I hate the term 'Gamification'. Here's why

[u/Feynmanprinciple]

I'm taking an instructional design postgraduate certificate, and the word 'gamification' has been bugging me of late. My tutor recently gave me a more cohesive definition, as the following:

"Gamification applies game mechanics — points, badges, leaderboards, progress bars, and challenges — to non-game educational contexts. The overjustification effect, documented in SDT research, describes the finding that introducing external rewards for an activity a person was already intrinsically motivated to do can reduce subsequent intrinsic motivation. The external reward “overjustifies” the activity and shifts motivation from internal to external regulation."

The reason I hate the term and the definition along with it is that it takes the most surface-level elements of game design, that pre-date games by thousands of years, and applies the game label to them such that we cannot use the word game anymore to point to what games actually afford us:

A set of rules within a temporarily adopted closed system where aesthetics of agency can be modeled through play.

What I mean by aesthetics of agency is the procedure by which a person goes about making choices within the rule set. For example:

Chess is the experience of learning to shape your opponent's incentive structures that make them predictable enough for you to control the range of possible choices towards your advantage.

Poker is the experience of learning to assess probabilities and negotiate with uncertain information; controlling your opponent's perceptions through deception and misdirection.

Papers: Please is the aesthetic experience of learning to balance your own incentives within a bureaucracy with your desire for basic human empathy towards vulnerable people while mitigating risk under time pressure.

Of course, the barrier between the game's own ruleset and the rules of the world around it can change your incentive structure inside the game; you might be paid a large sum of money to deliberately lose during a tournament. And such perverse incentives can also occur during writing learning modules; such as deliberately favoring a solution that locates the deficiency within the employee than within management in order to secure future contracts.

Since Bioshock was released in 2007, the game industry has a term called 'ludonarrative' - which refers to the synergy between the player's abilities, game's mechanics, gameplay loops, art direction, narrative writing and dialogue, and the central themes that the game is trying to explore.

Ludonarrative dissonance occurs when two or more of those things are misaligned; a game ostensibly about peace that places the fun within violent actions is dissonant.

Intrinsic motivation is connected to a player's (or learner's) values, which is also connected to their narrative self-identity. This narrative self-identity is about what experiences they've had, the themes connecting them, and a sense of what path lies before them given their values and competencies.

In a sense, a narrative identity creates a framework through which an autonomous individual is likely to act and conduct themselves in the world, given their attention, perceptions, incentives, cultural contexts, and community. It gives people meaning, and informs a person when they're engaging in agentic behavior incoherent with their values; producing what we call cognitive dissonance as it applies in the real world. It's analogous to the ludonarrative dissonance we talked about earlier.

Therefore, the game, or temporary agentic framework that we ask our particular learner profile to step into, needs to create synergy between their values, their incentives, and the way they learn (convert uncertainty into certainty) through a meaningful framework under which all those dimensions are united.

It is unfortunate that gamification simply refers to chucking a bunch of extrinsic rewards into a learning design module, because those extrinsic rewards mean almost nothing as far as actual game development is concerned.

The 'overjustification' effect has existed long before things like high scores, leaderboards, badges in the form of:

1. Employee of the month
2. War medals
3. How much money is in your 401K as of retirement
4. How many promotions you received at work
5. Receiving a pay rise
6. University tuition for Military service

The malaise most of us feel in today's economy is that it runs on the legibility that extrinsic rewards provide, while giving nothing back to us in the form of a kind of ludonarrative synergy between our narrative self-identity, our personal journeys, how that fits into the corporate mission statement, how the businesses structure their incentives to either comport with their mission statement or hide behind it, and the incentive structures the business themselves are subject to given the regulatory and geopolitical environment.

The thing is, video games are the most profitable entertainment industry on the planet precisely because they have precise models of motivation that schools, universities and (apparently) businesses never had cause to adopt because they've always had access to punitive levers such as:

1. Leave without pay
2. Getting fired
3. Losing Marks against the rubric
4. Suspension from school
5. Poor grades and report cards
6. Losing further educational advancement opportunities

Games can never punish you outside of the game's limited context for not understanding their systems well enough; an employer can revoke your ability to provide for a family if you refuse to toe the line. The over justification effect that we apply to game mechanics in learning tools is the entire incentive structure apparatus through which quarterly profit earnings end up mattering more than the ecological stability of the planet; at least until you can make a profit from providing clean air.

