Introduction
Gamification is becoming increasingly prevalent in the
workplace as a means to increase organisational
performance while making the process of the work itself
more rewarding [
10,14,15,42
]. The market for gamification
technology in the workplace is expected to grow from USD
1.65 billion in 2015 to USD 11.10 billion in 2020. Some of
the main drivers of this growth are the promise of
gamification technology to increase employee motivation
and satisfaction, and as a result organisational performance
[
55
]. Despite its recent upwards trend in adoption, and the
increased research to investigate this new approach, little is
known about the inner workings of gamification design [
59
]
making it difficult to measure the effects of independent
gamification design elements on its intended goals. Without
being able to measure these inner workings designers lack
the data to make data-driven design decisions, or even
understand why certain gamification designs are effective in
achieving their goals, while others are not.
Gamification design has often been introduced in
companies as a simple method to increase employee focus
on high value activities and drive employee engagement
and motivation [
4,9,61
]. Early academic research into the
“simple“ relationship between the use of gamification
design, defined as the application of game-design elements
and game principles in non-game contexts [
13
], has
supplied empirical support for the use of gamification
design elements and the increased performance and effort
on work related tasks by employees [
2,17,19,24
]. The
simple view of gamification helped give rise to
gamification applications and experiments in which game
elements like points, badges and leaderboards where added
to work processes in order to increase performance. The
majority of these applications and experiments only tested
short-term effects and generally found a positive connection
between the application of game design elements and a
performance measure [
27
]. These types of gamification
applications generating mainly short term effects received
criticism for not driving sustained engagement, motivation
or increased effort [
7,53
], while even risking long term
harm to intrinsic motivation for the tasks that were gamified
[
29
]. Perhaps as a result of this criticism, or through its own
evolution, the view on what gamification is has changed in
recent years, and gamification evangelists like Yu-Kai
Chou and Gabe Zichermann started to refer to gamification
as behavioural design or behavioural engineering [
11,12
]
with a focus on utilising game techniques and game
thinking in designing for sustained engagement and
motivation.
Gamification was recently redefined by Huotari and Hamari
[
33
] as a process of enhancing a service with affordances
for gameful experiences in order to support users’ overall
value creation. Within this definition the main goal of using
a gamification design approach is to induce a gameful
experience. Furthermore game elements were not
specifically necessary in order for a design to be classified
as gamified. Instead the intent of the designer in terms of
achieving a gameful experience took precedent over the
shape of the design. Aside from the experiential goal of a
gamified design, it also has the goal of affecting behaviours
as desired by the designer [
42
].
The current challenge in the field of gamification research
is to provide validated theoretical underpinnings as to how
gamification design elements lead to the achievement of
gamification goals, namely the gameful experience and
affecting user behaviour [
41,58,59
].
Within this paper we address this challenge by taking a two
pronged approach. First, by placing gamification in the
context of work design we review the available literature
that explains the inner workings of work design in relation
to employee behaviour. Based on this review we asses
whether existing validated theories within the context of the
workplace can help to explain how the application of
gamification design elements can affect employee
behaviour. Second, we review existing literature on
gamification and psychology to understand how
gamification design elements induce a gameful experience
among the employees working with the gamified system.
The academic purpose of this paper is to provide a
theoretical framework grounded in theories that are already
validated within the context of work. From a practical
perspective we expect that the measurement of the inner
workings of gamification will provide data that helps
designers to make data-driven design choices aimed at both
experiential and behavioural goals.
How Gamification Design Affects Behaviour
Gamification design approaches have been utilised in the
workplace to achieve a variety of behavioural goals.
including increased engagement & productivity [
46,54
],
change management [
32
] and organisational citizenship
behaviour [
34,54
]. While these goals are not exclusive to
gamification design approaches, they are recognised as
goals that are susceptible to be strongly and positively
affected by a gamification approach. The current challenge,
as gamification is a relatively new field and theories about
its inner workings are scarce and not yet validated [
59
], is
to understand the theoretical background as to why
gamification designs elements are adept at achieving these
behavioural goals.
While the gamification design approach may be novel, the
general pursuit to influence employee behaviour to achieve
organisational goals has a long history in academics.
