, vacuum cleaner or a washing machine. This is one place where a high achiever could "cash" on his hard work, as he may be allowed to buy stuff w/o waiting. Generally reputation, favors, networking played a bigger role in Soviet economy and hard work could help with those. Nice article BTW ;)
networked 14y ago
>As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements". Considering how token economies [1] are generally successful as motivators (HN karma, anyone?) I'd say this has less to do with idiocy and more with the "human nature". BTW, if anyone wants a good, quick introduction to the criticism of gamification I can recommend the Errant Signal video on the subject [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Token_economy [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfMjQKXZXk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWfMjQKXZXk
- caf 14y ago
  I'd say military decorations are a particularly convincing example.
  - robinh 14y ago
    Would in-game achievements also count?
kostya-kow 14y ago
> As a side node gamification drives me mad. IMHO only an idiot would care about made up "achievements". Idiots make an overwhelming majority of population.
- avmich 14y ago
  Idiots include also that vocal part of population longing for - and getting - Nobel prizes. One ought to realize how different SU was in 20s, 50s, even 70s from Russia today. People in SU thought about themselves and their country very similarly as it is in US now - the most progressive country, and of course, the smartest and overall best people. Little doubt about that. Tokens were much more serious then - in US one says "if you smart, you should be rich", in SU it was "if you're good, you can perhaps show an Order" - and they weren't easy to get. Imagine the life in the South, pictured in "Gone with the wind", without slavery - because almost everybody was in the same conditions - and stimulus responses will be different. Again, what use would be for a pile of cash in SU? Not much - you can't buy proportionally, since the whole economy is targeted to "regular people", and you'd get people looking at you funny pretty soon.
  - tatumizer 14y ago
    "if you're good, you can perhaps show an Order" ??? Is it your wild guess? Who told you this nonsense? Gamification was executed so badly - it was complete absurd. It was anti-motivation rather than a motivation. Everything was fake, everybody ridiculed it, no one ever taken it seriously within my memory (since mid-60s).
elteto 14y ago
At what price? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_Union http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collectivization_in_the_Soviet_... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodomor
Zigurd 14y ago
Re "only an idiot would care about made up 'achievements'" Napoleon said about military medals: "With such baubles, men are led." And yet, even in this forum, you will probably find some people eager to explain how that's not the same at all. In designing any system of incentives you have to figure in, or be fortunate to get right, how irrational people are about incentives. The market is a darwinian engine for optimizing irrational responses. Sometimes that's brilliant, and sometimes it isn't.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

CleanedStar 14y ago

"Of course, the Soviet economy is not widely held up as a model of success." I agree with you. The country went from a civil war and foreign invasion (including by the US, something I'm sure 99% of Americans don't even know) and then 25 years later were invaded by an alliance of Germany, Finland, Italy, Hungary and other countries. Followed by a Cold War against a nuclear armed opponent and its western European allies. Yet during the 1930s, when starving veterans were being shot dead in the streets of Washington DC, when unemployment in the US and Europe was over 20%, the Soviet economy was booming. Massive steel factories were erected in places such as Magnitogorsk, and factories building tractors to send to industrialize agriculture. The US said Russia stole all technology from the US - until Russia launched Sputnik. You can't blame the adversary for stealing IP when they're doing things you can't do. China also was a rural backwater, dominated by Europeans and Japanese until the 20th century. Under the leadership of the politburo of the communist party, its economy has been growing 10% a year since the early 1980s. People say that is unsustainable, but they've been saying that since the late 1980s. I'm sure their growth will slow down eventually, but they're already the second largest economy in the world by GDP. Of course, the politburo is not as left wing as it was during the height of the Cultural Revolution. The USSR economy did stagnate when Stalin died, and people like Molotov were sidelined. Capital spending decreased, policies like detente were enacted, and the economy stagnated. The economy did very well before this change in policy though. American and European workers and firms went to the USSR in the 1920s because there was work and contracts in their growing economy, while the US economy went off the hinges. Kind of like the current US unemployment rate which is higher than anything since the mid-1980s.

nine_k 14y ago
A former Soviet citizen here. > Yet during the 1930s, when starving veterans were being shot dead in the streets of Washington DC, when unemployment in the US and Europe was over 20%, the Soviet economy was booming. Oh yes. The US and Europe credited the Soviet Union well, and the Soviet Union paid in gold. At the same time, Soviet authorities robbed its own people, partly by putting hundreds of thousands to forced labor camps, partly by just taking away their possessions. The great hunger of 1935, with massive human casualties, has happened because grain was expropriated from peasants to be sold for gold, and the gold was spent to build massive steel factories and weaponry plants, using American and German expertise. With regard to shooting people dead, USSR was not shy of action at all. Massive death sentences in 1935-1939 witch hunt campaign plus cruel oppression of several riots against expropriations and hunger account for hundreds of thousands of deaths. (If you can't look this up in Wikipedia yourself, I'll gladly help you.) Trust me, this is not a model of growth you'd enjoy. Regarding gamification — yes, that was one of brighter ideas. Too bad that real competition was often replaced by a fake that made bosses happy, using massive falsification of results. You want a competition between producers? Have you tried the so-called 'market'?