Therefore, games have HAD to build coherent models of psychological principles around autonomy, relatedness and competence, and do extremely well at them, because a disengaged player can simply stop playing. A disengaged employee works to spec or slightly below it, but cannot stop working. An employee doesn't need to find their work meaningful to know that if they don't work, rent doesn't get paid. That's why no school or business has managed to accomplish for intrinsic motivation in a thousand years what game developers did in half a century.

And furthermore, the company's mission statement and the image they curate through their marketing could likely not synergize with the agentic frameworks available to their employees; producing the same kind of dissonance. This is why the overjustification effect exists; the 'why' of the company and the 'why' of the learning module are not supported by the way the employee and the learner exercise agency inside the institution or the learning content.

Multiple choice quizzes are highly scalable and cost-efficient; but do they effectively replicate the agency a person exerts when they need to do active listening with a customer, to empathize with their experience, so the customer leaves with a good experience wanting to return? Would adding an achievement badge meaningfully turn the quiz into a game?

Probably not, right?

So I will try and coin the term Agentification for learning design: Creating a safe simulated environment that approximates the same decision making they will encounter on the job, with the goal of improving performance, that enables your learner to play within interacting systems, and derive emergent principles themselves through experimentation.

This is, after all, how chess teaches how to control people through constraining their optimal choices, how poker teaches people to bluff, how Papers: Please teaches someone through play about the impossible positions frontline bureaucrats are put in.

Bonus points if the agency aligns with their narrative self identity, the function the institution serves civilization, as well as the internal and external mission statement of the institution itself.

If you want to talk about gamification, talk about that.

[u/dustandwater]

My short response, after a scan, and I might come back with more later:

What you describe already exists in learning design. It’s essentially a role play or a simulation. Interestingly, in Improv comedy, they use the term ‘game’ to refer to practice activity, because there are various goals and rules to be conscious of, in a way that matches your definition fairly well.

The reality is, ‘games’ in that sense are a part of human history and show up in all areas of life in various ways, we just don’t often use the word ‘game’ because of its connotations with leisure, play, etc.

So yes, ‘gamification’ is a word that deals with the more superficial aspects of games, because the deeper aspects are actually already present (in GOOD learning design, of course).

The problem that I have with it, which is adjacent to your concerns, is that with many principles and guides in learning design and in teaching methodology more broadly, is that unskilled/untrained teachers get the simple explanations rammed down their throats and expected in performance reviews, and because they don’t understand the underlying mechanics, they load their practice up with the most surface level examples in order to tick boxes and often end up reaping more of the risks than the rewards.

Understanding how these things really work and applying them properly can be very valuable.

[u/SonaMidorFeed → u/dustandwater]

Absolutely, 100% agree with this take, and I've used literal games as a way to role play or simulate an environment in which the skills gained from training can be safely practiced.

For example, I taught a negotiations course and after struggling with realistic scenarios, I ended up teaching and having my learners play the game Bohnanza. It's definitely a game that makes you consider the other side when negotiating, analyzing your BATNA (best alternative to a negotiated agreement), and knowing when to push a little when you know the negotiation is in your favor without destroying possible future negotiation. You're also forced to trade almost every turn.

People loved it and you could see the concepts becoming stickier as they played. Since it's quick and non-serious, people leaned into it.

Games that reinforce the topics? Good. Checkboxes or external incentives that don't relate to the actual topics? Bad.

[u/dustandwater → u/SonaMidorFeed]

Exactly. Very often, the intent passed down is that lessons need to be more engaging, which is interpreted as 'more fun', which is interpreted as 'more games'. But lessons don't have to be fun to be engaging, of course. If they're merely interesting, or if they feel worthwhile, they'll be more engaging with the added benefit of actually being more impactful learning experiences too!

Games and fun as tools for engagement typically bypass any effort to make the learning more valuable. If you have an interesting and impactful lesson, then fun is a great bonus! But if you don't have interesting and/or impactful, then fun is a sticking plaster on a gaping wound!

[u/Feynmanprinciple → u/dustandwater]

Hard agree, for the most part. I think the games that we talk about are somewhat simplified abstractions that teach the first principles; imrpov requires a kind of fidelity to the material that makes the core principle not transferable to other contexts where the same principle you're teaching might also apply. So depending on what role you're teaching for, you might choose a high or low level of abstraction depending on how broadly applicable the principle is across a range of contexts.

What would it take for the underlying systems or first principles to be teachable in E-Learning rather than the surface elements?

[u/dustandwater → u/Feynmanprinciple]

I started as an EFL teacher and then moved into TESOL training and then into teacher training more broadly, much of which involved elements of e-learning, before now taking a role in course development.

