Points, Badges, and Leaderboards Are Addictive

Gamification involves taking something not traditionally considered a game and integrating game-like elements to make it more captivating and engaging. This trend took off in the 2010s as companies realized they could drive user motivation and retention by gamifying all kinds of experiences.

1. Continued rise of gamification across sectors, with increasing sophistication.
2. Integration of advanced technologies like AI, IoT, and blockchain expected to enhance gamified experiences.
3. Studies show increased workplace engagement by 48% and productivity by 90%.

What is Gamification?

Gamification refers to applying game mechanics and principles in non-game contexts. It aims to capture the psychological devices that make games so engaging and addictive and utilize them to enhance users’ connection to products, services, communities, or activities.

Gamification works by tapping into basic human desires and needs:

• Achievement - gaining skills, mastery, and progress
• Competition - the drive to win or get ahead
• Altruism - helping others and making a difference
• Status - gaining recognition and esteem
• Self-expression - individuality and choice

Well-designed gamification utilizes game elements like points, levels, challenges, virtual goods, gifting, leaderboards, rewards, and narrative journeys to fulfill these intrinsic motivations. It provides clear goals, a compelling progress path, and rapid feedback loops.

For example, Nike’s social fitness app Nike+ gamifies running by letting users earn points and trophies for hitting goals. Users can level up, collect virtual badges, unlock new challenges, join teams, and compare progress on leaderboards. These game mechanics tap into desires for mastery, status, and teamwork.

Examples

Some pivotal examples of companies effectively using gamification:

• Foursquare (2009) - One of the first major gamified apps, Foursquare allowed users to “check-in” to locations to earn points and badges. Users became motivated to explore cities like tourists to compete on leaderboards.
• Duolingo (2011) - The language learning app masterfully gamified education through point systems, streak counts, rewards for completing lessons, and level progression. It made practicing feel like playing a game.
• Waze (2008) - The social navigation app tapped into drivers’ altruism by letting them earn points for reporting accidents, traffic, speed traps, etc. It gamified commutes by making them interactive experiences.
• Nike+ (2006) - Nike’s app with sensor-enabled shoes tracked fitness activities and gamified training through challenges, trophies, levels, and social interaction like leaderboards. Exercise became competitive and game-like.
• Khan Academy (2008) - The free online learning platform used points, badges, energy systems, avatars, and unlockable privileges/areas to transform studying into an engaging, game-inspired activity.

These examples illustrate how gamification principles effectively motivated users and brought game-like enjoyment to non-game spheres like location-based services, education, fitness, and transportation.

Psychology Behind Gamification

Research into motivational psychology explains why gamification is so effective at driving engagement. Studies show game mechanics tap into the basic human need for competence. Game elements provide:

• Clear goals and rules - establishes expectations and directions for succeeding
• Continual feedback - gives real-time input on progress and performance
• Balance of challenge and ability - creates the right level of difficulty to avoid boredom or anxiety
• Sense of control - ability to make meaningful choices and see their impact
• Progress narrative - feeling of moving upwards in skills and status
• Novelty and surprises - maintains curiosity and interest over time

Together these create a satisfying loop of striving, feedback, mastery, reward, harder challenges, more mastery, and so on. Gamification expert Yu-kai Chou describes this as a core motivational loop linking engagement to intrinsic human cravings.

Moreover, gamification adds elements of fun and playfulness that makes tedious or complex tasks feel more enjoyable. Research finds that games create psychological flow states characterized by energized focus and complete absorption where we lose track of time. Gamification aims to generate similar states of productive immersion.

Potential Issues with Gamification

Experts caution about the following potential downsides of poorly executed gamification:

• Oversimplify complex tasks into simple repetitive actions
• Encourage addiction-like obsessive behaviors
• Focus too heavily on external rewards over internal motivations
• Primarily serve business goals over users’ interests
• Emphasize competition excessively

Bad gamification usually centers on points, badges, and leaderboards without broader engagement strategies. It may disguise drudgery rather than make activities truly meaningful.

Well-designed gamification avoids these pitfalls by aligning rewards with internal motivations and real accomplishments. Done right, gamification makes achieving goals and growth intrinsically satisfying - creating playful, interactive systems centered on human needs.

New Frontiers: Blockchain-Based Gamification

As blockchain networks scaled in the 2010s, developers began exploring how “Web3” protocols could take gamification to new levels. Blockchains provide globally transparent ledgers ideal for tracking points, rewards, and virtual goods across products and services.

Unlike traditional loyalty points, blockchain-based points become transferable assets with real economic value. For example, Rainbow Wallet issues users points for using the Ethereum network, which will be redeemable for financial rewards.

Potential challenges include the complexity of crypto wallet setups and blockchain’s technical scalability limits. But overall, blockchain infrastructure unlocks groundbreaking possibilities for next-generation gamification.

• Singapore Airlines is using blockchain for loyalty programs.
• Exxon Mobil uses gamified VR for safety training.

Got Game?

Companies increasingly recognize that game principles work because they fulfil basic human drives.

And gamification will only become more sophisticated as designers blend data-driven insights with empathetic knowledge of human psychology. Next-generation gamification will likely move beyond external rewards to focus on experiences that are intrinsically meaningful and fulfilling.

Blockchain’s composable assets, transparency, and ownership tools provide the backbone for previously impossible gamified ecosystems. We are just beginning to glimpse gamification’s full potential to make personal growth and collaborative achievement as engaging as gameplay.

Work, learning, and life itself become fathomlessly captivating games.

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