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

Affiliated Institutions

Related Publications

GameFlow

Although player enjoyment is central to computer games, there is currently no accepted model of player enjoyment in games. There are many heuristics in the literature, based on ...

2005 Computers in entertainment 2008 citations

Publication Info

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

External Links

Social Impact

Social media, news, blog, policy document mentions

Citation Metrics

7234
OpenAlex

Cite This

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

Identifiers

DOI
10.1145/2181037.2181040