I like to think of life as a game: not necessarily in relation to its level of seriosity but instead to its functionality. In a game, there is a logistical approach for how to play. If you have a strong player, follow the rules, and play strategically, you have a high chance for success. Despite all the variations in people, situations, and occurrences, there are many elements of life that work in specific ways, including who we are, how things work, and why things work. Just like how we can win a game by understanding its components and mastering its strategies, if we can understand and master this general concept of “life,” the more likely we are to find success on our own. Kevin Werbach said:

 

The reality is that gamification taps into what makes us human. We’re engaged by games, we respond to some of these game elements not because it’s some cool new idea that someone came up with but because it relates to our basic human drives, our motivation for masterity, our desire to be connected to something broader than ourselves, our response to our desire for achievement, and so forth.

 

In his books and works, Werbach illustrates how implementing gamification into different businesses and fields leads to highly favorable outcomes. I would like to take this one step further and illustrate how implementing gamification into the general notion of life can attribute great success to individuals. In his book The Gamification Toolkit, Werbach breaks down the game into three elements: dynamics, mechanics, and components. 

 

The dynamics of a game– constraints, emotion, narrative, progression, and relationships– are what drive the player to actually play the game. Although they do not directly enter the game in a literal sense, they shape the way in which we play it. The dynamics encompass the “why” element of our life, giving us purpose and attributing meaning for what we do. 

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The mechanics stimulate action and create a framework for the dynamics to be implemented. They encompass methods of control and behaviors that are attributed to the player with the purpose of engaging the users. 

 

Finally, the components of the game are its basic elements: the “building blocks” of the system. These include features such as rules, teams, and levels. These can be thought of as means to achieve the goals created by the dynamics and mechanics.

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Building on to this framework, I've added another group of ideas: the principles. The eight principles describe fundamental patterns in the game, identifying ways in which our life works and offering a structure for navigating the rules.

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The rules of the game are as they sound: guidelines to life that can help us succeed. Applying the framework and stemming from the eight principles, the rules further identify ways in which life works and provides clear instructions for how we might navigate them. 

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Finally, the tools are a list of tactics that we can pull from to help us play the game. As we "play by the rules" and progress in the game, we can pull from our toolkit to help us achieve our goals. 

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