Abstract

This research paper is about a phenomenon called gamification and its effects on our way of learning and education as a whole. Gamification is a tool or a feature used to bring the elements of games (typically videogames) into different non-game fields like sports, marketing, and education in order to enhance the effectiveness of such fields. This research paper will further discuss where gamification came from, how it affects our motivation, and of course, how it helps us learn and encode new information in the easiest way possible. 

Introduction

Gamification slowly started showing up more often in our everyday life. In various fields, gamification plays an important role and people start to get familiar with it. However, what does it actually mean? What is the actual definition of gamification?

The first definition of gamification was first used in 2002 [1] and then became widely known only in 2010. It is quite hard to have one unique definition of gamification, however, experts tend to describe it as using game techniques, psychology, and technology in the real life world. [2]

Gamification became a commonly used element in business that helps businesses promote and enhance their products. Within the past ten years, gamification has developed into a contemporary business strategy that employs game mechanics and game design components to monitor, impact, and reward user behavior. It applies the core features of game characteristics, such as objectives, rules, playfulness, fun elements, feedback, reward, and promotions, to address a real-world business challenge. These game mechanics may produce a higher level of engagement when used in non-gaming contexts. Understanding the distinctions between lighthearted games and serious games is crucial if you want to reap the rewards of gamification. In other words, playfulness can be a good quality in items that go beyond simple entertainment. [3] Serious games are the type of games that serve a specific educational purpose.

But how does gamification entice the audience into learning more? How does the motivation work and how does it happen?

Motivation

First, it is necessary to understand the elements of games before talking about psychology and other areas of gamification. There are lots of game elements like: process tracking, customisations, levels, achievements, points, loyalty, and leaderboards. All of them use psychology to make the player be more active. [4] Below, you can see what each of these elements look like and what do they mean:

Process Tracking: An indicator that shows the process level of the user. The user gets to see the past progress combined with the amount of work left to finish.

Customisations: The visual and graphical representation of the user in game. May be used as a reward to make the player look better.

Levels: Levels are made to make the player engaged at all times by setting the difficulty higher each time. Also serves as an indicator to show how experienced the user is at something.

Achievements: Achievements are the small artifacts that players can show off to others due to them being rare. Such achievements are usually hard to get and only a small portion of players have them.

Points: Points are a part of the typical reward system in games. Points are given for certain tasks that developers think is important for the game progress. It can act like positive or negative reinforcements to navigate the player’s actions.

Loyalty: Engagement or loyalty is an element that contributes to the site's loyal user base. This element measures daily activity and old/new user rate.

Leaderboards: Table of “winners” where users can compete against each other to become the best and get the top spot on the leaderboard.

Gamifications uses these elements to create interest in the users and make sure a certain task is easy and engaging. Such elements are usually used for positive and negative reinforcement, which helps the developers get the desired behaviour from the users. Developers can use some or all elements depending on their goal.

To be moved to action is to be motivated. Thus, a person is said to be unmotivated if they lack any inspiration or impetus to perform, as opposed to motivated, who is energized or propelled toward a goal [5]. Gamification is a highly favored technique to increase user motivation for an application since it has the ability to change users' behavior. In order to increase motivation and engagement, gamification aims to mix intrinsic and extrinsic motivation [6]. Extrinsic motivation is the act of being motivated by an external factor, such as external pressure or "extrinsic rewards" (e.g. money or verbal feedback). Extrinsic game motivators include the points, achievements, leaderboards, progress bar, and avatar. Contrarily, intrinsic motivation refers to the desire to engage in a behavior because it is genuinely interesting or enjoyable [7]. Examples of intrinsic motivators in gamification include immediate feedback, group quests, and easter eggs.

Engagement is defined as a student's focus on and immersion in a task, but the teacher imposes the learning tasks. Therefore, student participation is not a given. Because it "has the advantage of introducing what really matters from the world of video games - increasing the level of engagement of students - without using any specific game," the incorporation of game mechanics and elements into learning activities appears to ensure greater student engagement in class [8]. Gamification has been shown to increase student engagement and participation in face-to-face and online learning environments [9,10]. Of all the game elements used in gamification, experience points, levels, leaderboards, challenges, and achievements are the most widely accepted [11]. But research indicates that a number of things affect engagement. First of all, whether a student is motivated by intrinsic or extrinsic factors influences how gamified interventions affect student engagement [12]. Second, involvement is empowering, according to research, particularly when students have the option to select between gamification and traditional approaches [13]. According to some study, involvement declines over time. If all learning environments were gamified, students' interest in it would eventually fade once the novelty wore off [14], and engagement would decline extremely quickly [15].

