As far as the working world, there are some fascinating Soviet attempts with that. I wrote a brief bit about it at http://www.kmjn.org/notes/soviet_gamification

As far as the working world, there are some fascinating Soviet attempts with that. I wrote a brief bit about it at http://www.kmjn.org/notes/soviet_gamification.html http://www.kmjn.org/notes/soviet_gamification.html based on some preliminary research, but I'd really like to read a proper analysis written by a Soviet-history expert. It's obvious why the USSR found the idea enticing: since they didn't have tools like higher pay or bonuses to reward workers with, they hoped that they could incentivize workers with some kind of inner cognitive motivation, patterned after whatever secret sauce works in games and sports. It's probably fair to say that their attempts were of decidedly limited success, though it's less clear whether it was the idea that was bad, the Soviet implementation of the idea, the context, or some combination. The conventional explanation among capitalist economists has been that the idea was bad: you can't incentivize workers with games, but only with actual payment, so of course the Soviet attempts failed. But now a bunch of businesses, presumably run by capitalists, seem to think that the idea is worth a second look, which suggests that either they're wrong (and it's not worth a second look, for the same reasons it wasn't good the first time), or the answer for why the USSR's model didn't work is more complex.