Gamification is familiar, and probably cliche by now, to everyone inside the game industry. It's already spilling to outside of the formal game industry, and you can see this in the rise of check-ins and location-based awards, as well as the point, badge, and leaderboard systems that are increasingly common. Some of these mechanics have been well-known for a long-time, such as the punchcards you get that promise a free 6th meal if you come 5 times to the restaurant - or coffee shop, or hairdresser, or amusement park. 

The way it's going, in five years, pretty much everything in the world is going to be gamified. Is this a force for good though? This is something I was discussing with Dr. Richard Bartle, co-creator of the first MUD (multi-user dungeon, which some of you may remember as ascii text-based virtual worlds from the 80s and 90s).

Gamification is the use of game design for non-game purposes, but Bartle argues that it's not the same at all as a game because in gamification you get rewards and you can't really lose. There's no play. 

This brings us back to the debate between intrinsic rewards and external rewards. Where gamification, in the form it takes today, increasingly goes wrong is that it's all about external rewards - in essence bribing players to do something by giving them points, badges, and so on.

Continuing on this path, which seems to be almost a certainty because many people working on gamification aren't game designers, is dangerous because given enough time, people will eventually recognize "extrinsic operant conditioning tropes," avoid them, and the house of cards will crash down.

So when you're gamifying something, make sure there's intrinsically fun play and give rewards that are really inherently valuable, such as fun content - not just worthless points and empty badges.