- this paper only reviewed studies done explicitly on gamification, not related topics such as intrinsic motivation
- similarly, there might have been papers that discussed gamification but with different terms and were thus not included in this literature review
- a formal meta-analysis could not be conducted due to a large variety in the methods of the reviewed studies

Chapman University

- the reviewed articles suggest that yes, gamification does work, but there are some caveats 
- there are many layers to the effects of gamification that need to be studied 
- the reviewed papers contained two key aspects: 1) the role of the context, 2) user qualities
- for future research on gamification, studies are strongly recommended to include more complex and far-reaching methodologies 

Discussion (Hamari et al. 2014)

Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014, January). Does gamification work?--a literature review of empirical studies on gamification. In 2014 47th Hawaii international conference on system sciences (pp. 3025-3034). Ieee.

Does Gamification Work? -- A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification

- some papers had a small sample size
- the psychometric measurements used when conducting surveys were not proper or validated
- some experiments did not have a control group and only used user evaluation for their analyses 
- in terms of implemented motivational affordances: there were sometimes no controls between them; they were sometimes analyzed as a group, not at the individual level
- several papers gave descriptive stats and could have presented details about the links between constructs but did not
- short time frames when conducting the experiments (novelty could be a confounding factor) 
- reports of results were unclear 
- none of the experiments used all levels of measurements (motivational affordances, psychological outcomes, and behavioral outcomes)
- it's important to be aware of these limits so future studies on gamification can be more clear and refined 

Discussion - Limits of Reviewed Studies (Hamari et al. 2014)

- broaden our understanding of the role context plays in gamification, and how context affects the gamification outcomes
- to do that, future gamification research should consider the social environment (specifically the theory of planned behavior), the nature of the system, and the user's involvement 
- additionally, individual differences between each participant of the gamification experiment need to be carefully observed and analyzed. Different player types, approaches, attitudes, motivations, and interactions may lead to different gamification outcomes or lead users to experience the same motivational affordances differently. 

Learn Before

Related