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From game design elements to gamefulness: defining "gamification"

Published: 28 September 2011 Publication History

Abstract

Recent years have seen a rapid proliferation of mass-market consumer software that takes inspiration from video games. Usually summarized as "gamification", this trend connects to a sizeable body of existing concepts and research in human-computer interaction and game studies, such as serious games, pervasive games, alternate reality games, or playful design. However, it is not clear how "gamification" relates to these, whether it denotes a novel phenomenon, and how to define it. Thus, in this paper we investigate "gamification" and the historical origins of the term in relation to precursors and similar concepts. It is suggested that "gamified" applications provide insight into novel, gameful phenomena complementary to playful phenomena. Based on our research, we propose a definition of "gamification" as the use of game design elements in non-game contexts.

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cover image ACM Other conferences
MindTrek '11: Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference: Envisioning Future Media Environments
September 2011
341 pages
ISBN:9781450308168
DOI:10.1145/2181037
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Published: 28 September 2011

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Author Tags

  1. alternate reality games
  2. game-based technologies
  3. gameful design
  4. gamefulness
  5. games
  6. gamification
  7. pervasive games
  8. play
  9. playful design
  10. playfulness
  11. serious games

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MindTrek '11
MindTrek '11: Academic MindTrek 2011
September 28 - 30, 2011
Tampere, Finland

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  • (2025)Software solutions for newcomers’ onboarding in software projects: A systematic literature reviewInformation and Software Technology10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107568177(107568)Online publication date: Jan-2025
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