Juho Hamari

Does Gamification Work? -- A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification

This paper reviews peer-reviewed empirical studies on gamification. We create a framework for examining the effects of gamification by drawing from the definitions of gamification and the discussion on motivational affordances. The literature review covers results, independent variables (examined motivational affordances), dependent variables (examined psychological/behavioral outcomes from gamification), the contexts of gamification, and types of studies performed on the gamified systems. The paper examines the state of current research on the topic and points out gaps in existing literature. The review indicates that gamification provides positive effects, however, the effects are greatly dependent on the context in which the gamification is being implemented, as well as on the users using it. The findings of the review provide insight for further studies as well as for the design of gamified systems.

The sharing economy: Why people participate in collaborative consumption

Information and communications technologies (ICTs) have enabled the rise of so‐called “Collaborative Consumption” (CC): the peer‐to‐peer‐based activity of obtaining, giving, or sharing the access to goods and services, coordinated through community‐based online services. CC has been expected to alleviate societal problems such as hyper‐consumption, pollution, and poverty by lowering the cost of economic coordination within communities. However, beyond anecdotal evidence, there is a dearth of understanding why people participate in CC. Therefore, in this article we investigate peoples motivations to participate in CC. The study employs survey data (N = 168) gathered from people registered onto a CC site. The results show that participation in CC is motivated by many factors such as its sustainability, enjoyment of the activity as well as economic gains. An interesting detail in the result is that sustainability is not directly associated with participation unless it is at the same time also associated with positive attitudes towards CC. This suggests that sustainability might only be an important factor for those people for whom ecological consumption is important. Furthermore, the results suggest that in CC an attitude‐behavior gap might exist; people perceive the activity positively and say good things about it, but this good attitude does not necessary translate into action.

Demographic differences in perceived benefits from gamification

In recent years, ‘‘gamification’’ has been proposed as a solution for engaging people in individually and socially sustainable behaviors, such as exercise, sustainable consumption, and education. This paper studies demographic differences in perceived benefits from gamification in the context of exercise. On the basis of data gathered via an online survey (N = 195) from an exercise gamification service Fitocracy, we examine the effects of gender, age, and time using the service on social, hedonic, and utilitarian benefits and facilitating features of gamifying exercise. The results indicate that perceived enjoyment and usefulness of the gamification decline with use, suggesting that users might experience novelty effects from the service. The findings show that women report greater social benefits from the use of gamification. Further, ease of use of gamification is shown to decline with age. The implications of the findings are discussed.

Do Persuasive Technologies Persuade? - A Review of Empirical Studies

This paper reviews the current body of empirical research on persuasive technologies 95 studies. In recent years, technology has been increasingly harnessed to persuade and motivate people to engage in various behaviors. This phenomenon has also attracted substantial scholarly interest over the last decade. This review examines the results, methods, measured behavioral and psychological outcomes, affordances in implemented persuasive systems, and domains of the studies in the current body of research on persuasive technologies. The reviewed studies have investigated diverse persuasive systems/designs, psychological factors, and behavioral outcomes. The results of the reviewed studies were categorized into fully positive, partially positive, and negative and/or no effects. This review provides an overview of the state of empirical research regarding persuasive technologies. The paper functions as a reference in positioning future research within the research stream of persuasive technologies in terms of the domain, the persuasive stimuli and the psychological and behavioral outcomes.

Do badges increase user activity? A field experiment on the effects of gamification

During recent years, the practice of adding game design to non-game services has gained a relatively large amount of attention. Popular discussion connects gamification to increased user engagement, service profitability, goal commitment and the overall betterment of various behavioral outcomes. However, there is still an absence of a coherent and ample body of empirical evidence that would confirm such expectations. To this end, this paper reports the results of a 2year (1+1year between-group) field experiment in gamifying a service by implementing a game mechanic called badges. During the experiment a pre-implementation group (N=1410) was monitored for 1year. After the implementation, the post-implementation (the gamified condition) group (N=1579) was monitored for another full year. Results show that users in the gamified condition were significantly more likely to post trade proposals, carry out transactions, comment on proposals and generally use the service in a more active way. Effects of gamification on user activity are studied in a sharing economy service.Pre-implementation group (N=1410) was followed for 1year before the implementation.Post-implementation group (N=1579) was followed for 1year after the implementation.We compared trade listings, transactions, social interaction and total activity.The results show significant positive effect on all of the four dependent variables.

