Introduction

This article will investigate how Steemit can be used as a political engagement tool. In a paper titled "Gamification of Politics" we can see how the power of digital gamification can be used to enhance political engagement. Steemit is unique in that it has the ability to use gamification, to go viral, to be used politically, while at the same time it has monetary payouts. This might be increasingly pertinent considering that anarchists are now onboard the Steemit platform, many for ideological reasons such as the lack of censorship.

What is Gamification?

Gamification encompasses the techniques and methods used to make digital media fun. If we look at World of Warcraft, Pokemon Go, or any popular game, we will see certain elements. Seemit has some of these elements and as a result we already have the casino effect, but the casino effect is just the result of intermittent reinforcement which is really only one technique. Leader-boards, status badges, and many other techniques have yet to be implemented which could improve gamification of Steemit.

The goal of gamification is to make the Steemit platform fun. below are a brief list of some of the techniques of gamification which could be built into the user experience of Steemit:

• Intermittent Reinforcement (Casino Effect)
• Quests
• Leader-boards
• Status badges
• Progress bars
• Progressively increasing difficulty or challenges

Steemit currently includes some of these elements. For example the ranking system on Steemd already lists status. From dust, newbie, user, superuser, hero, superhero, and legend. This would be equivalent to the Steemit leader-board and an example of gamification already build around the Steemit platform.

To improve on this functionality, it would be nice if there were an icon next to the name of users which represent or show their ranking on the leader-board. In addition, a progress bar could also display how far they are away from moving to the next level, such as from hero to superhero. The point is to encourage all active participants to want to improve their status because it's fun.

Later on down the road if there is the addition of human computation, or microtasks, then these could be gamified similar to how quests are. People would be able to take part in certain crowdsource tasks or human computation tasks to earn Steem Dollars. It is important that when people participate even in what is considered to be "small monetary value" microtasks that there is a visible status transfer, perhaps in the form of an evolved avatar.

What is Gamification of Politics?

For the most part, politics are not fun. The discourse is not fun, and the process is not fun. Gamification of politics may be a way to increase engagement by millennials in the process. By improving the user experience of the political engagement, younger and more motivated individuals will want to engage. In some cases this political engagement can save the world, but in other cases it can be disasterous. It's important to know that gamification is a technical which can cut both ways and in the political sphere it must be used responsibly. While Steem cannot be censored and we can expect to see the gamification of politics happen on the Steem blockchain with or without authorization by whales, there will certainly be an opportunity for Steemit to use gamification for the benefit of the community.

Financial liberation can be considered a political ideal. It's an ideal many in the Steemit community have. Steemit as it is now is already a technological which functions as a social media game with a purpose, with the most basic purpose right now being to promote financial liberation. In specific, by using Steemit successfully, a participant can become financially independent and as a result financially liberated. This would be similar to winning the game.

Games with a Purpose

Financial liberation is but one objective and one possible game with a purpose. There are many possible other games which can be played on the Steemit platform. These games have political implications and could be considered political games. Provided that the Steemit community accepts the rules, and members of the community agree to participate in these sub-games, these sub-games if they are fun, can attract more participants, and winning in these games might be defined as getting certain laws changed, or promoting human rights, or defending civil rights, or any number of different things. Dan Larimer himself claims that his guiding moral compass is evolved from his primary principles of protecting life, liberty, and property. The promotion of financial liberation depends on protecting property rights, and it is for this reason that you can see Steemit as a gamification of politics where the principles of the initial whales and designers help to direct the evolution of the platform.

Alternate Reality Gaming

An alternate reality game is a more advanced concept. Steemit is not yet at the phase of it's evolution where it can function as an alternate reality game but there could be sub-games built on Steemit at some point in the future which are alternate reality games. These games would utilize the reward mechanisms of Steemit such as Steem Dollars and Steem Power, but also add additional elements on top.

Because Steemit allows anyone with Steem Power to distribute the rewards, it is possible for a group of whales to create an alternate reality version of Steemit directly on top of Steemit without any changes. Simply by rewarding content according to certain "game rules", there can be a new reality built on top of the current Steemit reality, where role players in theory could be rewarded with upvotes for accomplishing missions or quests within the alternate reality game.

In my future post I will discuss the power of alternate reality games on Steemit and explain why it's important to have human computation as an element. Human computation would lower the barrier to entry even further so anyone could participate at any level. Currently human computation can be rewarded informally with upvotes but in the future there will be the ability to create ARGs which require every human to work their way into the game by putting in a certain amount of human computation which in itself is like a form of mining.

References

Mahnic, N. (2014). Gamification of Politics: Start a New Game!. Teorija in Praksa, 51(1), 143.