Studying gamification: The effect of rewards and incentives on motivation

Gamification is the use of game design elements in non-game contexts to encourage a desired type of behavior. In recent years gamification systems have been applied in marketing as well as non-business contexts such as politics, health, or interactive systems and education. Although gamification is a new concept, it is gaining momentum; technology industry research firm Gartner estimates that by 2015, some 50 % of large companies will use the techniques for at least one business process, and M2 Research estimates revenue from gamification software, consulting and marketing will reach $938 million by 2014, up from less than $100 million in 2011. The objective in this chapter is to form theoretical principles for gamification in practice. Based on the role of rewards and incentives on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, we offer a framework for building feedback mechanisms. The chapter is built upon three components: a model of motivation in games; an overview of incentives and rewards used in games and their role in creating motivation, while tying these rewards into the motivation model; classifying game achievements according to their characteristics (tangibility, exchangeability etc.). Finally some future research directions are presented.