Does gamification work? A literature review of empirical studies on gamification
Hamari, Koivisto and Sarsa reviewed 24 peer-reviewed empirical studies of gamification. Most reported some positive result, chiefly in engagement, enjoyment, motivation and how much people used or contributed to a service, and the review found that the effect depended on the context and on the users. Some gains faded over time, and services built around strictly rational tasks seemed harder to gamify. The authors list limits in the evidence: small samples, few validated measures, experiments without control groups, several game elements tested together, and short study periods in which novelty may have played a part.
Hamari, Koivisto and Sarsa reviewed 24 peer-reviewed empirical studies of gamification. Most reported some positive result, chiefly in engagement, enjoyment, motivation and how much people used or contributed to a service, and the review found that the effect depended on the context and on the users. Some gains faded over time, and services built around strictly rational tasks seemed harder to gamify. The authors list limits in the evidence: small samples, few validated measures, experiments without control groups, several game elements tested together, and short study periods in which novelty may have played a part.
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Proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3025-3034. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2014.377 https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2014.377