One of the most successful recruitment tools the U.S. Army ever made was…a video game? Sometimes without even knowing it, gaming elements in technology — often designed for addiction — are incentivizing you to think certain ways and do certain things. Join Veronica Belmont and co-pilot Ashley Carman as they explore the rise of gamification in our everyday lives, its positives and negatives, and its future.

IRL is an original podcast from Mozilla. For more on the series go to irlpodcast.org

Ashley Carman is the co-host of the tech podcast, "Why’d You Push That Button?"

Natasha Dow Schüll has written several books including Keeping Track and Addiction by Design. She uses the Freedom App to lock herself offline.

Long before the Internet, games were a source of entertainment, comradery, and learning. The rise of technology-enabled games to take on video form, and gaming as we know it became popular. Big Tech now gamifies most elements of our online life. The more you know about the evolution of games and why we are all so connected to them, the more you can see how they’re used to sometimes make online experiences better and sometimes more addictive. Here's more on the games we play online, from Mozilla.

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