Do points, levels and leaderboards harm intrinsic motivation? An empirical analysis of common gamification elements

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingArticle in proceedingsResearchpeer-review

  • Elisa D. Mekler
  • Florian Brühlmann
  • Klaus Opwis
  • Alexandre N. Tuch

It is heavily debated within the gamification community whether specific game elements may actually undermine users' intrinsic motivation. This online experiment examined the effects of three commonly employed game design elements - points, leaderboard, levels - on users' performance, intrinsic motivation, perceived autonomy and competence in an image annotation task. Implementation of these game elements significantly increased performance, but did not affect perceived autonomy, competence or intrinsic motivation. Our findings suggest that points, levels and leaderboards by themselves neither make nor break users' intrinsic motivation in non-game contexts. Instead, it is assumed that they act as progress indicators, guiding and enhancing user performance. While more research on the contextual factors that may potentially mediate the effects of game elements on intrinsic motivation is required, it seems that the implementation of points, levels, and leaderboards is a viable means to promote specific user behavior in non-game contexts.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationGamification '13 : Proceedings of the First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications
Number of pages8
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Publication date2013
Pages66-73
ISBN (Print)978-1-4503-2815-9
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2013
Event1st International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications - Toronto, Canada
Duration: 2 Oct 20134 Oct 2013
Conference number: 1

Conference

Conference1st International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications
Nummer1
LandCanada
ByToronto
Periode02/10/201304/10/2013

    Research areas

  • Game design elements, Gameful design, Gamification, Motivation

ID: 169436012