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Comment by scyzoryk_xyz | Hacker News Reader

I think this article is written a bit like that cash register anecdote. There is no conclusion other than examples why you are this way.

Why do you think you are like this? Not everyone is - I’m not.

But I’m currently working on a rewards gamification system in a surgical-medical training device and we’re discovering in user-testing that while yes, medical students do fixate on optimizing their scores, the system doesn’t necessarily incentivize the sort of development we would like to see. Kind of like the cash register anecdote - some people get stuck. And then there are also people who are turned off by this perspective of having to perform like this.

I think it has to do with a certain set of rules that some people are exposed to, but not others. For me gamification turns some things into a slog.

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> For me gamification turns some things into a slog.

same for me. i admit it still feels nice to "watch the number go up", mostly on content platforms with a social component to it (hn, reddit, stackoverflow) as you feel whatever you've said has either been useful to, or at least resonated with someone. as social creatures it's only normal to seek some sort of validation.

i think the only gamification set of features i've fallen for in the recent years has been duolingo, which has me practicing every day, even if just for 3-5 minutes. the way they've done it is quite interesting as they have what i'd call different levels of gamification you can buy into. the most basic one being your daily streak but then you have stuff like daily quests, monthly badges, league standings, friend quests and probably more stuff i can't remember now.

the article does cover quite a few examples and i like how the author hints at the chance that, at times, he'd probably be better of not maintaining his streak as that alone ends up resulting in an output that's not desirable (eg. stackoverflow answers with little value). however he left out some cases where gamification is tied to a normally positive impact like step counters (ignoring the data collection).

I've been very skeptical of gamification ever since seeing a marketing agency constantly pitch it as a way to increase user engagement and sales. Now it's a red flag that makes me ask, "what are you trying to manipulate me in to buying or doing?" The experience has been impactful enough that even I stopped caring as much about "achievements" in actual games.

Duolingo is interesting because it shows me I'll still engage with gamification if my goals align, but all those mechanics become a bit heavy. When I want flashcards and grammar lessons, getting a game to manage pushed me away. Then, when I realized our goals didn't align due to Duolingo's ceiling, it didn't seem worth being pressed to such an uncomfortable degree. I won't let myself be mentally abused by a cartoon owl.

You are on point I think - 10-15 years ago gamification became a generally fashionable thing to pursue to drive engagement, consumption and market shit. But most of it doesn’t really work because it’s not usually implemented very well. This is what we had initially with our medical training example - the developers just slapped some trophies and achievements and expected it to just work. Of course when we started user testing we found that people agreed with the general idea but didn’t really use it and found the clutter confusing. We’re still working on having gamification because we really do just want them to feel like it is a game, but it’s no easy feat to do it well. Thankfully with hard evidence from all the user testing we have the arguments to dial it back.

It seems to me gamification is a feature in some situations, a bug in other situations and with no uniformity between two people.

I despise the upvote/karma bullshit when it comes to discussions. It completely changes how people think and interact. The "witty" mention from the author is so cringe to me. The average person is just not a comedian and it is really the main reason I never use Reddit. To me, Reddit is an engine of non-comedians trying to be witty and funny playing an upvote game. The worst part is I imagine many are like the unfunny person who thinks they are funny because people fake laugh at their jokes because otherwise the interaction is just uncomfortable given the volume of bad jokes from the non-comedian. It all becomes self reinforcing in an awful way.

That is so different than something like duolingo that is motivating just to do a little bit of work that you might otherwise would not have and keeps bad streaks from forming. I just experienced this using Anki where all of the sudden I haven't practiced my language in 2 weeks but my language of choice is not on duolingo.

> I think this article is written a bit like that cash register anecdote. There is no conclusion other than examples why you are this way. Why do you think you are like this?

Hints at the bottom, maybe: "There are Amazon affiliate links on this page."

I spent almost a decade in public sector digitalisation in Denmark as a software developer, enterprise architect and later manager, and you wouldn’t believe the amount of gamification attempts that I have seen fail. I’m not sure where they come from. Ok, maybe I should clarify that. I understand how gamification is a very effective psychological tool to get people to spend a lot of time on things they wouldn’t otherwise spend time on. Which means they are great tools for making money on various things, but I never understood how gamification made its way into anything “positive”. Positive is maybe the wrong word, but I’m not sure how else to put it. The incentive to put gamification into public sector digitisation is basically always good. You did it because you wanted better surgeons. We did it because we wanted people to take their medicine, the jobless to get jobs, parents to take more interest in their children and so on. Basically all good intentions, but the tool isn’t for good intentions. It’s a tool to make people spend time on something they might not want to spend time on, so why did we ever think it would be a fitting tool for our good intentions?

