Take any game, strip away technology and format and you will be left with the same four elements. These four elements are common to all games: a goal, rules, feedback, and a sense of voluntary participation.
I propose to you that if you take any life activity, tweak the four above elements into place you will have a game.
Sometimes (meaning pretty much all the time) we find ourselves involved in life activities for which (come hell or high water) you gotta do it. That’s not what I call voluntary participation.
The “omg that’s awfully straight-forward” method of transforming a required activity into one with a sense of voluntary participation is to just change your attitude. You want a sense of voluntary participation while involved in a required life activity, well assume an attitude of voluntary participation.
Another method for adding a sense of voluntary participation to an activity is modify the rules, then voluntarily participate in the modified rules.
Example: You just gotta do the dinner dishes. Whether you like it or not, the dishes in the sink gotta get cleaned. Nothing voluntary about it.
How about adding the rule that all the dishes need to be scrubbed counterclockwise — not clockwise, not up-down, not side to side. They have to be scrubbed in a counterclockwise motion. You may not have a choice about whether or not you do the dishes. But you do have a choice about whether or not you follow the newly contrived rule.
This new sense of voluntary participation transforms the activity into a game. By changing the rules (even making it harder) then voluntarily participating in the new rules drudgery is turned into fun.
[Note: In follow-up blogs we will look at how playing with the goal and/or feedback can make a life activity into a game.]