Gamification Fatigue?

Every once in a while, attendees at my speaking engagements or workshops would ask, “Yu-kai, I want to add gamification to my company, but aren’t most games short-lived? Wouldn’t we be shooting ourselves in the foot if we implemented gamification?”

It’s true, many fun games are played for two to eight months, but afterwards players move on to new games. However, it doesn’t mean that gamifying your system would automatically result in the same situation due to two important reasons.

First, remember I mentioned earlier that there is generally no real purpose for playing a game; that is, most people never have to play a game. The instant a game is not fun, people will leave and play other games or go on Youtube/Facebook/email. As a result, after two to eight months, the game will often fail to engage people so they drop out. Hopefully the system that you are designing actually has a purpose to it, and so even if it becomes...