Gamification design is similar to many earlier work design
models in that it explains how deliberate changes by the
employer to the work environment affect the motivation of
the employee to perform work related tasks. Theories from
the field of job design that fit within these criteria can be
divided into two main areas. First, there are the need based
models like the Need theory [
39
] the Job Characteristics
model [
26
], and the 4-Drive model [
47
] which focus on
fulfilment of biological or psychological needs through job
and workplace design in oder to increase overall motivation
for the work. Within these theories motivation is defined as
the effort that an employee applies and maintains towards
organisational goals [
49
]. Second, there are the cognition
based models in which motivation is defined as the
conscious decision to perform a behaviour as desired by the
employer (instead of performing alternative available
courses of action) [
62
]. Within this definition it is proposed
that an employee makes deliberate choices in terms of the
level of effort they plan to contribute on specific tasks.
Theories that fit within this description include expectancy
theory [
62
], self-efficacy theory [
5
], equity theory [
1
],
goalsetting theory [
38
] and self-determination theory [
56
]. Each
of these theories propose that changes to the work
environment need to be made on a task level and take into
account contextual differences of the work environment.
For the purpose of explaining the inner workings of
gamification design in relation to its effect on behaviour,
the cognition based models are more suited as gamification
designs are consistently positioned to influence behaviour
on a task level [
59
].
While each of the cognition based models included are
similar in terms of their ability to affect behaviour they are
different in terms of their inputs and explanation as to how
they affect behaviour. Upon closer examination some of the
theories are closely related, for example the self-efficacy
theory and the goal-setting theory both discuss how
motivation for a difficult task can vary according to its
difficulty and the availability of constructive feedback. On
the other hand theories like Self Determination theory and
Equity theory describe very different process and share no
similarities.
While each of the individual theories provides valuable and
in-depth insights into how changes in the work environment
affect employee behaviour, expectancy theory is the only
theory that is able to encompass the other theories into an
inclusive model and provide directions as to how
motivation to act can be measured [
62
].
Expectancy Theory and Motivation to Act
In expectancy theory Vroom proposes that wether or not an
employee will choose a specific course of action is the
result of the motivational force associated with that specific
course of action exceeding the motivational force
associated with other voluntary alternatives that the
employee has. According to Vroom motivational force
(MF) is a product of expectancy, instrumentality and
valence
(MF) = Expectancy x Instrumentality x Valence
An individual’s expectancy is the cognitive belief that a
certain amount of effort will lead to the successful
performance of the intended task (e.g. I am able to meet the
deadline). Expectancy has been likened to self-efficacy [
23,
38
] as both constructs discuss the relationship between
selfperceived capability of the employee in regards to the task
at hand and the amount of effort the employee expects to
need to invest into the task in order to be successful.
The instrumentality of successful performance lies in the
cognitive belief that performing the task will indeed lead to
a desired result (e.g. meeting the deadline is likely to get
noticed). Instrumentality is closely related to distributive
and procedural justice as perceived fairness and
transparency of reward and resource distribution will
increase the belief that performance will actually lead to the
expected result [
3
].
Lastly the valence of a result lies in the value that a person
attributes to that result (e.g. meeting the deadline is
important for a coveted promotion) Valence is closely
related to both the self-determination theory and
goalsetting theory in that they propose that individuals decide to
enact a desired behaviour if that action can result in the
attainment of intrinsically or extrinsically motivated goals
[
38,56
]. In other words, an individual that is faced with the
option of performing an action will make a value judgement
on the desired outcomes that an action could potentially
deliver. As employers and designers we can influence this
valuation by increasing awareness of existing motivational
affordances (rewards, benefits, compensations) that are
most likely to be valued by the employee, or add
motivational affordances to the design in the hopes that they
are desired by the user.
How Gamification Design Elements Can Positively
Affect Instrumentality, Expectancy and Valence.
By using the expectancy theory it becomes possible to
recognise how game design elements can have a positive
effect on motivation to perform a desired behaviour
through an increase on instrumentality, expectancy and
valence (Figure 1). For example, procedural justice and
perceived understanding of the performance appraisal
system have a positive effect on the instrumentality of
performance through improved predictability and
controllability of the outcome resulting from successful
performance [
31, 64
]. Procedural justice is fostered when
decision-making processes adhere to a number of specific
rules [
64
]. As such game design elements like clear and
transparent game rule systems and transparent fixed ratio
reward systems can through procedural justice lead to an
increase in instrumentality associated with a desired
behaviour.
