If I’m going to read a book on how things are done in the workplace or in the world I want ways to use the ideas in the book in my life. Play At Work by Adam L. Penenberg seems far more interested in convincing you Gamification exists and how it is used by major players than it is in how I can use it to improve my life.

Not that after reading the book I couldn’t come up with ideas on how to use gamification both in my marketing and in my everyday life to make it easier to create outcomes I want. But when it discusses things that have worked, it’s far more likely to talk about how Microsoft created huge programs than suggest ways to use it with my friends or to run my business.

But where it focuses, it does an excellent job. I was aware of gamification and have read more than my share of stories about how bad Zynga software is, but I’m far more likely to notice it in places I didn’t before.

The other good things in Play At Work is that it never treats gamification as a good or a bad thing. It starts with the story of cow flicker, a “game” created to make fun of Farmville by creating something that was as boring and repetitive as possible. But by using the same tactics as Farmville, it unintentionally became a hit. People spent money to flick cows faster and even after he effectively shut down the game by removing all the cows, including the ones people had paid for, people still click on the areas where the cows once were for points. Gamification can, and often does, play on the addictive quality of games and uses people’s natures against them to create skinner boxes without even giving you the piece of food.

I can’t say that I loved Play at Work by Adam L. Penenberg. It was good enough to listen to and if I were running a Forbes five hundred company or even a smaller business with a few hundred people it would be far more applicable. But I wish that Adam had come up with a few ideas for ways to use this in your everyday life. Perhaps a game to help you eat healthier that didn’t require major companies to be involved or a gamification elements that a parent could use to make their kids do better in school. But even without specific ideas, knowing how gamification works would make it easier to come up with ideas on my own.

If you’re not already convinced that gamification exists and is used for and against you in your everyday life then reading Play at Work by Adam L. Penenberg is vital for you because you are being manipulated. And if you happen to be running a call center or a major software corporation, there are a lot of useful ideas tailored for you. But if you’re already comfortable with gamification, then you might do better spending your time coming up with ways to use it than a book that is primarily concerned with convincing you it exists.

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