Maybe it is just the ex- raid leader in me, but I've often thought of the day job and business as games with paychecks attached. Sometimes it even feels like I'm playing them -- particularly when checking my analytics stats. (I've had a lot of fun playing Spreadsheets In Space with worse visualization than my stats pages.)<p>I've resisted the urge to build actual game mechanics into my business for fear of what it would do to my social life. (It wouldn't be too hard -- make a quick Rails plugin to duplicate the Stack Overflow badges functionality, add a few hooks into my pre-existing stats code, maybe add a post-commit hook to... NO, NO, NOT GOING TO DO IT. But dang if the gamer in me doesn't see every problem and start thinking of ways to kill the dragon... preferably ridiculously efficient ways of killing the dragon without all the work that the designers intended me to go through.)
If you want to become serious about game dynamics I suggest watching this interview: <a href="http://mixergy.com/amy-jo-kim/" rel="nofollow">http://mixergy.com/amy-jo-kim/</a>