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I think this article is written a bit like that cash register anecdote. There is no conclusion other than examples why you are this way. Why do you think you a

I think this article is written a bit like that cash register anecdote. There is no conclusion other than examples why you are this way. Why do you think you are like this? Not everyone is - I’m not. But I’m currently working on a rewards gamification system in a surgical-medical training device and we’re discovering in user-testing that while yes, medical students do fixate on optimizing their scores, the system doesn’t necessarily incentivize the sort of development we would like to see. Kind of like the cash register anecdote - some people get stuck. And then there are also people who are turned off by this perspective of having to perform like this. I think it has to do with a certain set of rules that some people are exposed to, but not others. For me gamification turns some things into a slog.

rmvt 3y ago
> For me gamification turns some things into a slog. same for me. i admit it still feels nice to "watch the number go up", mostly on content platforms with a social component to it (hn, reddit, stackoverflow) as you feel whatever you've said has either been useful to, or at least resonated with someone. as social creatures it's only normal to seek some sort of validation. i think the only gamification set of features i've fallen for in the recent years has been duolingo, which has me practicing every day, even if just for 3-5 minutes. the way they've done it is quite interesting as they have what i'd call different levels of gamification you can buy into. the most basic one being your daily streak but then you have stuff like daily quests, monthly badges, league standings, friend quests and probably more stuff i can't remember now. the article does cover quite a few examples and i like how the author hints at the chance that, at times, he'd probably be better of not maintaining his streak as that alone ends up resulting in an output that's not desirable (eg. stackoverflow answers with little value). however he left out some cases where gamification is tied to a normally positive impact like step counters (ignoring the data collection).
- atomicfiredoll 3y ago
  I've been very skeptical of gamification ever since seeing a marketing agency constantly pitch it as a way to increase user engagement and sales. Now it's a red flag that makes me ask, "what are you trying to manipulate me in to buying or doing?" The experience has been impactful enough that even I stopped caring as much about "achievements" in actual games. Duolingo is interesting because it shows me I'll still engage with gamification if my goals align, but all those mechanics become a bit heavy. When I want flashcards and grammar lessons, getting a game to manage pushed me away. Then, when I realized our goals didn't align due to Duolingo's ceiling, it didn't seem worth being pressed to such an uncomfortable degree. I won't let myself be mentally abused by a cartoon owl.
  - scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
    You are on point I think - 10-15 years ago gamification became a generally fashionable thing to pursue to drive engagement, consumption and market shit. But most of it doesn’t really work because it’s not usually implemented very well. This is what we had initially with our medical training example - the developers just slapped some trophies and achievements and expected it to just work. Of course when we started user testing we found that people agreed with the general idea but didn’t really use it and found the clutter confusing. We’re still working on having gamification because we really do just want them to feel like it is a game, but it’s no easy feat to do it well. Thankfully with hard evidence from all the user testing we have the arguments to dial it back.
- itairal 3y ago
  It seems to me gamification is a feature in some situations, a bug in other situations and with no uniformity between two people. I despise the upvote/karma bullshit when it comes to discussions. It completely changes how people think and interact. The "witty" mention from the author is so cringe to me. The average person is just not a comedian and it is really the main reason I never use Reddit. To me, Reddit is an engine of non-comedians trying to be witty and funny playing an upvote game. The worst part is I imagine many are like the unfunny person who thinks they are funny because people fake laugh at their jokes because otherwise the interaction is just uncomfortable given the volume of bad jokes from the non-comedian. It all becomes self reinforcing in an awful way. That is so different than something like duolingo that is motivating just to do a little bit of work that you might otherwise would not have and keeps bad streaks from forming. I just experienced this using Anki where all of the sudden I haven't practiced my language in 2 weeks but my language of choice is not on duolingo.
devjab 3y ago
I spent almost a decade in public sector digitalisation in Denmark as a software developer, enterprise architect and later manager, and you wouldn’t believe the amount of gamification attempts that I have seen fail. I’m not sure where they come from. Ok, maybe I should clarify that. I understand how gamification is a very effective psychological tool to get people to spend a lot of time on things they wouldn’t otherwise spend time on. Which means they are great tools for making money on various things, but I never understood how gamification made its way into anything “positive”. Positive is maybe the wrong word, but I’m not sure how else to put it. The incentive to put gamification into public sector digitisation is basically always good. You did it because you wanted better surgeons. We did it because we wanted people to take their medicine, the jobless to get jobs, parents to take more interest in their children and so on. Basically all good intentions, but the tool isn’t for good intentions. It’s a tool to make people spend time on something they might not want to spend time on, so why did we ever think it would be a fitting tool for our good intentions? The results were always somewhat similar to yours. Recipients engaged more on the whole. There were rebels, people who gamed the systems and a range of other outliners, but as a whole people engaged more. The process also failed to cultivate any of the developments that the process people had hoped for. I was never really surprised to see the attempts fail. I know I’m a little “special” in that I have ADHD, and that it manifests in a way where it’s basically impossible for me to engage in anything I find boring. So aside from being terrible at meetings (and yes, I quickly quit management), it also renders me sort of immune to gamification while also being weirdly inflicted by it as anyone with ADHD will likely attest to. Anyway, those systems, the ones that give you a “win-streak” for taking your medicine every day, they aren’t fun. I want the streak, but I also don’t care because it’s not fun, and so I forget to take my medicine just as much, and at some point, it becomes more fun to break the streak. All of this is obviously very anecdotal, but my personal experience with these systems, and how they aren’t actually fun, seems to correlate with how they seem to fail to incentivise the development their creators want, unless that development is for people to spend a lot of money on video games. I do wonder if there is any actual science on the subject, it would be interesting to see if my anecdotal stories here are just silly stories. They likely are, there must be a reason “gamification” won the hearts and minds of good intended, highly educated and very professional people who want to use the methods for good things.
rapnie 3y ago
> I think this article is written a bit like that cash register anecdote. There is no conclusion other than examples why you are this way. Why do you think you are like this? Hints at the bottom, maybe: "There are Amazon affiliate links on this page."

