The app stores are full of platforms that promise to make an everyday activity seem more fun. Duolingo does it with learning new languages, Headspace with meditation, Strava with jogging – there are tons of examples. You might not even be able to order fries without being pulled into playing a Mc-version of Monopoly!
That’s gamification for you. It takes the things that make games fun – like earning points, winning badges, or seeing your name on a leaderboard – and mixes them with less-fun daily activities. This makes tasks feel a lot more exciting, and even provides that extra push to help you build habits, learn new things, and get stuff done.
Gamification is quickly becoming a big part of how we learn, work, and play. The gamification market is currently worth about $15.4 billion, but experts think it could triple to $48.7 billion by 2029. It’s catching on because it works: adding game elements can make people more interested in and better at what they do. It also has commercial implications as it can prompt people to engage with brands more. This isn’t new: a decade ago, Domino’s Pizza saw sales jump after it introduced its Pizza Hero game that let customers create their own pizzas.
Gamification mechanics clearly work to boost your motivation, engagement, and productivity – but how do they work, and are they really the game changer they promise to be? Let’s find out.
What Is Gamification and Why Do We Love It?
Imagine if something as mundane as washing the dishes or folding the laundry could let you earn points, unlock achievements, and climb leaderboards – just for doing things you have to. That’s gamification in a nutshell. It adds game-like elements to non-game activities like chores, turning them into something fun and exciting.
We all love a good game, right? When you apply game mechanics, like a scoring system, trophies, or even just a timer, to daily chores or tasks, your next big clean up or run becomes less about the task itself and more about having fun while you do it. Research suggests that gamification can reduce your cognitive overload, distracting and relaxing your mind so you stop stressing about completing a task and start enjoying it. Who doesn’t want to forget they’ve got to clean their entire house?
Gamification isn’t just used for household chores, though. In fact, you can find gamification almost everywhere. Take education, for example. Gamification means that instead of just reading a passage from a textbook, you could earn a badge for every new paragraph you finish, or collect rewards for participating in class. The best part? Studies suggest that learning like this actually helps you understand and remember as much as 90% of the material. That’s one way to improve students’ skills.
At work, studies show that 90% of employees say they’re more productive when using gamification. Why? Because gamification encourages employees to complete routine tasks more quickly and efficiently, earning points and badges as they go – suddenly, clearing those emails in your inbox doesn’t seem so daunting anymore. Gamification is now something employees seek in the workplace, with around 78% of jobseekers actively looking for companies offering gamification in their 9–5. For companies taking on new recruits, gamifying the onboarding process can make new hires 54% more productive. If companies want to continue attracting the best talent, it seems gamification is the way to go.
Gamification is also helping brands find and retain customers, especially in retail and e-commerce. Would you be surprised to learn that adding gamification can increase customer acquisition by as much as 700%? It’s no wonder we’re seeing prizes, points, and badges on almost every shopping app we use. Gamification keeps us engaged, and importantly, keeps us coming back. We’re loyal to the brands that make shopping fun, collecting freebies and prizes for our loyalty.
Look at leading makeup brand Sephora. Their Tinder-inspired “Swipe it. Shop it.” game allowed customers to swipe left or right depending on whether or not they liked the look. Instead of browsing an entire catalog of products, customers could quickly find looks they liked and shop for all the relevant products straight away. Sephora effectively created a personalized shopping experience that’s tailored to the needs of every customer. It’s simple, but it works. Sephora’s approach to gamification and shopper personalization is probably one of the reasons it makes more than $27 million in revenue every day.
Popular Gamification Tactics
One of the best things about gamification is how diverse it is. No two games are the same. Companies can combine tactics to create a truly unique experience, whether it’s a points system, leaderboard, or enticing storyline. Let’s go through some of the most common gaming techniques.
Point Systems
Points are at the heart of gamification, helping transform everyday activities into challenges you want to tackle. They’re an easy, instant way to measure your success: each point you earn is a small victory and a mini incentive to keep going.
