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What began as Rob's excuse to talk about his favorite Mario games turned into a long discussion of research about gamification and its role (if any) in improving human behavior. We review the literature, the theory, and the anecdotes around this hot hot trend in every field from education to environmentalism. Is gamification the Fortnite of productivity? Or should it be tossed in a landfill like E.T. for Atari 2600.

Articles discussed this episode:

Morford, Z.H., Witts, B.N., Killingsworth, K.J., & Alavosius, M.P. (2014). Gamification: The intersection between behavior analysis and game design technologies. The Behavior Analyst, 37, 25-40. doi: 10.1007/s40614-014-0006-1

Sailer, M., Hense, J.U., Mayr, S.K., & Mandi, H. (2017). How gamification motivates: An experimental study of the effects of specific game design elements on psychological need satisfaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 371-380. doi: 10.1016/j.chb.2016.12.033

Hamari, J., Koivisto, & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does Gamification Work? A literature review of empirical studies on gamification. Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences. doi: 10.1109/HICSS.2014.377

Fogel, V.A., Miltenberger, R.G., Graves, R., & Koehler, S. (2010). The effects of exergaming on physical activity among inactive children in a physical education classroom. Journal of Applied Behavior Anlaysis, 43, 591-600. doi: 10.1901/jaba.2010.43-591