huhtenberg 14y ago

For what it's worth the "socialist competition" was widely regarded as a fake and ultimately laughable construct by pretty much everyone in the country. Sure, there were enthusiastic supporters, but they were few and far between and they weren't actually looked up to by the unwashed gray masses. They were regarded more like people who were really, really proud of their boyscout badges. (edit) Reading other comments - I should clarify that what I said relates to the 1970+ period, not the earlier years.

alive-or-not 14y ago
That was probably true in the 80s, but from what I read back in the 30s, 40s, 50s the workers in USSR were a lot less cynical. In those days people could very well see the socialist economy improving their standard of living, education, health care, etc.
- frozenport 14y ago
  In the 30s, 40s, early 50s, workers were a lot more DEAD! I still have family who remember Stalin's purges, starvation and WW2. The same people say life in the USSR was only reasonable under the later leaders like Brezhnev. Nobody likes Gorbachev, but they would be first to admit that the differences in their lives in the 1940s and 1980s were vast.
  - moxie 14y ago
    During the purges of the 30s and 50s, the most dangerous place to be was a member of the central committee. Ordinary workers were not affected by the bulk of the purges (and to some extent did not even realize they were happening), with the notable exception of Jews during weird Stalinst manipulations like the Mingrelian affair. As recently as 2009, 60% of Russians preferred the Soviet days (with older citizens that number is as high as 80%). And even for eastern bloc states like the Ukraine, 46% of the population regrets the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
    - samatman 14y ago

omonra 14y ago

Author might want to learn about soviet laws about mandatory work & punishment for 'absenteeism' "On 8 January 1939, the government made clear that an unauthorized lateness of 20 minutes (or taking a break 20 minutes too long, or leaving 20 minutes early) counted as absenteeism, grounds for mandatory dismissal (Pravda, 9 Jan 1939). Transportation breakdowns (a common event) were no excuse; a doctor's certificate was required, and doctors who gave certificates too easily themselves faced prosecution and prison. Some workers still found it worthwhile to be absent and force a mandatory dismissal, so that they could seek work in a place where labor books were not closely read. Stalin put an end to this with a remarkable law, Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, 26 June 1940 "On the Transfer to the Eight-Hour Working Day, the Seven-day Work Week, and on the Prohibition of Unauthorized Departure by Laborers and Office Workers from Factories and Offices2" This replaced the civil sanctions of the 28 Dec. 1938 decree with mandatory criminal penalties: 2-4 months imprisonment for quitting a job, and 6 months of probation and 25% pay confiscation for an unauthorized tardiness of 20 minutes. Both managers and prosecutors were themselves subject to criminal prosecution if they did not enforce this law strictly." Russian - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%D1%8B%D0%B9_%D0%BA%D0%BE%D0%BC%D0%BC%D1%83%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B7%D0%BC#.D0.9F.D1.80.D0.B8.D0.BD.D1.83.D0.B4.D0.B8.D1.82.D0.B5.D0.BB.D1.8C.D0.BD.D0.B0.D1.8F_.D1.82.D1.80.D1.83.D0.B4.D0.BE.D0.B2.D0.B0.D1.8F_.D0.BF.D0.BE.D0.B2.D0.B8.D0.BD.D0.BD.D0.BE.D1.81.D1.82.D1.8C http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%92%D0%BE%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%BD%... English http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/labor-discip.html http://www.cyberussr.com/rus/labor-discip.html

mjn 14y ago
(I'm the author.) What makes you think I'm not aware of those? The essay is in effect an attempt to express skepticism about gamification by pointing out that it looks awfully similar to something that was tried in the '20s/'30s in the USSR. Admittedly I make that point more clearly in the expanded paper version of the essay (linked at the bottom), where I discuss the descent of the '20s / early '30s gamification experiments into late-'30s Stakhanovism. I think there is overall (including today) some pretty strong internal difficulty when claiming to "gamify" work but still retaining the context of a hierarchically controlled workplace where work is mandatory, with penalties tied to the "game". Then it devolves into just another method of workplace accounting & control.

orbitingpluto 14y ago

I remember reading an article about Soviet nail factories competing against other nail Soviet nail factories. To boost production everyone ended up creating worthless pin sized nails: one point per pin. To correct this they shifted to production by weight, leading to crude low quality heavy nails. Gamification doesn't work unless it actually means something.

mjn 14y ago
As an academic, this sounds remarkably like what's going on with our own "gamification" of academic publishing, with impact factors, citation counts, h-indices, acceptance rate targets, journal points systems, etc. People do strange things which happen to maximize ("game", as it were) those metrics.