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According to Barber (2007), the consumer society fosters the growth of an infantile ethos. This happens because infantilization of the consumer is the best way to create new needs that the market can then answer with new goods and services. Given that neoliberalism encourages individual consumers to remain, at least partially, infantile, what position can boring, difficult, “adult” activities occupy in a neoliberal society? Exertion and hard work are in fundamental opposition to infantilization. In a neoliberal culture, then, “serious” activities – like labor, hard work, and other boring things – must be dressed up as pleasant pastimes. Today, thanks to apps, it is possible to work, practice self-care, or study under the guise of playing a game. Clearly, then, gamification – the transformation of boring tasks into pleasurable activities – is consistent with and symptomatic of the broader infantilization promoted by consumeristic capitalism.

Gamification is a fundamental feature of several health apps. When using these apps, we earn rewards and points (depending on what we do). We thus engage in a pleasurable self-governance driven by our own aspirations and capacities. Gamified self-tracking is, then, the opposite of work and work activities. It increases our productivity without oppressing us – at least at first glance. This (apparent) self-governance is a funny and pleasurable taylorism of everyday life.

The biomedical paradigm enjoys growing importance in our society. Biomedicine (e.g., Genetics) seems to occupy the position once held by religion and politics. In this context, every trivial problem of daily life is thought to require an appropriate remedy, and perfect health becomes a paramount value, especially within the upper class.

Medicalization is not only promoted by doctors. Today, other engines of medicalization are also available. These include pharmaceutical companies through marketing, advertising, and disease mongering; active consumers who seek a pharmacological solution – a magic bullet – to solve non-organic problems; technology, because highly sensitive diagnostic tools can now detect potential abnormalities even in very low quantities; and the culture of risk, which is connected to the evolution of diagnostic tools, because it is now always possible to be at risk of something.

The parts of life today considered pathological or quasi-pathological are ever increasing shyness, sadness, imperfect blood pressure, or glucose levels. Progressing editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) – the text from which diagnoses of mental illnesses are made – reveal a growing number of syndromes. These “diseases” are diagnosed on the grounds of certain symptoms and the number of weeks they last (quantification). Smartphones, with their tremendous capacity for data collection, contribute to a growth in self-diagnoses. For example, invited to log our every moment of sadness through a “trustworthy” avatar from our app (gamification), we can easily make too much of normal moments of discomfort, immediately seeing them – with a simple computation – transformed into something pathological in need of a cure.

Gamification applications (apps) are gaining great attention in many contexts and have grown increasingly. Despite their significant role in many settings, prior research mainly focused on initial adoption, and there are limited studies on the post-adoption stage. This study aims to explore the factors influencing individuals’ continuance intention to use gamified task manager apps, drawing on the technology continuance theory (TCT) by integrating enjoyment, habit and social influence.

Data were obtained from 318 Malaysian who had prior experience with task management gamified apps and analysed with the partial least squares approach.

According to the results, confirmation, perceived usefulness (PU) and enjoyment positively influence satisfaction. PU, enjoyment, satisfaction and social influence affect attitude, while the result failed to confirm the association between perceived ease of use and attitude. Furthermore, PU, attitude and habit are strong determinants of users’ continuance intention. Moreover, continuance intention was not predicted by users’ satisfaction and social influence.

The findings provide directions for developers and marketers of gamified task manager apps. Besides the technological and functional benefits of applications, they should also consider social, hedonic and individual factors in the designing and marketing stages.

This study extends the literature by assessing the determinants of continuous intention to use gamified task manager apps; and extending the TCT in the context of gamification by incorporating three contextual factors, namely, perceived enjoyment, social influence and habit.

A rapid increase in global smartphone ownership and digital health technologies offers the potential for mobile phone applications (apps) to deliver mental health interventions. The purpose of this paper is to bring together evidence reporting on mental health mobile apps to gain an understanding of the quality of current evidence, the positive and adverse effects of apps and the mechanisms underlying such effects.

A systematic search was carried out across six databases, for any systematic reviews or meta-analyses conducted up to 2020. Review quality was assessed using the Assessment of Multiple Systematic Reviews.

Across a total of 24 articles, a variety of clinical outcomes were assessed. Most compelling support was shown for apps targeting anxiety symptoms; some evidence favoured the use of apps for depression symptoms. Less evidence was available for the remaining clinical symptoms such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep disorders and substance use. Overall, there was limited evidence pertaining to adverse effects and change mechanisms and a lack of quality reporting across a large proportion of included reviews. The included reviews demonstrate the need for further robust research before apps are recommended clinically.

