There is a heated debate going on between scientists and marketers around the topic of gamification. You might say: leave them alone. But it is still important to take note of this. Important for anyone who wants to get serious about gamification.
In my previous article I said that there is no point in fighting the label gamification. That is my personal opinion (based on my experiences with the label Het Nieuwe Werken, which I am not a fan of either), but not everyone agrees. In fact, there are quite a few people who get red spots on their necks as soon as the term is mentioned. These people can mainly be found in circles of game designers and game scientists. In general, they are annoyed green and yellow by the way in which gamification is being implemented by the business community. As far as the label is concerned, I fear that they are fighting a losing battle. Nevertheless, the discussion that is taking place is of great importance for the future of gamification.
Watered down version
Ian Bogost
The most outspoken critic of gamification is Ian Bogost , a professor at Georgia Tech and co benin phone number list -founder of game studio Persuasive Games . He is best known in gaming circles for Cow Clicker , his parody of the Facebook game FarmVille (if you're interested, check out this article in the January issue of Wired ). The piece, titled "Gamification is Bullshit," sums up Bogost's views on the subject nicely. The somewhat offensive title aside, he makes a number of valid points. His anger about gamification stems – like that of many other game enthusiasts – from a fear that the mysterious, magical, wonderful medium of games is being ripped from his hands, flattened, and sold back to him in a watered-down version. And that fear is not entirely unfounded, considering the ideas of the current leader of the gamification movement, Gabe Zichermann (who Bogost calls "gamification's Dark Lord").
The Foursquare School
Gabe Zichermann
organizes the Gamification Summit , has a widely read blog on the subject and has published two books on gamification . His ideas on the subject are therefore widely known. He explicitly aligns himself with what I will call the “Foursquare school” for convenience. By this I mean the initiatives that label working with points systems, rankings and badges as gamification. Companies such as Bunchball and Badgeville have already pre-packaged such elements in ready-made platforms. Gabe Zichermann could be seen as their most prominent spokesperson. As such, he also receives the lion's share of criticism. This became clear a few months ago when his latest book was mercilessly dissected by another important voice in the gamification debate: Sebastian Deterding .