[joshdance]

We can't paint with too broad a brush. Gamification doesn't work for all situations but does for some. Our sales reps love the leaderboards and will make extra calls or a come in a bit early to be #1.

Consumer products use gamification well in a few cases (Duolingo, Carrot app etc).

So is the whole gamification thing really over? No. Are we getting smarter and trying not to cram it into every place where it doesn't belong? Hopefully.

[sheepmullet]

"Our sales reps love the leaderboards and will make extra calls or a come in a bit early to be #1."

Because the top few sales people are treated like royalty and almost always directly benefit from each extra sale (usually via commission, also through network effects).

"Consumer products use gamification well in a few cases (Duolingo, Carrot app etc)."

Because people want to learn a language, get fit, etc. We already have the desire and know the huge benefits and these gamification products help make the journey a bit easier.

The reason enterprise style gamification doesn't work is because cranking out an extra 5 widgets a day doesn't improve the employees life one little bit. The incentives are all wrong.

I can either:

1) bust my ass off putting 100% effort into getting an extra 10-20% done each day then be too worn out to do anything else. Upside is I might be a little bit less likely to get fired and I might get a bonus bottle of wine each month.

Or

2) stay in the middle of the pack and invest my energy and determination into my side projects and l&d. Upside is in the long term I can fairly safely double or even triple my pay.

Not a hard choice and gamification isn't going to stop anyone from picking option 2.

[dwd]

Gamification doesn't work where the mechanics for point accumulation takes time away from getting things done. Which is why incentive/reward schemes where the point accumulation is calculated from business metrics (sales is a favourite) are more popular in corporate situations. They have been around for years, they just didn't have the cool buzzword and association with game mechanics.

I built the initial (could still be the same code for all I know) reward calculation engine of accumulate.com.au back in 2002/03 and sites like Red Balloon work much the same.