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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 moti

by 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 ;)

by mjn 14y ago

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 ;)