Relationships between attributed valence and gamification
design elements are not deterministic as they are dependent
on context and individual predispositions. There are
however tendencies for these relationships [
30
], and as such
a variety of different design elements like quests, badges,
character stats, etc, carry the potential to create valence for
several different salient goals and/ or needs [
15
].
Last, an example as to how game design elements can
increase expectancy can be recognised in the common use
of immediate positive feedback systems as a way to
increase self-efficacy [
48
].
Competence
Relatedness
Hedonic pleasure
Suspense
Immersion
Flow Figure 1. How Gamification Design Affects Behaviour Adapted from Huotari & Hamari 2017, pp 23 [33].
The term gamefulness was first suggested by McGonigal
[
40
] to describe the unique experiential condition of games.
Rather than using the term gamification which was at that
time being criticised for the defining of a design approach
by its shape (e.g. it looks like a game), she opted for the
term gameful design which would define the design
approach by its experience (e.g. it feels like a game). While
the concept of a gameful experience has been accepted as
an adept way to describe the aim of gamification there is
still debate on what a gameful experience is and which
exact conditions are needed to label an experience as
gameful [
33
]. Furthermore the only valid way to measure a
gameful experience would be through self-reporting as
games and gamified designs can induce a gameful
experience in one person, while failing to induce a gameful
experience in others. (e.g. through a difference in skill or
affect) [
28
].
Within their paper on the definition of gamification, Huotari
and Hamari [
33
] propose a starting point towards describing
a gameful experience by referring to specific psychological
factors/ experiential states associated with games. This
initial list, which is by no means proposed as all inclusive,
can be divided into three distinct constructs (Table 1.). First,
it is possible to distinguish psychological states experienced
during needs fulfilment the most commonly referred to in
gamification research being the psychological states
proposed in the self determination theory: mastery,
relatedness, and competence [56.59]. Second, we can
recognise affective states resulting from emotional arousal
(e.g. suspense [
13
]). Third, we can recognise psychological
factors like immersion and flow which are best defined as
an altered state of consciousness brought about by deep
engagement with an activity [
8,43
].
In summary, there are no clear set of conditions that
constitute a gameful experience, and as gameful
experiences are individualistic in nature it is impossible
toguarantee that a certain game or gamification design will
induce a gameful experience among all users. We can
however try to deduce what a gameful experience is by
asking those that experienced them, and preliminary
findings suggest psychological states experienced during
need fulfilment, affective states experienced during
emotional arousal and altered states of consciousness
experienced during deep engagement with the gamified
environment. From a design perspective this means that
adding game elements that create suspense, or conditions
that facilitate flow or immersion are not guaranteed to
create a gameful experience, they are however more likely
to do so than gamified environments in which the design
has not included elements that induce emotional arousal,
need fulfilment or immersion.
How Gamification Design Elements Influence
Psychological States Through Psychological Need
Fulfilment.
A broad appeal of games is based on the ability of games to
fulfil the psychological needs of players. For example
players can experience pleasurable feelings of competence
through receiving informational performance feedback in
the forms of points and levels [
16,51
]. Specifically
feedback that is made juicy, by for example providing
context in the form of a narrative emphasising meaning or
significance, can create immediate pleasurable experiences
enhancing this experience of feeling competent [
37
].
Aside from competence other psychological need fulfilment
like the experience of relatedness or belonging can be
induced by playing with others [
51
]. Psychological need
satisfaction occurs across different demographics of
players, within a variety of genres and content, as such they
can be expected to generate a pleasure experience to
different player types and across different behavioural goals
[
51
].
When it comes to the pleasurable experience of autonomy
and control the negative effect of too little autonomy of
control is more visible than situations where control and
autonomy are present in the right amount. For example
unintuitive designs or complex controls with which a user is
not familiar mitigate the opportunity for a positive user
experience [
45
]. Furthermore, gamified environments in
which players make use of intuitive controls allowing them
to focus on game play rather than game mechanics
increased the potential for a user to experience presence.
Presence is a state in which players feel immersed in the
game environment and substitute the physical reality for the
virtual reality. Players experiencing presence are desirable
for game designers as it is directly related to how gameplay
itself satisfies psychological needs [
51
].