It’s all wired in basic human psychology. A climbing score is a visual representation of progress, tapping into that internal need for mastery and accomplishment. The more points you earn, the more you want to earn. This is known as a positive feedback loop, where the end result motivates you to repeat a certain task so you get to keep enjoying that feeling of success.
Point systems can also show off your achievements to other users if the app you’re using has social or community elements. In some apps, collecting points might even unlock premium content, adding an element of exclusivity and an extra incentive to engage with the platform. Both features turn activities that are often quite solitary into communal – and even competitive – experiences.
Let’s think about how it works in practice. Cleaning the kitchen might seem dull, but earning points for washing dishes can instantly transform it into a rewarding game – especially if you can trade points for prizes or claim a spot on a leaderboard. This approach increases your motivation and could make the task feel less like a chore and more like a fun quest.
Points systems are incredibly popular in the workplace. For example, Omnicare used point systems to motivate its employees and subsequently enhance its customer service. Earning points let employees claim a spot on the leaderboard and win prizes such as Amazon gift cards or movie tickets. This approach cut customer call waiting times in half.
Badges
If raking in points feels like a quick thrill, earning badges is like hitting the jackpot. They’re usually more special or rare – you might earn a new badge for reaching a big milestone like completing five runs, buying 10 coffees, or learning 100 new Spanish words. The best part is that when you snag a badge, it usually reveals a new one to chase. It’s like a fun collection game where each badge pushes you to set and smash new goals, keeping you glued to the app or service – and hopefully, your goals.
IBM introduced a badge system in 2015 to increase engagement among student developers who were completing their online learning courses. While students were enrolling to the courses, IBM quickly noticed they weren’t finishing them, so they turned to gamification to entice students back. They saw a 129% increase in student enrollments, and even more impressively, a 226% increase in the number of students completing courses. Plus, a whopping 87% of people who earned their badges in a study felt more engaged with what they were doing.
Leaderboards
Some gamified apps use leaderboards to rank users based on performance. These high score tables let apps spotlight top performers – and might also give other people a friendly nudge to push themselves.
Real-time updates let you see your name move up or down, giving you an immediate sense of how you’re doing. Instant feedback is gold for setting personal goals and upping your game, especially when you’re comparing yourself to others. You might find that leaderboards themselves don’t motivate you, but climbing them often comes with extra rewards, like bonus points at the end of the challenge, a badge for retaining a high score, or actual physical prizes like a free coffee. Claiming the latest prizes can be a powerful motivator, too.
Challenges
Whether you’re using an app to learn a new language, training at work, or keeping up with your fitness, challenges can make routine drills far more exciting. They become obstacles you have to overcome to complete an achievement and earn points or badges, inviting you to test your skills and see how far you can go.
The idea here taps into something called the “flow state” – a fancy way of saying that activities where the difficulty is just right put you in a happy, productive headspace. When something is too tough or easy, you can’t fully engage with what you’re doing. That’s what gamification aims for with challenges.
Challenges also often provide you with clear directions that tell you exactly what you need to do to reach the next step in your journey. Without them, you might end up aimlessly scrolling through an app, not really knowing what to do and quickly losing motivation in the process. Challenges like timed quizzes or new lessons with exclusive rewards can push you to engage with your app and compete.
Levels
In gamified apps, levels act as your stepping stones – you need to move through them to get further in your fitness, productivity, or learning journey. Each level usually represents a new stage of difficulty, effectively packaging your progress into smaller, manageable chunks. This keeps you engaged while giving you a clear sense of how far you’ve come and how far you have to go.
Using levels in apps can be extremely motivating – it fuels your need for achievement and satisfaction without overwhelming you with never-ending or difficult tasks. Things would get boring pretty fast if you played a game or used a learning app without any sense of progression. Levels mean every stage you reach feels like a mini-victory, pushing you to keep going.
Levels also help developers understand different skill sets and learning paces, so they can build systems that adapt to real-time engagement. As you progress, some apps can understand how quickly you learn or how skilled you become, and in turn adjust to your patterns, offering the right level of difficulty at each step to push you to keep going.
