Abstract:

The term gamification is most commonly defined as “the use of game design elements in non-game contexts” (Deterding et al., 2011, p. 10). In contrast to full-fledged digital games and serious games, gamification selectively deploys elements such as points, badges, leaderboards, levels, narratives and quests within existing systems—such as marketing campaigns or workplace tools—to evoke gameful experiences and influence user behaviour (Deterding, 2014; Huotari & Hamari, 2012). Over roughly the past decade, and especially since the early 2010s, gamification has diffused rapidly across sectors, supported by the widespread availability of mobile devices, data analytics and ubiquitous connectivity (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019).

The research landscape on gamification has expanded in parallel. Early work was dominated by conceptual debate and small-scale experiments (Deterding, 2014; Hamari et al., 2014), but the last five to seven years have seen substantial growth in empirical studies across multiple domains, including marketing and brand strategy (Hofacker et al., 2016; Nobre & Ferreira, 2018) and workplace or organisational settings (Landers et al., 2017; Koivisto & Hamari, 2019). Bibliometric analyses and systematic reviews consistently report sharp increases in publication volume since around 2015, with annual output now numbering in the hundreds of articles (Koivisto & Hamari, 2019; Xu et al., 2022).