Social Network Games: Players' Perspectives

This article presents the results of an interview study on how people perceive and play social network games on Facebook. During recent years, social games have become the biggest genre of games if measured by the number of registered users. These games are designed to cater for large audiences in their design principles and values, a free-to-play revenue model and social network integration that make them easily approachable and playable with friends. Although these games have made the headlines and have been seen to revolutionize the game industry, we still lack an understanding of how people perceive and play them. For this article, we interviewed 18 Finnish Facebook users from a larger questionnaire respondent pool of 134 people. This study focuses on a user-centric approach, highlighting the emergent experiences and the meaning-making of social games players. Our findings reveal that social games are usually regarded as single player games with a social twist, and as suffering partly from their design characteristics, while still providing a wide spectrum of playful experiences for different needs. The free-to-play revenue model provides an easy access to social games, but people disagreed with paying for additional content for several reasons.

A definition for gamification: anchoring gamification in the service marketing literature

Abstract“Gamification” has gained considerable scholarly and practitioner attention; however, the discussion in academia has been largely confined to the human–computer interaction and game studies domains. Since gamification is often used in service design, it is important that the concept be brought in line with the service literature. So far, though, there has been a dearth of such literature. This article is an attempt to tie in gamification with service marketing theory, which conceptualizes the consumer as a co-producer of the service. It presents games as service systems composed of operant and operand resources. It proposes a definition for gamification, one that emphasizes its experiential nature. The definition highlights four important aspects of gamification: affordances, psychological mediators, goals of gamification and the context of gamification. Using the definition the article identifies four possible gamifying actors and examines gamification as communicative staging of the service environment.

What Is eSports and Why Do People Watch It

Purpose: In this study we investigate why do people spectate eSports on the internet. We define eSports (electronic sports) as a form of sports where the primary aspects of the sport are facilitated by electronic systems; the input of players and teams as well as the output of the eSports system are mediated by human-computer interfaces. In more practical terms, eSports refer to competitive video gaming (broadcasted on the internet).Methodology: We employed the MSSC (Motivations Scale for Sports Consumption) which is one of the most widely applied measurement instruments for sports consumption in general. The questionnaire was designed and pre-tested before distributing to target respondents (N=888). The reliability and validity of the instrument both met the commonly accepted guidelines. The model was assessed first by examining its measurement model and then the structural model.Findings: The results indicate that escapism, acquiring knowledge about the games being played, novelty and eSports athlete aggressiveness were found to positively predict eSport spectating frequency.Originality: During recent years, eSports (electronic sports) and video game streaming have become rapidly growing forms of new media in the internet driven by the growing provenance of (online) games and online broadcasting technologies. Today, hundreds of millions of people spectate eSports. The present investigation presents a large study on gratification-related determinants of why people spectate eSports on the internet. Moreover, the study proposes a definition for eSports and further discusses how eSports can be seen as a form of sports.

Measuring flow in gamification

Psychometric properties of the DFS-2 are examined in gamification of exercise.A good model fit for the original DFS-2 structure is found.A respecification of the model is created to reach higher level of goodness-of-fit.The data suggest a division of the components of flow into conditions and outcomes.The study also shows which components of flow are salient in gamification. This paper measures flow in the context of gamification and investigates the psychometric properties of the Dispositional Flow Scale-2 (DFS-2). We employ data gathered from users of an exercise gamification service (N=200). The results show that the original DFS-2 factorial structure does result in a similar model fit as the original work. However, we also present a factorial respecification that satisfies more recent model fit thresholds. Beyond validating the original DFS-2 instrument in the context of gamification, the psychometric analysis and the respecifications suggest that the components of flow divide into highly correlated conditions of flow (which were also found to be more salient in the context of gamification: autotelic experience, balance of skill and challenge, control, clear goals, and feedback) and into possible outcomes (merging action-awareness, concentration, loss of sense of time, and loss of self-consciousness) from achieving flow.

Why do people watch others play video games? An empirical study on the motivations of Twitch users

This study investigates why people choose to watch others play video games, on services such as Twitch. Through a questionnaire study (N=1097), we examine five distinct types of motivations from the uses and gratifications perspective: cognitive, affective, personal integrative, social integrative and tension release. Information seeking is shown to be positively associated with the amount of hours that users chose to spend on the service, as well as the amount of individual streamers they choose to watch. Furthermore, we find that tension release, social integrative and affective motivations are positively associated with how many hours people watch streams. We also find that social integrative motivations are the primary predictor of subscription behaviour. This study lays the groundwork for understanding the motivations to consume this emerging form of new media in the context of online games and video streams. The study lays groundwork for understanding video stream consumer motivations.Tension release strong positive impactor on hours watched for video game streams.Social integrative motivations found to impact subscription behaviour.Informating seeking shown to impact number of streamers watched.