Gamification is not entirely bullshit

I haven't spent too much time with Khan Academy, so can't say too much about it. There are two things to keep in mind:

1. Extrinsic motivation erodes intrinsic motivation. The most obvious example is asking a kid to take out the trash. Once you pay him/her, they'll only do it for money again. While this example is silly because no-one has any intrinsic motivation to take out the trash, it gets really dicey when you add rewards to things like reading. Are they reading to develop a love of reading, or for the carrot you put at the end? What happens when the carrot goes away? The research suggests that once the carrot disappears, so does the reading. The psychology isn't completely cut-and-dried on this, as no psychology seems to be, but it's compelling to me, at least.

The problem is that some scholars, particularly Alfie Kohn, would say that things like gold stars are rewards, and thus you're eroding things that way. However, you have to balance that with providing legitimate feedback for knowing how well you're doing, as people want to feel competent. Both these come from self-determination theory (read up on it, it's neat). The trick is to make sure the reward doesn't try to control behavior, but rather provide feedback on behavior. eg. "you did x 5 times" (good) vs "you did x 5 times as required" (bad). It's a really fine line.

As far as I can see, the main goals in Khan Academy seem to be informational and are good.

2. Badges are game systems themselves (I heard this from Nicole Lazzaro [1]), and they will result in increasing behavior of certain things for people that pay attention. They do not necessarily result in increased behavior of value. eg. a badge for posting 5 times is earned whether your posts are insightful, or whether they simply say "first post". And, again, these are extrinsic rewards, and once they dry up, people stop caring. There's also a strong possibility that rewards suffer from inflation, and you have to hit people with bigger and bigger rewards once they start relying on them.

The badges at Khan Academy make me wary [2]. Check out this one: "Quickly & correctly answer five questions in a row." What's the goal here? Khan Academy's goal, one would think, is to encourage students to think deeply about problems and arrive to correct solutions. It spends a lot of time saying students are able to work at their own pace, and this is a benefit, but then we have a badge which encourages quick, possibly slap-dash, behavior. It's more controlling than informational, requesting the student do something not necessarily natural to him/her in order to achieve it.

The ones given out for achieving proficiency are better; they align with what they want students to do and provide informational feedback that students have done it, increasing their motivation.

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Now, this is not to say that all achievement systems are bad or doesn't work. Stack Overflow's seems to do really well. If it was doing poorly, we'd expect a large drop off of people when the extrinsic rewards dry up, largely at reputation 10,000, when you get moderator tools. The current data from Stack Overflow indicates only about 5% or so of users drop off once they get the tools (I can dig out references if you're interested). Upvotes and achievements provide useful feedback about your mastery of SO, so with that low attrition rate, it indicates they are doing things right.

The elephant in the room that Stack Overflow presents is that it may indicate that gamification does work in its entirety, and that all this motivation theory is invalid in this domain for some reason. This is possible, but such a strong statement would require much harder evidence than we have. Right now, it's more plausible that Stack Overflow is simply doing things well and seems to be aligning with the recommendations of the research, rather than indicating a wider problem with the applicability of this stuff.

[1] http://www.xeodesign.com/founder.html [2] http://www.khanacademy.org/badges

Playfulness shows up at work all the time, although not necessarily in ways that promote the bottom line.

Play mindsets can be encouraged in the workplace when they don't emerge spontaneously. Whether those efforts are successful for a given person on any given day...? It's still pushing a rock uphill.

Game design and reward systems are trying to find a path that doesn't suck. It may take another decade of experimentation before ten thousand failed attempts show the obvious and elegant ways to make more workplace leaders look like your favorite camp counsellor, recess organizer, or dungeon master.

For those not familiar, you need to get many questions right in a row to move. These problems are generated along with "hints" specifically tailored to the problem - as-in the problem is worked step-by-step for you as you click "hint". What was also great is that it adapts (it seemed at least) to give you problems like the those you're having trouble on.

All of this gives you the feeling: "I'm really getting this, I'm not so bad at math after all" - all intrinsic. I looked at the badges as just "neat" - but the big chart of activity was somewhat inspiring because you can see yourself persevering. Then again - this is also intrinsic.