Where does gamification collide?

Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, and Nacke's 2011 From game design elements to gamefulness: defining gamification fixed the working definition still used across computing: gamification is the use of game design elements, such as points, badges, levels, and leaderboards, in contexts that are not themselves games. The paper drew a careful boundary between gamification and neighbouring ideas, arguing that adding a few game elements to an app is not the same as building a full game or a toy. This is the defining statement of the construct, and the labels grouped on this page, from the marketing and education traditions, mostly describe the same practice under other names.[1]

Unit

One system that adds game elements to a non-game task

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Coded by which game design elements a system includes and how they are arranged

Hamari, Koivisto, and Sarsa's 2014 Does gamification work? treated gamification as an empirical treatment: they reviewed studies that added game elements to information systems and asked whether the additions actually changed users' attitudes and behaviour. Working from the same definition as Deterding and colleagues, they cast gamification as a manipulation whose effects are measured against a control, and reported that results were often positive but depended heavily on context and on who was using the system. This is the information-systems reading of the very construct the human-computer interaction tradition named, so the difference between the two is one of purpose, defining the practice versus testing it, not of referent.[2]

Unit

A gamified system studied against a non-gamified comparison

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Effects on usage, engagement, or task outcomes in controlled or field studies

In marketing the same practice is anchored in the language of services and customer engagement. Huotari and Hamari's 2016 A definition for gamification: anchoring gamification in the service marketing literature recast gamification as designing a service to afford gameful experiences that support a customer's own value creation, shifting the focus from the game elements themselves to the experience they are meant to produce. Hofacker, de Ruyter, Lurie, Manchanda, and Donaldson's 2016 Gamification and mobile marketing effectiveness then framed points, rewards, and challenges as tools for loyalty and repeat engagement. Both describe the same construct that computing named, dressed in the vocabulary of service and brand loyalty rather than of interface design.[3][4]

Unit

A service or campaign that offers customers a gameful experience

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Customer engagement, loyalty, and repeat behaviour attributed to the gameful design

Education carries the nearest sibling labels: serious games and game-based learning. Gee's 2003 What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy argued that well-designed games embody strong principles of learning, and this line of work asks how games, or their elements, can teach. The overlap with gamification is real but partial: a serious game is a whole game built for a non-entertainment purpose, whereas gamification, as computing defines it, adds only selected game elements to a task that stays a task. Grouping them here shows how one design idea splinters into several names, but the education labels sit slightly wider, sometimes meaning a full game rather than a sprinkling of points and badges.[5]

Unit

A lesson or tool built from a game or from game elements

Recovery means

Not applicable

Measured by

Learning gains, motivation, and time on task compared with conventional instruction