How Game Design Elements Alter Consciousness
Through Deep Engagement.
There are several ways in which players that are deeply
engaged in a game can experience consciousness alteration.
We have used the term consciousness alteration to describe
the experience of detachment from the physical reality and
a sense of merging with the game environment by losing
awareness of the mediating technology [
21
]. The most
notable constructs describing such experiences are
presence, immersion and flow, and while each of these
constructs have distinguishing factors, they share the
experience of being “in the game environment”. There is a
broad understanding within the general game community
about these constructs, but on an academic level there is
still an avid discussion about what causes these states and
what defines them [
36
].
A starting point for explaining how the different states may
be interconnected has been coined by Ermi and Mäyrä [
18
],
they propose that immersion is a manifold construct that
can be conceptualised in terms of sensory immersion,
closely resembling presence, challenge based immersion,
closely resembling flow and imaginative immersion, which
shares similarities with narrative immersion [
57
]. Using this
description of immersion Nacke and Lindley [
43
] suggested
design criteria that could induce these different states of
immersion including a complex and explorable virtual
environment in which the player needs to finds its own
route, challenge levels in which adversaries increase in
difficulty, sensory effects suitable for the environment
(lightning, sounds, scripted and responsive animations),
feedback systems in the form of rewards, mood enhancing
aesthetics (variety of models, dynamic lighting and ambient
sounds) and narrative framing. Initial experimental results
indeed show an increase in experienced immersion when
these factors are present although no specific insight is
available about which specific factors were more important
and whether they are influenced by individual
predispositions of the players [
43
]. While the state of
immersion is viewed as critical to game enjoyment,
immersion being the outcome of a good game experience,
the enjoyment from immersion can also be a result of
allowing the user to momentarily lose self-consciousness
[
44
]. In a sense immersion allows a player to have a
pleasurable distraction in which they can detach themselves
from everyday worries and evaluation by others and escape
for a period into the game or task environment. [
36
].
How Game Design Elements Influence Affective States by Eliciting Emotions.
Another important reason for many players to engage in
games is the ability of game environments and game play to
invoke strong emotional responses [
52, 60
]. Emotions
commonly associated with gameplay include suspense [
13,
35,37
], frustration [
22,50
], thrill [
25, 52
] and relief [
25, 63
].
Emotions are typically described in terms of dimensions of
valence and arousal, where the valence dimensions
described the degree to which the affective experience is
positive or negative and the arousal dimension indicates the
level of activation ranging from excited to to sleepy [
6
].
Within these emotional dimensions games are commonly
designed to elicit emotions higher on the arousal range with
valences related to both positive (e.g. thrill) and negative
affects (e.g frustration).
When designing a game, or gamified environment that
elicits emotion distinctions can be made in regards to the
type of audience (Table 2) as a player can receive emotional
cues as an observer, or as an active participant [
20
].
Furthermore the emotional cues can come from four distinct
sources of emotion within a game environment [
20
] (Table
2). The first proposed source is that related to the game
itself in terms of winning, losing, progressing. The second
source of emotional cues comes from the narrative related
to the game and can be related to the protagonist, antagonist
or a representation of the players within the game (e.g.
roleplay). A third source for emotional cues comes from the
artefacts in the game which can include the artful and
aesthetic designs as created by the game designer but also
the creation made by the player him or herself. Lastly there
are the emotional cues coming from the ecological
(sensory) environment of the player as observer and the
more visceral responses that they potentially elicit. From an
active participant perspective the player can experience
emotional cues through proprioception where the player’s
mediated sensory input mimics a players physiological
response to events (e.g. blurring, shaking screens when
recovering from a blast in a first person shooter) [
20
].
While research into affective design is relatively new its
importance for a pleasurable game experience has long
been acknowledged among practitioners, as such it is
expected to facilitate a gameful experience in gamified
environments as well.
In summary, gameful experiences are subjective and game
or gamified designs cannot be certain in inducing a gameful
experience in all users at all times. Gamification design
elements can however help to facilitate gameful
experiences through their ability to induce psychological,
affective and consciousness altering states (Figure 2).
