[atomicfiredoll]

I've been very skeptical of gamification ever since seeing a marketing agency constantly pitch it as a way to increase user engagement and sales. Now it's a red flag that makes me ask, "what are you trying to manipulate me in to buying or doing?" The experience has been impactful enough that even I stopped caring as much about "achievements" in actual games.

Duolingo is interesting because it shows me I'll still engage with gamification if my goals align, but all those mechanics become a bit heavy. When I want flashcards and grammar lessons, getting a game to manage pushed me away. Then, when I realized our goals didn't align due to Duolingo's ceiling, it didn't seem worth being pressed to such an uncomfortable degree. I won't let myself be mentally abused by a cartoon owl.

[scyzoryk_xyz]

You are on point I think - 10-15 years ago gamification became a generally fashionable thing to pursue to drive engagement, consumption and market shit. But most of it doesn’t really work because it’s not usually implemented very well. This is what we had initially with our medical training example - the developers just slapped some trophies and achievements and expected it to just work. Of course when we started user testing we found that people agreed with the general idea but didn’t really use it and found the clutter confusing. We’re still working on having gamification because we really do just want them to feel like it is a game, but it’s no easy feat to do it well. Thankfully with hard evidence from all the user testing we have the arguments to dial it back.