I’ve heard this comment, often from bemused parents or spouses of gamers: “If you spent as much energy on your (homework, job, marriage, business, health) as you do in (WoW, Starcraft, Call of Duty, Second Life), you’d be a (genius, billionaire, superstar)”. This is missing the point entirely. The reason why people spend time on game achievements instead of real-life achievements is because real-life achievements are 1) hard 2) perhaps a lot harder for you than they are for other people 3) might actually not work out. Most people are not up for that level of stress and uncertainty in their lives, and this is why games are so appealing.

With games, it barely matters who you are or what resources/abilities you have… if you put in the time, you’ll be able to “succeed”. The most popular games virtually guarantee success. Take WoW for example: A person with very little ambition, goals, prospects, or resources can become an epic figure who cannot fail. Simply by performing tasks that scale to their ability, the player is able to advance and become fantastically powerful. They’ll get to experience a level of success and accomplishment that they may never feel in their real life, and that feeling is virtually guaranteed.

No amount of gamification is going to provide that kind of incentive and reward around real-world stuff, and more importantly we can’t provide that level of certainty to the outcome.

Ist Gamification nur ein "schillerndes Buzzword"? Ich sehe durchaus auch die Grenzen des Gamification-Hypes aber für Community-basierte Geschäftsmodelle sowie Netzwerkmarketing fassen die "Downsides" nicht.