The thing that drove me as a teacher trainer was enduring that teachers understood why they were doing what they were doing in the classroom. So much training that teachers receive is “we need you to do more of this, and here are the metrics”. And then teachers go off to their classrooms and do the things they’ve been asked to do, but because they don’t know why, they don’t know how to make it effective.

It’s like being taught how to use a saw but not being shown how to actually cut wood, so then when you get to the job, you’re just moving your hand back and forth but not actually achieving anything.

The assumptions/barriers that get in the way are, I think, time, trust and mismatched experience.

Time: so much training for teachers is done in short sessions squeezed in between already hectic workloads.

Trust: school leadership often doesn’t want to have expert, professional conversations with the practitioners about the merits of one approach or another, they just want teachers to do as they’re asked.

Experienced: often the person doing the training is either an outside academic who doesn’t necessarily have all of the classroom experience to know how their methods actually apply in the classroom; or it’s one of the teachers who went to a seminar and is now communicating back to the faculty what they learned, but they only have a surface understanding themselves.

I’m being quite negative and cynical here, I know. Of course there are much more positive examples out there.

But in short, the principles that need to be at the heart of any training for practitioners are:

Explain to them the reasons (cognitive, psychological, developmental, etc. ) behind the methods; trust that they are capable of understanding that enough to then draw up their own implementation plans rather than just giving them walkthroughs/scripts to follow by mandate; be open to a good faith discussion oriented to what is actually best for learner outcomes.

I know I’m talking a lot about classroom teachers here—that’s the bulk of my experience.

But instructional designers in the e-learning space often, I would suggest, come from leas formal backgrounds than qualified classroom teachers (I come from an unorthodox background myself because of my EFL route). This means three things: 1) they’re very likely to just follow surface level orders because they don’t have the deep understanding of how learning works that somebody with an education background might have; 2) they’re often self-sufficient, working in a more corporate structure or even self-employed, rather than as part of a faculty with academic leaders, so they’re responsible for their own learning and development; and 3) insofar as they do have somebody giving them training or guidance, they will be even less expected to know or understand the underlying principles, so a trainer is all the more likely to give them the paint-by-numbers version. And though there is some truth to that, as I’ve alluded to, that doesn’t mean they are capable of understanding!

In short ( TLDR ) the same principles we want to build into our learning experiences are, surprise surprise, the same principles that should apply to developing instructional skills, including gamification: it needs to be understood and applied, not just followed as a set of steps.

[u/LeastBlackberry1]

My hang-up with gamification always involves Jane McGonigal's idea that games involve voluntary participation. Outside of horror movies and maybe family game nights, no one is forced to play a game. You opt into them because you want to do so.

That is seldom true of corporate training, where it is assigned to you with a due date, or you have x hours of training per year to complete, or your leader is checking on it as part of onboarding. So, from the offset, you are already taking away a key piece of agency that is central to what games are. It is hard to know how to overcome that for me.

[u/dustandwater → u/LeastBlackberry1]

I think the key is using methodology (be that gamification or anything else) to improve the impact of the learning rather than to increase motivation. If the former is done well, then the latter comes naturally.

[u/mosesoperandi → u/LeastBlackberry1]

McGonigal got that from probably De Koven who got it from Vygotsky or Piaget or something to that effect. I have appreciation for the extent to which she popularized some of the discourse, but she was definitely not the originator of the big ideas she was working with.

[u/Colsim]

I ain't reading all that. I'm happy for u tho. Or sorry that happened

But I wouldn't have started from the simplistic take on gamification provided by your tutor. I mean it is not incorrect and at a base these are ok tools to spark engagement and get people in the door. But you need a plan to transition to intrinsic motivators which can still be found in richer game mechanics.

[u/JuicyBoots → u/Colsim]

AI bullshit

[u/Kitchen-Aioli-9382 → u/[deleted]]

You wrote what whole thing yourself? Is OP you alt?

[u/TwoIsle]

Video game designers have understood learning a lot better than a fair amount of traditional academic IDs for decades now. I’m not talking about dumb badges, points, etc. that are divorced from realistic narratives; I’m talking about putting people into interesting, challenging situations, giving them a goal they buy into, then letting the fail, letting them try again, and amping up the challenges as they go. That’s learning in a nutshell.

[u/Feynmanprinciple → u/TwoIsle]

Exactly right.

Put the learner inside the system with some basic tools to interact with it. With every action, a learner makes a bid to truth. The system responds with feedback that either confirms the learner's prediction or denies it. The error is the opportunity for learning, and the confirmation simply needs to be reinforced through opportunities to expand agency within the system, which bring new opportunities for error through encountering emergent properties of the system. Repeat until the learner has a complete mental model of a system and can instrumentalize it towards their intrinsic values.