The results were always somewhat similar to yours. Recipients engaged more on the whole. There were rebels, people who gamed the systems and a range of other outliners, but as a whole people engaged more. The process also failed to cultivate any of the developments that the process people had hoped for. I was never really surprised to see the attempts fail. I know I’m a little “special” in that I have ADHD, and that it manifests in a way where it’s basically impossible for me to engage in anything I find boring. So aside from being terrible at meetings (and yes, I quickly quit management), it also renders me sort of immune to gamification while also being weirdly inflicted by it as anyone with ADHD will likely attest to. Anyway, those systems, the ones that give you a “win-streak” for taking your medicine every day, they aren’t fun. I want the streak, but I also don’t care because it’s not fun, and so I forget to take my medicine just as much, and at some point, it becomes more fun to break the streak.

All of this is obviously very anecdotal, but my personal experience with these systems, and how they aren’t actually fun, seems to correlate with how they seem to fail to incentivise the development their creators want, unless that development is for people to spend a lot of money on video games. I do wonder if there is any actual science on the subject, it would be interesting to see if my anecdotal stories here are just silly stories. They likely are, there must be a reason “gamification” won the hearts and minds of good intended, highly educated and very professional people who want to use the methods for good things.

There is a good bit of research in the medical field. Eg here's a meta study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33128662/

I found this bit of the abstract interesting:

> However, most studies lacked well-defined control groups and did not apply and/or report theory to understand underlying processes.

This paper seems to be a good overview of the theories underlying gamification

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756322...

> Gamification can illustrate goals and their relevance, nudge users through guided paths, give users immediate feedback, reinforce good performance and simplify content to manageable tasks. Gamification mechanics can allow users to pursue individual goals and choose between different progress paths, while the system can adapt complexity to the user's abilities.

The above section is extremely interesting and matches my experience. Where gamification has really excelled in incentivising me to continue is when I had a path to follow, I can see progress and improvement.

A good example is the Odin project study paths, or Khan Academy courses. At their core they represent a skill tree that you progress through and use.

Giving me badges (github/SO), accomplishments (Steam)for the sake of magic points, are all in my opinion useless non engaging and shallow. In my opinion SO is the biggest culprit in shallow badges.

> A good example is the Odin project study paths, or Khan Academy courses.

One other example that has a few of my friends hooked is Duolingo.

Learning another language was something they'd wanted to do, and had tried to do in the past. They just had trouble sticking to putting the work in.

But Duolingo's particular brand of gamification has got them doing the thing they always wanted to do, but never got round to before, and they now compare streaks of activity of more than a year.

Gamification definitely works better when it's in conjunction with something you already want to do, or feel like you should do. It gives you an excuse to push a little harder to keep on task. It mostly seems to not work at all when it's for something you don't care about.

But that goes against @devjab's experience upthread:

> [gamification] isn’t for good intentions. It’s a tool to make people spend time on something they might not want to spend time on, so why did we ever think it would be a fitting tool for our good intentions?

> [gamification systems] seem to fail to incentivise the development their creators want, unless that development is for people to spend a lot of money on video games.

(Unless Duolingo counts as a video game? But even so, I don't think people spend a lot of (any?) money on it?)

While I agree with most of what was written by devjab, this:

> It’s a tool to make people spend time on something they might not want to spend time on.

I disagree with. It's a tool, its usage can differ wildly between orgs, people. I think it's clear that gamification can be used for good from the examples people have provided. Of course the opposite is also true.

Thank you for these - they will come in very handy!

I’m not so sure that it won everyone’s minds, more that it’s something that sounds like a generally good idea in a meeting. Like, who would go against making unfun things fun by making them toy-like!

I’m similar to you, ADHD and whatnot. I was generally weary of using gamification in our use case, but surprise surprise - med students aren’t the rebel type! Only problem is - we would have to invest insane resources and research into figuring out how to have them do exactly what we want. Currently we’re leaning towards keeping gamification parts but only sparingly sprinkling them in just several key moments of achievement.

> Basically all good intentions, but the tool isn’t for good intentions. It’s a tool to make people spend time on something they might not want to spend time on, so why did we ever think it would be a fitting tool for our good intentions?

This is a great quote - we want them to spend time practicing, and our devices are somewhat cool but get boring pretty quick. So it helps to activate them, but now we also don’t want them to fixate on just the devices to get the perfect score ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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