Instrumentalization of Games

Preface: My aim here isn’t to mourn “where are games going?” On the contrary, I want to highlight the often-overlooked opportunities brought by this transformation, and emphasize how crucial it is for us creators to understand and harness them. In an era where technical barriers to game creation are falling, the ability to grasp a game’s essence and repurpose it as an “instrument” is becoming a new kind of literacy.

 

Instrumentalization: Something New, or History Repeating?

The idea of using games as tools isn’t exactly new. Since antiquity, games have served not only for entertainment but also as means for teaching strategy (Go, Chess), strengthening social bonds (folk games), performing rituals (games in religious ceremonies), and even transmitting political messages (satirical plays). Yet the digital age—especially the rise of video games—has brought a new quantitative and qualitative dimension to this phenomenon. Now, games can become sophisticated instruments for real-time data analysis, global networked experiences, personalized journeys, and complex simulations, reaching levels previously unimaginable. This is why it’s important to examine the varied concepts that fall under the “game” umbrella.

 

“Play” (Paidia): Purposeful Use of Freedom

As Huizinga highlights in Homo Ludens, play is a “free” act: an experience outside ordinary life, governed (or not) by its own rules, providing intrinsic satisfaction, “not serious” but all-encompassing. Caillois calls this Paidia—ruleless, noisy, joyful, spontaneous play. But how can something so free and unstructured be instrumentalized?

The answer lies in play’s core dynamics: exploration, curiosity, trial and error, creativity, and flow. These dynamics can be consciously triggered and directed toward certain goals.

In Education: Play-based learning lets children internalize knowledge by exploring the world through their natural curiosity. Not only in kindergartens—playful scenarios and experiments are used even in universities to teach complex subjects.

Business & Innovation: Methods like Lego Serious Play help companies harness the creative, metaphorical power of play for strategy, problem-solving, and team communication. “Playful thinking” in brainstorming encourages breaking out of mental ruts.

Therapy & Mental Health: Play therapy creates a safe space for children—and sometimes adults—to express and process trauma, anxiety, or emotional struggles. Here, play becomes a tool for communication and healing.

Urban Design: “Playgrounds” in cities can be designed for adults too, encouraging interaction, movement, and community in public spaces.

The central challenge of instrumentalizing play is maintaining its free spirit while steering it toward goals. Excessive structure or external pressure can kill play, reducing it to a mundane task. Thus, instrumentalizing play requires a delicate balance.

 

“Gaming” (Ludus): The Power of Structured Experience

“Gaming,” or Caillois’s Ludus, means play that is structured by rules, goals, competition (Agon), chance (Alea), mimicry, and vertigo (Ilinx). Unlike play, gaming is clearer, more measurable, and usually involves “winning” or “completion.” These qualities make it even more open to instrumentalization.

E-sports: The most visible form—where games become professional sports; players are athletes, teams are clubs, tournaments are leagues. Gaming becomes far more than entertainment in terms of economic value, audiences, and cultural influence.

Serious Games: Perhaps the clearest example: surgical simulators in medicine, tactical training in the military, educational games in history or science, corporate ethics or compliance training… The purpose is not fun, but learning, skill-building, or behavior change.

Education & Assessment: Educational games and game-based assessments use gaming’s structure—points, levels, quests—to make learning engaging and motivating.

Behavioral Research: Economists and psychologists design controlled game scenarios to study human behavior, decision-making, and social interaction. Games serve as laboratories for observing complex human phenomena.

The risk here: focusing only on external goals and losing the game’s intrinsic motivation. If a serious game is boring, it fails. If an educational game only transmits information and doesn’t “feel” like a game, it’s ineffective.

 

Video Games: The Instruments of the Digital Age

Video games bring play and gaming into the digital realm, adding new layers and exponentially increasing their potential for instrumentalization. Lev Manovich’s new media principles (numerical representation, modularity, automation, variability, cultural transcoding) help explain why video games are such powerful tools.

Data & Personalization: Video games can generate massive amounts of data about player behavior, used to personalize experiences, build player profiles, optimize learning—or conduct market research. This is a huge opportunity, but also raises serious ethical concerns.

Simulation & Modeling: Games can model complex systems—city management, ecosystems, economic models—and test scenarios. SimCity is more than entertainment: it’s a tool for thinking about urban planning. Foldit unites human intelligence to solve scientific problems (protein folding).

Persuasive Games: As Ian Bogost notes, games can be designed to convey political, social, or environmental messages, provoke thought, or influence behavior. These are “persuasive games,” rhetorical tools.

Health & Rehabilitation: VR-supported games are used for phobia therapy, physical rehabilitation, or maintaining cognitive function in older adults. Mobile health apps use game mechanics to encourage healthy habits.

The potential of video games as instruments is limited only by the vision of designers who understand and leverage these capabilities.

 

Ludo and Gamification: The Portability of Mechanics

By “ludo” here, I mean the fundamental building blocks of games: mechanics and systems—points, levels, badges, leaderboards, quests, resource management, feedback loops. Instrumentalization of ludo is about extracting these elements from games and applying them elsewhere: gamification.

Gamification is often reduced to the shallow “points-badges-leaderboards” trilogy, so its potential is misunderstood and underrated. True gamification requires a deep understanding of both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, and meaningful adaptation of game principles to other contexts.

Workplace Motivation: Gamified systems can encourage sales, project completion, or teamwork—but must also foster mastery, autonomy, and meaning, not just competition.

Marketing & Loyalty: Brands use gamification to boost engagement, make loyalty programs more appealing, and spread brand awareness.

Educational Engagement: Gamified learning platforms can encourage students to submit assignments, attend classes, or practice tough topics more.

Social Change & Sustainability: Gamified apps and campaigns can encourage recycling, energy saving, or volunteering (think Jane McGonigal’s SuperBetter).

Gamification’s success depends on understanding the context and motivations of the target audience. Poorly designed gamification can be manipulative, meaningless, or even counterproductive. The ethical dimension must always be considered.

 

The Designer’s New Role & The Era of Ludic Literacy

All these forms of instrumentalization fundamentally change the role of game designers and media creators. It’s no longer enough to make “fun” experiences; we must understand how and why they are fun (or engaging, motivating, instructive), and repurpose that knowledge for different aims. This requires ludic literacy—the ability to read, analyze, and design game systems.

And here comes the “unexpected synthesis”: Perhaps the instrumentalization of games is, in fact, humanity’s evolution in understanding and interacting with its own cognitive and motivational systems. Games contain the purest, most powerful formulas for motivation, learning, and social interaction. By deciphering and applying these formulas, we’re not just “using games”—we’re developing a new and powerful language, a new interface, for designing the human experience.

This “ludic interface” could help us transmit knowledge more effectively, solve complex problems more collaboratively, make boring tasks more bearable, and—most importantly—better understand ourselves and each other. Instrumentalization doesn’t have to steal the spirit of play; perhaps it’s a chance to diffuse that spirit into every aspect of life.

  Of course, we must not ignore ethical concerns, risks of manipulation, or the dangers of superficiality. A powerful tool, misused or applied unconsciously, can be harmful. That’s why it’s our duty as professionals to approach this process critically, maximize potential, minimize risk, and never forget that games are not just tools but rich cultural and human experiences.

It’s a long and complex journey, but I believe it’s worth thinking, debating, and—most of all—creating for. So, where do you think we stand in this “ludic interface” era, and what awaits us next?