Quantifying the Effect of Gamification?

September 28, 2012 7:24 AM

Is there good quantitative research on the behavioral effect of gamification and achievements?

There's a lot of talk about gamification and achievements, and what I'm looking for is research that shows the effectiveness in practice. I've found lots of qualitative analysis and rhetorical critiques, but I am more interested in data.

I've searched on Google Scholar and on Google itself, and found a few small tidbits but nothing really rigorous.

Some examples of things I'm interested in (numbers are completely made up):

• After we deployed xyz feature, we saw a 10% increase in retention / exploration / time spent for 25% of the population
• After Blizzard deployed achievements in World of Warcraft, 75% of players were highly favorable towards them. Today, it is 60%.
• Analyzing actual behavior of players and achievements unlocked, 5% of players are highly motivated by achievements, 25% moderately motivated, and 70% don't care.
• In a controlled study, we found that people using FitBit exercise 15% more than people who don't

posted by jasonhong to Science & Nature (4 answers total)

Best answer: There might be links to useful studies in these blog posts about gamification in (mostly corporate) elearning.
posted by ceiba at 8:27 AM on September 28, 2012

Best answer: There are a number of recent studies on the effects of the WiiFit (and similar systems) on weight loss and health -- hopefully those include enough gamification to be relevant? Some links: the WiiFit and childhood obesity. Active video games and health, a summary in NYT Well Blog. A discussion of exergaming effectiveness, includes links to recent studies.
posted by pie ninja at 9:11 AM on September 28, 2012

Look at the SIGCHI conference
posted by victory_laser at 2:27 PM on September 28, 2012

Response by poster: Thanks all, appreciate it!
posted by jasonhong at 7:29 AM on October 1, 2012