You may not realize it from this course, but my degree is actually
in law, and most of my research work has been on legal and
policy aspects of the internet and related emerging technologies, as opposed to the
more strategic and business oriented aspects
that we're focused on in this course.
But the two things do come together,
in the discussion of legal issues around gamification.
And, while the primary considerations in developing a gamified system, are not
law so much, there are some areas where legal and also regulatory considerations.
Could become important.
And so, they are worth touching on in the
context of risks and concerns, for designing a gamified system.
So, let me quickly go through five issues in which the legal system could become a
problem, or you might get sued by someone
because of some issue in a gamified system.
The first is privacy.
One of the aspects of gamification is that you're
going to get lots of information potentially, about your players.
Information about who they are, their profile, and so
forth, but also, tremendously granular data about what they're doing.
Every action they take in the game, potentially
can be collected, and that's a great thing.
That's the basis of the analytics, and the
ability of a well designed gamified system, to
optimize for the player's interest, and provide real
learnings for the company that sets it up.
But the flip side of that, is the developer of the gamified system.
Is going to have tremendously detailed and personal information about the players.
And that necessarily brings into play, concerns about privacy.
Now, privacy is a big legal area.
It's developing very quickly.
There are lots of questions about privacy
online, and in various kinds of digital context.
Which are still not fully addressed by the existing legal system.
It's also something that varies tremendously, based on where you are.
Here in the United States where I'm based, we
tend to have a fairly laissez-faire attitude towards privacy.
We let companies do a great deal, without prospective regulation.
In Europe and other parts of the world, there
tends to be, much stricter constraints on what can
be done with private information, what sorts of data
can be collected, and what can be done with it.
So, be careful, when designing a gameified system,
especially anytime your getting access to personally identifiable information.
Information, that tells you something, definitely, about a single individual.
Second issue flows from the discussion earlier about exploitation, and playbor.
The concern that a gamified system, could
give rise to employment or labor law issues.
So, I put up here the graphic from
the target checkout system that tells people their score.
And I talked about the potential for that to feel manipulative to the workers.
I also gave you the example of
the so-called electronic whip at the Disneyland hotels.
That one, in fact, came out of a
labor dispute, where the workers were complaining about
their working conditions, and one of the issues
that they brought up, was this leaderboard system.
So, there are a variety of rules in many countries,
restricting what you can do as an employer vis-a-vis your employees.
And there also are rules when employees
get together, and want to collectively bargain.
As with many aspects of law, they vary country
to country, and employment law restrictions tend to be.
Far stricter in European countries, than they are in the United States.
But even in the United States, there are
limitations and considerations on what you can do.
so, these are issues that will come
up in any kind of internal gamification situation.
Where the game elements are being used in some
way that affects people's work performance, and the question is
whether it's being properly disclosed, and whether it's consistent
with what the law requires as far as working conditions.