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.

Keywords

Computer scienceHuman–computer interactionPhenomenonRelation (database)Game mechanicsGame designVideo gameGame DeveloperMultimediaGame art designVideo game designMetagamingSoftwareGame theoryNon-cooperative gameEpistemologySimultaneous game

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Publication Info

Year
2011
Type
article
Pages
9-15
Citations
7234
Access
Closed

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Sebastian Deterding, Dan Dixon, Rilla Khaled et al. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness. , 9-15. https://doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040

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DOI
10.1145/2181037.2181040