That latter part is important: there's currently no incentive for the outcome the author envisions, at least not enough to produce truly great outcomes that are

That latter part is important: there's currently no incentive for the outcome the author envisions, at least not enough to produce truly great outcomes that are better than education as its exists today. Consider that many teachers have some pretty strong emotional and non-monetary incentives (they have to if they want to stick through all the bullshit) to do a good job, and it still produces educational outcomes that aren't great. While I do think student-driven activities within game-like feedback systems have a lot of promise for education, the educational system today could not use them effectively, and developer incentives today are not aligned with the outcome. However, you don't necessarily need actual software to come up with these systems. Consider Rafe Esquith's classroom economy, where students paid rent for their desks, could get income for different extra credit activities, and could buy other students' desks so they collected the rent instead of the teacher. Not a bad way to teach a whole host of complex economic issues without any software, and he did it for fifth graders. https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2012/05/22/teachers-charge-students-rent-for-desks/ https://www.thinkadvisor.com/2012/05/22/teachers-charge-stud... Imagine if all teachers were incentivized to experiment with these kinds of systems, and if they had the support to design and implement them, software or not.