Rewards
Gamified apps are good, and rewards make them even better. Beyond points and badges, rewards can include awards, exclusive content, new features, or even physical prizes. Those extra bonuses can make tackling new challenges feel like an even more worthwhile use of your time.
The impact of rewards is rooted in basic psychology. Dopamine – a neurotransmitter linked to feelings of pleasure and satisfaction – makes your brain happy when you get a reward, and this feeling draws you in and makes you want to chase more rewards.
Rewards also help set and reinforce habits. If you’re using a gamified app to learn a new language, for instance, getting a reward after completing a daily lesson can turn a challenging task into a habit. Before you know it, you’re logging in every day, eager to earn your next reward – and maybe (hopefully) even enjoying the learning process itself.
Rewards also add a social dimension to gamification. Many apps let you share your rewards or compare them with friends, which can be incredibly motivating if you thrive on social recognition and competition.
Progress Bars
A progress bar is a visual indicator of how far you’ve advanced toward your goal. In gamified apps, it turns abstract achievements into something you can see and almost touch. It can also help you manage your expectations and make long or complex tasks feel more doable.
You know that feeling of satisfaction you get when your phone battery is at 100%? Progress bars are a lot like that. Seeing how much you have left can fuel your motivation to reach the end – our brains aren’t fans of leaving things unfinished, so seeing a task is only partly done can nag at you. If that almost-full progress bar is on your mind, your brain might be nudging you to finish what you started.
Quests and Storylines
When you think about what draws you into a great book or movie, it’s usually the compelling storyline and the characters’ challenges. In gamification, incorporating quests and storylines works much the same way, weaving a narrative into your activities to make them that little bit more engaging.
Quests become mini-missions, complete with clear objectives, necessary actions, and a defined final reward. Storylines can add depth to this experience by linking quests together in a cohesive narrative. For example, on a fitness app, instead of simply ticking off daily exercises, you might find yourself on a “Journey to the Peaks of Health.” Each workout brings you closer to the next milestone, with new story elements revealing themselves along the way to deepen your engagement and commitment to the goal.
Engine Yard is one company that’s nailed the quest and storyline gamification element. It introduced gamification into its Zendesk platform, tasking employees and customers with missions after completing surveys or submitting bug reports. The idea was to use gamification to increase engagement, customer satisfaction, and responsiveness to bug tickets. It worked: Engine Yard saw a 20% drop in customer complaint tickets while forum engagement increased by 40%.
Streaks and Daily Check-Ins
Streaks count how many times you consecutively complete a certain task, like logging in, completing an exercise, or finishing a new lesson. Checking in every day extends your streak, helping you build habits – after all, the longer your streak, the more you have to lose by breaking it, which can be a powerful motivator to keep going.
Research in behavior science shows that habits form more effectively with a clear cue (the daily check-in), a routine behavior (the task itself), and a reward (extending the streak). This helps transform on-and-off engagement into regular practice – but if you break your streak, you might lose your engagement completely.
Social Engagement
Social elements in gamified apps – like shared challenges, collaborations, and team competitions – can fire up your natural desire to connect and compete, making you more likely to engage with an app.
Social features don’t just involve direct competition – many apps let you post about your achievements and milestones on social media. This leads to further social reinforcement from your nearest and dearest in the form of likes, comments, and other forms of positive feedback.
Where Can You Find Gamification?
Gamification is popping up in all sorts of places – chances are you know of or use a few popular gamficiation-based apps, especially in the retail, education, business, fitness, healthcare, and marketing sectors. Some sectors are more advanced than others, though.
The retail sector currently holds the lead in gamification, with 28.6% of market share. Education is second, followed by healthcare. Many other industries are beginning to utilize gamification techniques too: research suggests that 87% of worldwide businesses will adopt gamification within the next five years. Let’s look at how gamification can be used across these industries.
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- 🏫Education
Gamification can transform how students approach new topics. Platforms like Khan Academy, Udemy, Yousician, and Duolingo move away from traditional learning models and into dynamic and motivating games for people of all ages – including adults – to make learning fun.
