To me "game mechanics" are just another way of saying "behavioral economics." Game mechanics are about exploiting irrational but predictable psychological leve

To me "game mechanics" are just another way of saying "behavioral economics." Game mechanics are about exploiting irrational but predictable psychological levers in the human mind. To that end, there are lots of apps that use game mechanics, some more obvious than others: Foursquare/Gowalla are obvious. You get random rewards and points for doing various real-life activities like traveling and eating out. Opower. See, e.g., this article http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/10/california-embraces-psychology-of-influence-to-reduce-energy-use.html http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/greenspace/2009/10/californi... Mechanical Turk. Why would an American do work for $0.50/hour? It's not rational, and I think it's the game-like nature of mturk. Many websites use the quest/reward mechanic to guide users through the registration process and the first few key steps of the application, e.g., LinkedIn's "your profile is 75%" complete mechanic.