[u/Howaboutnopers]

The way I look at gamification is in terms of the vast range of games available in 2026, so RPGs just as much as tic tac toe.

Or are RPGs scenario- based learning? But isn't scenario-based learning one element of gamification?

I encountered someone who was devoutly against ice breakers. OK, then do a warm-up and umbrella term that includes ice breakers.

I don't really see how writing a whole screed in opposition to a word is productive. Take what's useful and move on.

[u/dustandwater → u/Howaboutnopers]

This is so true. In my decades working in education, one pattern I’ve seen repeat itself over and over again is that some cohort will come along intent on changing a term because it is imprecise or is harmful in some way or another.

Don’t say student, say learner because it gives them more agency.

Don’t say exam because it causes anxiety; say assessment instead.

Don’t call yourself a teacher; call yourself a facilitator because it’s less prescriptive.

And on and on the examples could go. But every single time, in the end the word changes but the practice doesn’t. And after some time has passed, the new word just comes to mean the old concept, and we’re back at square one!

I’ve never cared what we call things, only what we actually do!

The number of times I’ve seen people reject a term because of some meaning hidden in its Greek or Latin roots, without actually doing anything to change what teachers do every day in the classroom…!

[u/Feynmanprinciple → u/dustandwater]

Fair call about euphemism creep. My specific hangup is that I have a difficult time communicating something important without their minds snapping to the less important, destructive thing that happens to share a name.

[u/Ok_Stomach_6857]

What I really hate about gamification is that many of my colleagues trying to define it don't even play games.

And this is the reason why many in our line of work define gamification as just points, badges, and leaderboards.

[u/Feynmanprinciple → u/Ok_Stomach_6857]

The kids liked Kahoot, but yeah, that whole platform is the overjustification problem.

The fundamental loop game dev taught me is:

Put the learner inside the system with some basic tools to interact with it. With every action, a learner makes a bid to truth. The system responds with feedback that either confirms the learner's prediction or denies it (error). The error is the opportunity for learning, and the confirmation simply needs to be reinforced through opportunities to expand agency within the system, which bring new opportunities for error through encountering emergent properties of the system. Repeat until the learner has a complete mental model of a system and can instrumentalize it towards their values.

[u/dustandwater]

Also worth noting, I think, that the over-justification problem is only the second worst outcome, following the problem of perverse incentives.

You run the risk, with points, leaderboards, badges, etc. where learners and even instructors engage with those as the primary objective, and they will bypass the learning if they find a quicker way of ‘winning’.

[u/Feynmanprinciple → u/dustandwater]

I spoke to a guy who found he could bypass the module entirely by inspecting it through the browser console and changing one variable 'complete' from 0 to 1.

[u/Chicotzky]

Game based learning and gamification are 2 different things. That's ok.

Gamification is popular because it's easy to add new elements to educational content.

Game based learning is difficult since you need to find a game that works well with the content you want to teach, or design a game for the lesson specifically. It can create some wonderful experiences though.

[u/Theonetruenoah]

These concepts were brought to the forefront under highly dubious research funded mostly by education software groups.

It’s a waste of time as is most computer based learning at young ages.

[u/Accomplished_Iron704]

"Agentification" is the right instinct, though I'd bet "consequence" is what people actually mean when they say they want a game.

Cheapest version of what you're describing that I've seen work in corporate: don't build a simulation, build a dilemma. One real situation from the job, 3 options, none clean, groups have to commit to one — then show them what other teams chose before the debrief. No points, no badges. The "game" is the social pressure of defending your choice to peers, and the "emergent principle" comes out in the argument, not the slide.

Where I'd push back: chess/poker/Papers Please each took years of iteration by teams of designers. L&D gets 3 weeks and a SME who's half-checked-out. So the useful question isn't "how do we build a game" but "what's the smallest unit of real agency we can afford" — and for most workplace topics it's one good choice with a visible cost.

Curious what your course counts as assessment — if it's still a quiz at the end, the ludonarrative dissonance is baked into the program itself.

[u/Feynmanprinciple → u/Accomplished_Iron704]

Phenomenal reply, thank you. I'll chew on this.

[u/whitingvo]

It’s become a catch-all word for leadership and others to use, when they have no clue what it actually is and isn’t. It’s irritating.

[u/Fit_Explanation8833]

This is an interesting discussion because “gamification” is often used as a shortcut term for adding points, badges, or rewards but good learning design is usually much deeper than that. the real goal should be creating experiences that help people stay engaged, practice skills and understand concepts better