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- 🏋️Fitness
Fitness apps use gamification to make working out more enjoyable and attainable. They track your progress, add competitive elements, and give you rewards to keep you going. Popular fitness apps with these features include MyFitnessPal, Strava, and Nike+ Run Club.
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- 📊Business
Businesses increasingly use gamification in employee training programs. It makes training sessions more engaging and effective. Adding gamified apps to business apps is also a fantastic way to keep customers engaged and loyal. Popular business apps using gamification include eBay, Trello, and Slack.
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- 📺Marketing
Marketers also use gamification to boost brand engagement and customer retention. By making interactions more fun and rewarding, they subtly encourage customers to take action, like making a purchase. Successful examples include Starbucks Rewards, Domino’s Pizza Hero, and McDonald’s Monopoly.
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- 🏥Healthcare
In healthcare, gamification is used to encourage patients to follow treatment plans and build habits for healthier lifestyles. This approach makes these tasks seem less daunting and more enjoyable, even increasing the chances other patients will jump on the bandwagon and improve their healthcare. Notable examples include SuperBetter, Headspace, PhysioFun, and MySugr.
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- 💰Finance
Financial services use gamification to teach you about financial literacy and encourage better financial habits. For example, platforms like Quapital and Mint help you manage your budget with financial goals, track your spending habits, and save money. You receive notifications and rewards for meeting set budget targets, which keeps you on track with your goals.
Are We Engaging at the Expense of Privacy?
As with any digital platform, concerns around user privacy and data collection are common, and gamification is no different. Most, if not all, games rely on some form of data collection to track user behavior, tailor experiences, and keep us engaged. Gamification elements might even be used to encourage you to give up some of your privacy, seemingly rewarding you for handing over your data. Ruby Tuesday is one example: their gamification campaign included sweepstakes and reel slots, and users signed up to play with their names, emails, and zip codes to win food gift cards and a cash prize.
Many gamification apps also ask you to create profiles to play. Most of the time, these profiles are linked to other apps, such as Facebook or Instagram. When you sync your profiles, you could give up some element of your privacy while also consenting to usage and behavior tracking. Your information could then be used for marketing purposes, such as targeting you with ads for other games, offers, or discounts.
Similarly, some gamification apps can track even more sensitive data, like your location. For example, a running app may ask your permission to track your location and social contacts to provide you with more accurate running routes and competition between nearby runners. Some research suggests that users are more willing to hand over this information because they’re so focused on the outcome – in this case, a more valuable and personalized running experience.
Many studies have shown that gamification makes us cognitively absorbed, which means we could be more likely to lower our guard and neglect potential privacy concerns while absorbed in an activity. Overlooking privacy issues isn’t only a concern while playing a game: six out of ten Americans admit to skipping past privacy policies, including on gaming apps. Even if apps seem transparent about how they use our data, we seem more than happy to take their word for it without looking into it.
Permissions on these platforms often includes access to personal and location data, which makes using a VPN a necessity. While a VPN won’t stop providers from accessing information you willingly share, it will encrypt your data. This protects your information from falling into the wrong hands, and stops third parties from spying on your activity. VPNs also disguise your location, making it harder for online spies to see where you are. A VPN free trial is the easiest way to make sure you’re happy with the service you choose.
Despite the potential privacy risks, it’s clear gamification is a trend that will continue to grow, and across almost every industry too. We can’t hide from gamification – it’s everywhere. In fact, some of the most downloaded apps ever use gamification to keep users engaged. We’ll explore some of these apps next.
Popular Apps that Use Gamification
Duolingo
Learning a new language can feel overwhelming, especially when you’re just starting out. Duolingo turned what could be a slog into a fun and entertaining game. It’s become one of, if not the most, popular language-learning apps, with around 23.4 million active daily users and over 98 million downloads.
Duolingo’s driving force lies in its points system. When you nail a lesson, you rack up points based on how well you’ve done, and the more points you have, the higher you’ll climb in the leaderboards, which are organized into leagues. Each league challenges you to outdo others or risk dropping a rank.
