From gamification to the metaverse and beyond. Metaphors, myths,  and ideologies

Mattia Thibault

doi:10.23925/2763-700X.2024n7.67357

Autores/as

Mattia Thibault Tampere University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.23925/2763-700X.2024n7.67357

Palabras clave:

idéologie des médias, intelligence artificielle, jeux numériques, ludification, metavers

Resumen

In the last decades, the modelling ability of digital games has had an increasingly strong influence on both industrial communication and strategic decision making. The ways companies communicate, represent themselves, and organise their workflows and operations have been subject of an attempt to translate and emulate the semiotic features on digital games. Dynamics and interactions become gamified, while the future of industrial communication is deferred to a (for now hypothetical) metaverse, that borrows aesthetics and interactions from digital games. Scarcity — a cornerstone of both games and economical systems — is imported in these, potentially abundant, digital words through technological workarounds such as blockchain. And, more recently, Artificial Intelligence, for years developed as a strategic actor in games, has become the new buzzword and has been indicated as latest technological frontier. In this article, I map the ways in which digital games, understood as a modelling system, have been able to exert influence over discourses around technology and development. To do so, I also show how metaphorical language and mythical thinking shape the ideologies behind these operations — and hence our ability to engage critically with these phenomena.

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