The point made in that book that stuck with me ever since I first read it is this (I think she was quoting someone else):
The opposite of play is not work; it's depression.
I think the key thing people do wrong through, is to take work and try to make it more like play by adding in superficial 'game mechanics' like achievements.
Visual Studio had this for a while, and it had things like "use the debugger 100 times" or something like that. This is not how you make work into play. Those achievements are meaningless. Worse, they could provide incentive for using visual studio poorly.
The opposite of play is not work; it's depression.
I think the key thing people do wrong through, is to take work and try to make it more like play by adding in superficial 'game mechanics' like achievements.
Visual Studio had this for a while, and it had things like "use the debugger 100 times" or something like that. This is not how you make work into play. Those achievements are meaningless. Worse, they could provide incentive for using visual studio poorly.
For a really deep look at how games can be used to improve real world tasks, I recommend the works of [James Gee](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Paul_Gee).