Disclaimer: I am a Guild Wars devotee so I tend to analyse all subscription MMOs for how they’re trying to squeeze extra cash out of me. I don’t actually find a game which rewards you for doing the same stuff over and over (through things like random loot rolls) particularly appealing.

I think the issue with gamification is that its often fairly dishonest, a sort of exploitation of our reward centres. The issue I personally have with it is that gamification often diverts attention from the actual task at hand, whatever it is. You attach these points to something, rather than considering what that ‘something’ really is, how it could be improved in itself. The points are often an invented currency, essentially, that the gamified company creates instead of, for example, providing an actual discount in dollars to their loyal customers. And the last thing, for me, is similar to the currency thing. If you want people to do something, and you want to use a reward scheme for it, we already have this, its called payment in money.

That said, its not as if a truly game-like environment isn’t capable of getting people’s attention, focusing their efforts etc, but the vast majority of what’s out there at the moment is ad men creating job security with a new buzzword.

We’ve recently had a bright member in our IT team at work (Tim) develop an apple game in their spare time. Publish it via apple and have it available in the market place for people to buy. 5-6 years ago that simply wouldn’t have been possible.

I’m hopeful that the shift towards mobile base games as opposed to PC and console games will create the beachhead for our young talents to find themselves.