Gamification quite rightfully takes a lot of flak. Earning meaningless shiny coins in order to compete for some position in the leaderboards makes the process f

Gamification quite rightfully takes a lot of flak. Earning meaningless shiny coins in order to compete for some position in the leaderboards makes the process feel somewhat shallow, even silly. Successful games don't have this problem. However, I don't believe that the emotional rewards of playing a well-crafted game that was at least tangentially based on some otherwise boring real-world activity are meaningless. Some people might say that the folks who made DragonBox have essentially 'gamified' the learning of basic algebra - but I'd say they did a pretty solid job. I don't get the sense of conceptual shallowness from it that is usually present in such games. Some things can be turned into games with an almost 1:1 map between game mechanics and the equivalent real world activity. Some games (like one I'm currently making, which involves somewhat more advanced mathematics) wouldn't work with such a map, but instead benefit from a more oblique approach. Consider how games like Sid Meier's Civilizations or Age of Empires teach history, or how the codex entries and galaxy map in Mass Effect might at least open some people's minds to concepts in frontier physics or planetary science, respectively. This is still quite unexplored territory. I believe similar things can be achieved for more precise and even advanced concepts, although by imparting a more refined understanding to the player. The key is to carefully choose small sections of a subject that are amenable to being mapped obliquely (not 1:1) to game mechanics, while being careful to make the 'game' part feel 100% genuine. The term 'gamification,' however, seems to imply that you can take a boring/repetitive/unpleasant thing in the real world, throw a half-decent game designer at it and some programmers, and you end up with a game that turns all aspects of that activity into something that not only produces the same real-world benefit, but is also fun. I don't think this is possible in general - only in very specific cases. The point is that the information cost of turning something into a game is not zero, and is measured by the degree of simplification and loss of rigour or real-world value. As long as the gamifiers are willing to make subjective calculations like these, I'm all for it, but not if they claim that the gamified thing is functionally equivalent to the real thing.