Don’t We Already Have That?

I was reading this great article by Jason Tanz on Wired (via Marco Arment) about the Facebook game spoof Cow Clicker, and this paragraph stuck out to me:

Game theorist Jesse Schell took this idea to its Orwellian extreme in a presentation at yet another industry conference. He described a world in which a person’s every action—brushing their teeth, showing up to work on time, tattooing an advertisement for Pop-Tarts onto their forearm—earned points. Schell says he wanted to encourage people to think carefully about which kinds of games and experiences were appropriate to develop.

It seems to me that we already live in just such a world. The “points” are just called “money” and cheating is not only allowed, but seemingly encouraged by the rules.