Conclusion
An increasing amount of organisations consider, or are
already, using a gamification design approach to increase
employee motivation towards specific tasks while providing
them with a gameful experience [
55
]. Gamification design
uses game design elements with the aim to achieve both
behavioural and experiential goals concurrently [
13,42,59
]
allowing for task-level design that carries benefits for both
the employer and employee. The current state of research
about gamified designs has evolved from whether it works
to how or why it works [
59
]. Within this paper we outlined
a theoretical proposal that aims to explain a potential
answer to this question. Aside from providing a theoretical
perspective about the inner workings of gamification our
focus has been on making use, where possible, of existing
validated theories that use measurable factors and
constructs.
Within our model (Figure 3) the starting point of
measurement are the gamification design elements that an
employee interacts with in the execution of a task. It is
important to understand that the game design elements that
an employee interacts with include contextual and
preexisting motivational conditions including for example
management feedback systems, compensation & benefits
schemes and cultural norms within an organisation. This is
in line with standard gamification design practices that
recommend contextual analysis of existing processes,
behaviours and cultures [
42
]. The model further proposes a
two-directional effect that the gamification design elements
have on the employee, on the one hand the design facilitates
the motivation to perform a desired action of the employee,
and on the other hand the design influences the gameful
experience the employee perceives.
A difficulty in creating consensus within the field of
gamification on any proposed theoretical model on the
inner-workings of gamification lies in the different
perspectives available on what constitutes a gameful
experience [
33
] or even what constitutes motivation [
49
].
Within this paper we pose that gamification design operates
on a task level, rather than on a job or workplace level, and
as such we explain motivation to perform a desired
behaviour from a task level perspective. We have not tried
to define gamefulness in this paper but have taken the
starting point from Huotari and Hamari [
33
] in terms of the
psychological factors commonly associated with games,
from this starting point we propose that a gameful
experience can be facilitated by affective, psychological
and consciousness altering states.
It is impossible to measure motivation to act without
looking into someones brain, as the motivation to act is a
force that is created before the actual behaviour takes place.
Despite this motivation is often measured in experiments by
its outcome, i.e. the actual behaviour. The problem with
only measuring behaviour is that it only shows whether or
not the gamification design elements combined created
more or less motivational force directed towards the desired
behaviour compared to existing motivational force towards
any viable alternative behaviour. The expectancy theory
from Vroom [
62
] allows for measurement of motivation to
act on a task level before actual behaviour takes place
which enables measurement of motivation to act as a result
of the addition of gamification design elements to an
existing system. Following this we propose that
gamification design is effective in changing behaviour by
increasing the motivational force of a desired behaviour
(through an increasing of perceived valence, instrumentality
or expectancy), or by decreasing the motivational force of
alternative behaviour.
Within this paper we did not do an exhaustive research on
what mediates the relationship between gamification design
elements and the factors of the expectancy theory (valence,
instrumentality and expectancy), we did however do a
preliminary literature search and found suggestive evidence
that describe how constructs like self-efficacy, potential for
need or goal fulfilment and increases in procedural justice
influence the factors of the expectancy theory while
themselves being influenced by gamification design
elements [
15,48,64
].
As far as we are aware no-one has attempted to define what
constitutes a gameful experience, yet there seems to be
consensus among different academics that gamified design
facilitates and aims to induce this experience among its
users. Whether or not an employee has a gameful
experience in a given design is subjective and varies per
person [
33
], and as a result it is difficult to directly measure
a relationship between gamification design elements and
whether or not a user experiences gamefulness. Instead we
propose to measure affective, psychological and
consciousness altering states that are present before an
existing system is enriched with a gamified design, and
again after the design has been implemented. Measuring the
initial state and the state after the addition of gamification
design elements will enable researchers to understand
through which states the design was most effective.
Lastly, within this paper we do not propose exclusive
relationships between individual gamification design
elements and the different factors of the model (e.g.
valence, expectancy, affective states, etc). While we have
given examples of these relationships to provide support for
the model we have also recognised that many of the
gamification design elements described in literature affect
multiple factors in our model. For example virtual rewards
can affect valence, if the virtual reward is valued by the
employee, at the same time it can affect expectancy through
its function of providing a positive feedback to an action
and concurrently it can affect the affective state of the
employee through experiencing a win-state. Future
empirical research using this model is expected to provide
empirical evidence on relationships between specific
gamification design elements and the different factors
outlined in this model.