Duolingo also uses a system of lives, or “hearts,” to keep you on your toes. You lose hearts for making mistakes, and if you lose them all, you can’t complete your lesson or retain your progress unless you wait for hearts to refill or buy more with in-app currency. This adds a layer of strategy to your learning sessions and comes with an element of risk as you can never predict how well you’ll do in each lesson.
New levels demand more lessons, pushing you to engage regularly and keep climbing higher in your league. Your learning streak is also crucial – it counts how many consecutive days you’ve completed a lesson. Maintain it, and you’ll unlock perks like temporary premium features or a Streak Freeze for days you can’t finish a lesson.
Duolingo uses advanced AI to personalize your learning, adjusting its difficulty based on your progress. This means it collects some of your data, like the language you’re learning, which skills and lessons you’ve completed, and word strength. Duolingo also collects other types of data, especially about your usage habits. It can track when you use the app, which in-app purchases you make, and even your device type. Although it says it doesn’t share information with third parties, it does work with third-party ad partners like Facebook and Google. This means you’re likely to see ads for Duolingo while using these sites.
Strava
Strava is a social fitness network for cyclists and runners. With GPS tracking at its core, Strava logs billions of activities and also connects over 120 million users, making it a heavyweight in the fitness community. The app uses gamification to keep you motivated and engaged with a vibrant athletic community.
At the heart of Strava’s appeal are segments – user-created sections of roads or trails where athletes can compete for the best time. Whenever you zip through a segment, your time is logged, pitting you against everyone else who’s taken the same route and pushing you to improve your time.
Strava keeps the momentum going with regular challenges, ranging from nailing a certain number of activities to covering set distances within a month. Finish these challenges and you might score exclusive badges or even real-world prizes, incentivising you to stay active and regularly engage with the app.
The app tracks your personal achievements. It celebrates your bests by notifying you the moment you outdo yourself, turning every run into a chance to beat your own record. Detailed logs and performance analysis tools let you use real data to drive your self-improvement. Plus, every milestone you hit earns you new badges and trophies. Displayed proudly on your profile, these symbols of achievement show others how serious you are and spur you to keep pushing your limits.
What really sets Strava apart is its social focus. Giving kudos to fellow runners, commenting on their sprints, or simply connecting with new people brings a layer of community support that’s rare in fitness apps. These social interactions build a network of motivation, helping everyone stay fired up and focused. Doing so comes at the cost of some privacy though. Strava tracks your location to help you connect with nearby runners and find routes. Posting your activities publicly on the app also means others can see your profile, even if it’s someone you don’t know.
Starbucks Rewards
At first, Starbucks Rewards doesn’t look anything like a gamified app – until you start looking into what’s underneath its surface. The app cleverly incorporates subtle gaming mechanics, turning your daily coffee habit into one of the most successful US loyalty programs with over 31 million active members.
Buying a latte through Starbucks Rewards doesn’t only give you a much-needed caffeine hit. It also earns you a set amount of Stars, which you can then use as currency for everything from a free espresso to a piece of merchandise. This reward scheme creates a sneaky loop: the more you buy, the more you earn, and the more likely you are to return to collect more.
Starbucks takes its loyalty program a step further as it lets you “level up” with a two-tier membership system. At the start, you sign up as a Green tier member, but you can quickly amount enough Stars to receive Gold status. This not only sounds better, but also shows your status and brings exclusive rewards like extra shots of espresso, a choice of syrups, and whipped cream for free.
If you’ve ever scrolled through social media and seen people boasting about creating the next best frappuccino, you’ll know Starbucks is also all about personalizing your drinks. This feature is especially prominent within the app where you can customize every drink down to the temperature, putting you fully in control of your order. It’s a bit like creating your own character in a game. By letting you decide even the tiniest details, Starbucks caters to your preferences better than other coffee chains, strengthening your connection to the brand.
A recent app update rolled out a handful of new interesting features – including an iTunes playlist from every store so you can easily find songs that tickled your fancy when you last ordered. You can also expect regular discount codes and personalized offers in your inbox, all based on your purchase history, making it feel like the app is designed specifically for you. Yep, that does mean that Starbucks tracks how you interact with the app and which drinks you buy. If you want to find nearby Starbucks stores, that also means handing over your location.
