This morning I was reading Andrzej Marczewski's post entitled The Hype is Over – Gamification is Here to Stay. After relegating gamification to the trough of disillusionment last year, Gartner has taken it entirely off the recently released 2015 Hype Cycle graph.
I had been saying that I thought being in the trough way a good thing. I took it to mean that we had enough experience with different gamification efforts to start to make really good choices about what was good and bad about it. The failures may disillusion some, but for others (like me) it meant a open field of opportunities. We could learn from past gamification efforts and deconstruct what was working, just as gamification has drawn from games.
I don't think everyone should look to gamify everything but I think having knowledge of the tools can help inform lots of innovative solutions. I focus on the learning space, and, I have heard a lot of the same arguments about gamification that people have made about e-learning in the past. It was a fad. It wasn't good for certain topics. And it has suffered some of the same maladies. Guilt by association. One bad experience has made people shy away from trying it again. Thinking that it was simple. Thinking that it was a quick fix. Sigh.
When I advocate for gamification, I don't focus on using it because it makes things more fun, I focus largely on two key things that games and gamification, when done well, do really well -- make progress visible and shorten the feedback loop. As much as some people kick and scream about how pointless (pun intended) game elements like points, badges, and leaderboards are, they are valuable if you use them in ways that are meaningful to the learners.
So I'm glad the hype is over. Maybe now we can get down to some serious gamification.
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