I’ve found myself wondering about “gamification” with increasing frequency these last few months as various articles appear online to denounce it. What is it, exactly? And is it really as bad as they all say? What follows is a brief exploration of the concept and a look at its applications.  At the end, I offer my opinion on whether gamification really is bad, or merely misunderstood.

What is gamification?

According to Wikipedia, the earliest known use of the term “gamification” was made by Nick Pelling back in 2004 as part of his consultancy business, Conundra Ltd. The text on Conundra’s website reads:

Conundra is a UK-based consultancy specialising in “Gamification“.

This means: we help manufacturers evolve their electronic devices into entertainment platforms. We then help them design, build and run industry partner programmes around new collaborational business models. For these emerging platforms, we can also source, adapt or co-develop games and entertainments. Moore’s Law means that, soon, every device will become a game.

Here, Pelling is just using “gamification” to refer to the act of making an electronic device a gaming platform. For better or worse, that is no longer what gamification means.

For at least a year now, gamification has been used to refer to a utilitarian way of thinking about some of the incidental features of games. Under the gamification paradigm, games become less of “here is a game that feels like this to play,” and instead become more of “here is a game that accomplishes this goal.”

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