Todoist
Todoist is a task management app that turns productivity into a game where you’re both the player and the prize winner. Its premise is simple but effective, and by gamifying the experience, the app makes everyday organization not just manageable but downright fun for over 25 million users worldwide.
Rewards are an integral part of Todoist. Whenever you complete a task, you receive Karma points, helping you reach daily and weekly goals. The app keeps track of how many points you have and counts your continuous earning streak, recording your progress in real-time and visually displaying it within your profile. This gives you a motivational boost and fosters new productive habits.
Todoist also serves you negative points when you leave a task overdue for more than four days. This means you lose points you earned previously, reducing what you’ve already accumulated.
If ticking things off the list isn’t enough of a visual stimulus to keep you going, Todoist uses a handy progress bar that fills up as you get closer to completing a project or leveling up. This can be incredibly motivating: iit leverages a psychological phenomenon called the Goal Gradient effect which states that you’re more likely to try harder to achieve your goals if you can see the end is near.
The app lets you customize your projects, prioritize them, or sort them by date, urgency, or other criteria. In other words, you can make sure your list doesn’t feel as overwhelming, making you more likely to tick off your tasks.
Fancy a more detailed insight into your productivity? Todoist sorts you out with detailed reports of your progress. These summarize and analyze your activity, like the number of completed and missed tasks, and offer insights into your most and least productive times to highlight areas for improvement.
Alongside that, Todoist collects all the standard types of personal information like your email, IP address, and device information. It also stores cookies in your browser so it can identify you when you return to the website and personalize the page for you. In their privacy policy, Todoist states cookies can be used for advertising purposes too, so it’s likely looking at your habits to serve you relevant ads.
Headspace
Meditation might be great for wellness, but it’s not exactly easy to get into, especially if you’re just starting out. Headspace can help you build habits: it revolutionized how people approach meditation and mindfulness by incorporating simple gamification methods. It worked so well that the app now has over 65 million downloads, through which it provides thousands of users with meditation sessions, mindfulness exercises, and sleep-promoting activities.
One of the first things you notice when you use Headspace is your streak counter. Every time you meditate, your streak grows. Miss a day and the counter resets. This might sound trivial, but it’s surprisingly motivating. The app also rewards you with badges for reaching predetermined milestones like completing your first meditation. These tap into our intrinsic love for collecting and achieving.
Headspace also has a unique take on leaderboards. Instead of ranking everyone, it shows you friends who have meditated that day. This creates a gentle nudge to keep up but without the stress of competition, which many other gamified apps rely on. You can even send friendly reminders to your buddies who might need a little push.
Headspace can send you gentle nudges in the form of push notifications. These can range from reminding you about limited-time events or an unfinished session to encouraging you to keep your streak going and congratulating you on your latest achievements.
Obviously, the more personalized the experience, the more information Headspace needs to track. It collects your contact information like email and phone number, but also more sensitive personal data such as your health information, sexual orientation, medical history, and age. Headspace doesn’t hide the fact it shares your information with third parties, either. It also doesn’t state what information it shares, only that it does.
Gamification Just Clicks with Our Brains
Gamification turns mundane tasks into engaging challenges, using basic psychology to make you more likely to stick with your goals and actually enjoy the process. Whether it’s earning points for washing dishes, collecting badges for completing workouts, or climbing leaderboards in learning apps, game mechanics provide the motivation and feedback needed to keep you going.
Apps that might have once seemed daunting are now fun and inviting – and, a lot of the time, free to use. This lowers the barriers of entry, making gamified platforms more popular among more diverse audiences and boosting their usage even more.
Privacy concerns remain, no matter which gamification app you engage with. The more personalized your experience, the more likely you are to keep going back. By the same token, more customization means apps need to collect more data about you. Making mundane tasks more fun to get through is an exciting thought, but is it worth giving up your email or location so an app can track you? That’s for you to decide.
Still, considering its remarkable successes so far, it’s exciting to think where gamification might go next. It’s already slowly making its mark in the world of virtual and augmented reality, but, for now, it’s still in its infancy.
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