Gamification is simply the application of a ton of learnings (and in some cases, pure intuition) about how humans behave, what drives us, and how to keep us engaged. In terms of "stick badges on it and people will keep using your product", gamification is not going to hang around all that long, ruined by poor execution and over-exposure (as with any UX trend).<p>However, the trend of humanification -- <i>designing for and by humans</i>, taking us away from an age of faceless software -- is well underway, and I don't think that's going away any time soon. I also think that's a Good Thing.
I strongly believe that Game Mechanics are going to be <i>huge</i> on the order of magnitude of social or mobile.<p>Can you imagine what would happen if Zynga took their playbook and decided to build a weight-loss startup (the market for weight loss products in the US alone is $35 billion/year). Not to mentions the dozen of other billion-dollar self-help industries that can be transformed with game mechanics.<p>Sooner or later life is going to be like a MUD with standardized ways of measuring skills and comparing yourself against your friends. In a couple of generations time kids will grow up talking about "levelling up" in real life skills.<p>The application of game mechanics to real-life is only just beginning and it's going to have a huge transformative effect on how people live their lives.
What we are seeing is the backlash against the idea that just adding points and badges will create a compelling experience. This is no more accurate than if you replaced [your favorite game] with a series of menus and button presses and threw in some random point and badge awards. The experience itself must be rewarding.<p>That said, "gamification" techniques can be a wonderful thing. Points are a useful way to highlight positive interactions with users ("you did X, this is a good thing, these points help you realize that"). Badges are a good way of providing metagame elements, both at the beginning of an experience (to shorten the learning curve) and at the end (to provide extended engagement). This all relies on a compelling core experience, of course.<p>I think that Dennis has been clear that Foursquare is a social layer on top of physical locations, not a game. That people generally see it as a shallow game can be considered both an example of the compelling (and perhaps overriding) aspect of the gameplay elements and an indictment of the core 4Sq experience.
Gamification for me, is like the Wall St of the internet.<p>A lot of hype, little real value.<p>Big difference between the gaming industry (PS3, Nintendo, Zynga... which are awesome) and attempts at trying to make the world a game.