Abstract

In a progressively narrowed structure, I first seek to relate the Quantified Self movement to the notion of gamification, locating the widespread explosion of both terms around 2010. Adopting the definition of media theorist Mathias Fuchs of this second concept as an ideology that aims to hide labor exploitation, a need for a technological desublimation is established, i.e., to reveal the materiality and general logic of big data companies, their inherent institutional use. I then turn my attention to the artistic practice “cinema” – here taken in a metonymic sense, which includes television and streaming series. I briefly go through the history, context and recent cases in the field that reverberate an infiltration of gamification into its aesthetic structure. Finally, there is space to introduce some films whose narrative centralizes game mechanics (whether digital or not). In this connection, the movie Drowning by Numbers (Peter Greenaway; 1988) and the episode “Nosedive” (Joe Wright; 2016) of the web (television) series Black Mirror (Charlie Brooker; 2011-) will serve as a case study. I raise and question the plot itself, the thematization as a specific way in which a cinematographic work can “counter-gamify”, while reflecting on the obsessive use of numbers and games in these two works. Always in a conscious and admittedly dystopian tone, I end with an attempt to rethink/complete the definition of gamification proposed by Fuchs – based on the film and the episode.