Learning

The authors Lee and Hammer [16] list a few advantages of gamification. They claim that a game's complex set of rules, which promotes active exploration and discovery, helps players build their problem-solving abilities. They value "concrete challenges precisely matched to the player's skill level, increasing the difficulty as the player's expertise develops." They also stress the significance of the "emotional area," which includes all the strong emotions you experience when playing, including pride, excitement, optimism, and curiosity, as well as the frustration of failure. Games, in their opinion, provide the ability to "reframe failure as a necessary component of learning" since failure becomes an opportunity to attempt, practice, and get better. In particular, Dominiguez [17] shows that frequent, meaningful, and quick feedback can improve student results. These positive outcomes in cognitive, emotional, and social areas should also ensure positive effects on performance of students and their scores [18]. Overall, the study showed that the results are strongly influenced by the users that utilize it. In fact, students who received instruction using conventional methods and those who received gamified activities both received the same grade. According to certain studies, pupils have the ability to object to "mandatory fun" and, more importantly, to think about binding the imposed reward system [19].

There is general agreement that gamified learning must be customized, that it must take into account how different students are influenced by it, and that it must address how gamification affects the varied profiles of the students in the class [15]. As was already said, the study findings appear to issue two different types of cautions: we need to pay close attention to the environment and frequently alter the design to have a bigger impact on motivation. There is proof that it is required to build a gamified atmosphere with distinct objectives, difficult tasks, and real-world examples where team spirit is promoted through game mechanics, conversations, and debates.

Additionally, these gamified settings must support students' learning requirements and suppose that gamification must have a fun or innovative element. Additionally, it's important to guarantee that participation is entirely voluntary because studies have shown that gamification works best when students have a choice. Obligation interferes with the purpose of the gamified activity and lowers student motivation [19]. Finally, research suggests that gamified learning experiences should include early, frequent, meaningful, and rapid feedback because it can boost student motivation and improve their performance [13]. However, it was noted that many of these empirical studies on gamification have methodological flaws, including small sample sizes, a reliance solely on user evaluation, a lack of well-validated psychometric measurements, the investigation of multiple affordances as a whole, the presentation of only descriptive statistics, very brief experiment time frames, and a lack of clarity in the research report [9]. In order to advance, the standard of research must be raised. In particular, Hamari [9] claims that with acceptable psychometric measures and suitable samples, the data comparability problems in international research on gaming can be resolved. 

The consensus among academics is that rather than viewing gamification as the magic bullet for education, integrating game aspects into the classroom requires a closer examination of their advantages and disadvantages. Additionally, they have suggested various directions for future gamification study. First, rather of treating gamification as a whole, studies should focus on specific aspects of it [15]. To understand how to develop a gamification system that can encourage and raise intrinsic motivation, it should pick out game aspects and assess their efficacy in the teaching/learning process [20]. It should also specify the circumstances in which gamification affects each student's performance and grade in class. In order to understand how technology in the classroom will make it simpler to add game aspects for higher student engagement, research should take into account technology affordances and their linkages with gamified systems. The third consideration has to do with the transfer of information from the gaming context to other contexts. Since the gaming environment differs from traditional educational settings, research has not yet determined if it facilitates the transfer of knowledge [15].

Conclusion

In conclusion, even if the tasks are monotonous, gamification can be a strong tool to encourage and change the user's behavior. The usability evaluation of such games is essential if we are to make them suitable for use by this very specific target audience, as computer-based instruction, and more importantly, games-based learning can make a very real contribution to teaching essential life and work-based skills to people who struggle to find other ways of learning these skills [21]. However, it's crucial to include the game features into the application in a way that will keep people interested. The game's elements initially act as external motivators before changing into more effective intrinsic ones. And of course, gamification needs to be perfectly planned and elegantly executed.

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