This paper makes a valuable contribution to the current status of research and reviews investigating mental health mobile apps. Recommendations are made for improved adherence to review guidelines and to ensure risk of bias is minimised.

Gamification is the use of game elements in different contexts. It is also a tool with potential application in several areas, including training and development. From this reference, this study has a main objective to identify a perception of efficiency and the measurable results in the process of gamification in training and development actions.

The quantitative stage of the research sought to investigate the perception of efficiency of professionals who have already undergone gamified training, collected through an online form with responses on a Likert scale and treated with the Minitab Statistical Software. The qualitative stage, on the other hand, identifies the perception of results through classification with professionals who develop gamified training, with the results found in the content analysis techniques.

The compiled results confirmed the presence of engagement and its influence on motivation as one of the advantage points for the application of gamification. It was also possible to find in these results the relevance of design care for the game/training interaction to work effectively.

Among the trends of greatest incidence found in the research, are the possibility of associating gamification with virtual reality and augmented reality, as well as with simulators to enhance the experience lived by the player during training.

This purpose of this paper is to use autoethnographic methods to enable an individual to reflect on their learning practices and habits in their professional role in computing and data science.

Action reflection cycles with autoethnographic methods are used in this enquiry to examine and transform the self-driven learning in the role of a professional in the context of computing and data science. Data are collected using personal thoughts and emotions in order to determine to what degree the changes that are brought about are improving their learning practice.

An incongruity between espoused theory and theory-in-use is identified. In this paper the authors explore how engaging in reflection within the structure of an action research framework can change the learning behaviour of an individual, motivating them to engage more positively and consistently with self-directed learning in their workplace environment.

Through analysis of reflective journals key aspects of personal and professional life that influences the individual’s approach to the learning tasks is identified. In addition, activity logs are maintained which collect information on the tasks that are undertaken. These activity logs are automatically generated using specific task-tracking software. Double-loop learning (Argyris and Schön, 1974) helps to identify the values that underpin the learning practice.

By resolving the tension created due to the incongruity of values, the individual has been able to find more motivation for learning and thus become more engaged in the learning process.

Participation in the knowledge economy requires individuals to engage in continuous learning. Organisations that support individuals in continuous learning are best adapted to take advantage of emergent and evolving knowledge and skill requirements.

This paper examined the behaviour of an individual engaging in self-directed learning and showed how through engagement with reflection and critical self-analysis, he increased his motivation and efficiency for self-directed learning. The authors show how this skill becomes increasingly important in modern knowledge economy workplaces.

Games and learning research has diverged into “games for learning” and “games as learning” research. This paper aims to provide a third framing, “games with learning”, that can help address the lived experiences learners have with these media outside of formal, instructional contexts.

This paper is a critical analysis of the current games and learning field, considering what has been missed by recent research in the field and how we might benefit from further consideration of what Bernard Suits calls the “lusory attitude” or voluntary choice to accept inefficiencies in achieving goals. The paper analyzes dominant rhetoric of educational game research, with the intent of revealing the implicit assumptions about play and choice that much recent “games for learning” and “games as learning” work may have ignored.

The paper reveals that the further consideration of learning through extant play with games (characterized here as “games with learning”) can be a means of shifting the direction of educational games research toward investigations of how games are played “in the wilds” of out-of-school contexts. The paper advocates for a shifting of focus from compulsory contexts to the study of voluntary game play.

The paper argues for the complex value of games and gameplay in non-institutional settings, and advocates for further research to understand games in non-institutional spaces.

The key argument is that games and learning to date has focused inordinately on how games can further educational design, rather than how the use of games can reveal important new contexts for learning.

The purpose of this paper is to review the concepts of “fun and play” and propose a preliminary model that suggests potential benefits for quantitatively/qualitatively rating serious games and simulations associated with corporate and university game-based learning (GBL).

A relevant literature review was executed to locate significant references to fun and play, assessment of GBL, and the pattern for integrating those elements with knowledge mobilization (KMb). A repertory grid method (RGM) was used to propose a preliminary model.

The proposed FUNIFICATION Model will be useful as a foundation for further evaluation of GBL environments.

Additional rationalization of the proposed model and applying it to actual games with focus groups as the observers would provide additional validity to the new model.

A threshold for fun involved in serious games and simulations would provide a quantitative/qualitative measure for playability of serious games and simulations. The FUNIFICATION Factor would feed into a KMb model for acquiring, codifying, disseminating, and making knowledge actionable, either within academic, corporate, or public sector environments.

The range of assessment models for GBL is evident from the literature review, and value could be derived in building an evaluation model based upon the RGM to identify a FUNIFICATION Factor for serious games and simulations.