I totally understand what you’re trying to say - that the product itself is more important. However it feels like you’re speaking about two different things. In other words, your comparisons are flawed in my opinion.

Angry Birds IS a game, meaning gaining levels and unlocking content are the main objectives in and of themselves, whereas Nike Training Club’s main objective is to make you work out. In order to make ‘working out’ more fun for you, they added gamification as another layer of incentive.

A better question in my mind is… while you were using the Nike app, did it make it more fun for you to work out because you were unlocking bonus content? If yes, gamification did its job.

I think the reason gamification is so appealing for marketers is because it gets consumers through the door and make them stick longer. Whereas you might not have gone past your first workout, now you’ve gone through the whole workout regimen in part because you wanted to see what you could unlock next.

In this context, it doesn’t really matter what the actual product is. If gamification made the experience even a tiny bit more enjoyable, then gamification has done its job. If you did more work outs just because of the bonus content… does it matter? You got the workout done either way!

In other words, what you’re comparing have little to do with Ramifications of Gamification as your title suggests. Do you have examples of gamification making your product/service experience WORSE? Or are you more interested in finding out meanings of life and where humanity is headed if all we do is due to incentives?

I personally dont like the gamification of apps. I am thinking about the runkeeper service for example. For me it does one thing, which is to track my runs. I rather dont get into earning promotions or ‘points’ towards some fictional ‘reward’. I just joined fitocracy the other day and I saw some game elements in there as well. But it’s more of a social tool plus game elements.

Thanks for reading and commenting!

@ Calvin: You make great points, and yes, I admit my comparison was off. That said, I was really replying to the original post from Say Media, about the potential effects of gamification on people, and specifically to the writer’s neurotic concern that all this gamification is messing with our own intrinsic methods of motivation and reward.

Re: the Nike app, I do find that it motivates me, but I stand by my original point that if I didn’t find the content valuable, all the game tricks in the world wouldn’t make me keep at it. So yes, from a marketing perspective, gamification works! But only up to a certain point. It’s trendy now, but I’m of the opinion that, as @Florian hints, it’s not the be all end all. Definitely useful for some things, not so much for others.

I think the real question is, why is everyone so active while I do absolutely nothing with myself? Running apps…sheesh.

@sara, that’s what ‘angry birds’ is for lol

@Sarah, wait until you hit your 30s. You might find a little more incentive.