rmvt 3y ago

> For me gamification turns some things into a slog. same for me. i admit it still feels nice to "watch the number go up", mostly on content platforms with a social component to it (hn, reddit, stackoverflow) as you feel whatever you've said has either been useful to, or at least resonated with someone. as social creatures it's only normal to seek some sort of validation. i think the only gamification set of features i've fallen for in the recent years has been duolingo, which has me practicing every day, even if just for 3-5 minutes. the way they've done it is quite interesting as they have what i'd call different levels of gamification you can buy into. the most basic one being your daily streak but then you have stuff like daily quests, monthly badges, league standings, friend quests and probably more stuff i can't remember now. the article does cover quite a few examples and i like how the author hints at the chance that, at times, he'd probably be better of not maintaining his streak as that alone ends up resulting in an output that's not desirable (eg. stackoverflow answers with little value). however he left out some cases where gamification is tied to a normally positive impact like step counters (ignoring the data collection).

atomicfiredoll 3y ago
I've been very skeptical of gamification ever since seeing a marketing agency constantly pitch it as a way to increase user engagement and sales. Now it's a red flag that makes me ask, "what are you trying to manipulate me in to buying or doing?" The experience has been impactful enough that even I stopped caring as much about "achievements" in actual games. Duolingo is interesting because it shows me I'll still engage with gamification if my goals align, but all those mechanics become a bit heavy. When I want flashcards and grammar lessons, getting a game to manage pushed me away. Then, when I realized our goals didn't align due to Duolingo's ceiling, it didn't seem worth being pressed to such an uncomfortable degree. I won't let myself be mentally abused by a cartoon owl.
- scyzoryk_xyz 3y ago
  You are on point I think - 10-15 years ago gamification became a generally fashionable thing to pursue to drive engagement, consumption and market shit. But most of it doesn’t really work because it’s not usually implemented very well. This is what we had initially with our medical training example - the developers just slapped some trophies and achievements and expected it to just work. Of course when we started user testing we found that people agreed with the general idea but didn’t really use it and found the clutter confusing. We’re still working on having gamification because we really do just want them to feel like it is a game, but it’s no easy feat to do it well. Thankfully with hard evidence from all the user testing we have the arguments to dial it back.
itairal 3y ago
It seems to me gamification is a feature in some situations, a bug in other situations and with no uniformity between two people. I despise the upvote/karma bullshit when it comes to discussions. It completely changes how people think and interact. The "witty" mention from the author is so cringe to me. The average person is just not a comedian and it is really the main reason I never use Reddit. To me, Reddit is an engine of non-comedians trying to be witty and funny playing an upvote game. The worst part is I imagine many are like the unfunny person who thinks they are funny because people fake laugh at their jokes because otherwise the interaction is just uncomfortable given the volume of bad jokes from the non-comedian. It all becomes self reinforcing in an awful way. That is so different than something like duolingo that is motivating just to do a little bit of work that you might otherwise would not have and keeps bad streaks from forming. I just experienced this using Anki where all of the sudden I haven't practiced my language in 2 weeks but my language of choice is not on duolingo.

devjab 3y ago

I spent almost a decade in public sector digitalisation in Denmark as a software developer, enterprise architect and later manager, and you wouldn’t believe the amount of gamification attempts that I have seen fail. I’m not sure where they come from. Ok, maybe I should clarify that. I understand how gamification is a very effective psychological tool to get people to spend a lot of time on things they wouldn’t otherwise spend time on. Which means they are great tools for making money on various things, but I never understood how gamification made its way into anything “positive”. Positive is maybe the wrong word, but I’m not sure how else to put it. The incentive to put gamification into public sector digitisation is basically always good. You did it because you wanted better surgeons. We did it because we wanted people to take their medicine, the jobless to get jobs, parents to take more interest in their children and so on. Basically all good intentions, but the tool isn’t for good intentions. It’s a tool to make people spend time on something they might not want to spend time on, so why did we ever think it would be a fitting tool for our good intentions? The results were always somewhat similar to yours. Recipients engaged more on the whole. There were rebels, people who gamed the systems and a range of other outliners, but as a whole people engaged more. The process also failed to cultivate any of the developments that the process people had hoped for. I was never really surprised to see the attempts fail. I know I’m a little “special” in that I have ADHD, and that it manifests in a way where it’s basically impossible for me to engage in anything I find boring. So aside from being terrible at meetings (and yes, I quickly quit management), it also renders me sort of immune to gamification while also being weirdly inflicted by it as anyone with ADHD will likely attest to. Anyway, those systems, the ones that give you a “win-streak” for taking your medicine every day, they aren’t fun. I want the streak, but I also don’t care because it’s not fun, and so I forget to take my medicine just as much, and at some point, it becomes more fun to break the streak. All of this is obviously very anecdotal, but my personal experience with these systems, and how they aren’t actually fun, seems to correlate with how they seem to fail to incentivise the development their creators want, unless that development is for people to spend a lot of money on video games. I do wonder if there is any actual science on the subject, it would be interesting to see if my anecdotal stories here are just silly stories. They likely are, there must be a reason “gamification” won the hearts and minds of good intended, highly educated and very professional people who want to use the methods for good things.

rapnie 3y ago

> I think this article is written a bit like that cash register anecdote. There is no conclusion other than examples why you are this way. Why do you think you are like this? Hints at the bottom, maybe: "There are Amazon affiliate links on this page."