For example, I have a good stack overflow score. And I keep going back there. But I am curios whether the user's interest or any other purpose of gamification wanes over time?
Coursera has a free course on gamification - the materials are easy to review.<p>IMO gamification is<p>1. Overused and<p>2. Relies on rewards to incentivize behavior.<p>Using rewards kills/diminishes intrinsic motivation - see Alfie Kohn’s book Punished by Rewards.<p>Giving a gold star for good behavior will piss off the child who acts good but is not noticed and doesn’t get the star and make them act good only when the teacher is watching.<p>Leaderboards pit users against each other and give a momentary ego boost.<p>Measuring behavior to build trust and allow more responsibility is another matter - discourse does that successfully.
"The Duolingo owl is stalking me!"<p>"Gamification" was more buzzword than real and where it was covering the lack of anything <i>actually</i> interesting then no, it's not going to work long term and probably not short term.<p>Where is was useful was in getting people to pay attention to barriers to entry their product imposed and reduce them. Beyond that it was a fad for anti-social, unproductive manipulation of users emotions in place of delivering value.
If you mean "points, badges and leaderboards", then it's not enough.<p>If you want to know what works, start by reading 'Hooked' and 'Actionable Gamification'.