6. Final thoughts
Despite all the interest in gamification by managers and scholars, the dearth of both research and popular literatures on the topic is noteworthy. Our exploration into gamification reveals many interesting possible avenues of future research by scholars and areas of application by practitioners. For example, the issue of consent to participating in gamified experiences has yet to be explored in research. In some cases–—as with customers–—consent is implicit. However, when designing gamified experiences for employees, an important question is whether explicit consentshould be offered. What are the major considerations in creating gamified experiences for different groups of stakeholders, such as customers and employees? In this article we have shown that gamification is a method firms can use to improve and develop the ways in which they engage with a variety of stakeholders. Internally these are mostly employees, and externally these are mostly customers. In the examples presented here, behavior changes were accomplished by applying lessons from game design to non-game settings. In particular, success in gamification was driven by appropriate alignment of gamification mechanics, dynamics, and emotions to specific player types; in contrast, gamification failures were linked to poor alignment between these gamification principles and players involved in the gamified experience. We hope that this article helps managers as they attempt to initiate, direct, and harness the behaviors of individuals in a wide range of organizational settings through gamification.
