During the last decade games have become an established vein of
entertainment, and consumer culture, and essentially, a common part of
people's daily lives. In the United States alone 59% of the population
plays computer games while revenues of the computer games industry
exceed US $15 billion (ESA, 2014). However, in addition to the increased
penetration of games, also the ways in which people play and employ
games have become more varied. The long-tail is getting longer: there
are more different kinds of games available for a multitude of different
platforms that cater for differing gaming needs for widening audiences,
and which use a wide variety of business models. Perhaps the most
prominent advancement stemming from these developments is "gamification"
which generally refers to the increased convergence of games and
everyday life. More particularly and practically, gamification commonly
refers to the process of enhancing services and systems so that they
increase enjoyable and intrinsically motivated use as well as support
further behavioral change by employing elements characteristic of games -
"Transforming Homo Economicus into Homo Ludens". The "Gamification:
Motivations, Effects and Analytics" -minitrack was established to
address this growing junction of interests of both scholars and
practitioners where games, services and information systems meet and
merge. Even though this minitrack is featured at HICSS for the first
time and there were two other minitracks competing for game-related
submission, this minitrack managed to receive more submissions than the
competing tracks as well as an amount of submission that is on par with
other popular, more established minitracks. Ultimately, six high quality
papers that cover gamification from diverse perspectives were accepted
to be presented across two sessions. Gamification is still a rather
novel development that suffers from growing pains, and therefore, it has
still been under significant conceptual chaos and theoretical
turbulence. In "Reimagining gamification through the lens of Activity
Theory", Hendranus Vermeulen, James Gain, Patrick Marais and Siobhan
O'Donovan seek to contribute to the conceptual and theoretical
understanding of gamification by identifying some of the pitfalls in how
gamification has been currently conceptualized and perceived, and
offering an alternative dialectical perspective for gamification that is
based in activity theory. Even though gamification has been very
transparently and pervasively acknowledged to be one of the big
technology trends during the recent years both in academia and in
industry, it has remained opaque as to what kind of technology is being
developed around it as well as what kinds of patents companies are
filing related to gamification. In "Monitoring Gamification in
International Patent Documents: Technology Classes, Firms and
Preliminary Value Indicators", Patrick Julian H -- flinger and Eric
Zimmerling investigate the international patent documents (from EPO,
USTPO and Google Patents) in order to discover what kinds of patents are
been filed related to gamification, in which classes of patents and who
is filing them. The analysis provides interesting insights in the
otherwise previously unexplored area of patents and company interests
related to gamification. Increased competition is repeatedly touted as a
detrimental side effect of leaderboards and other competition-inducing
game mechanics. On the other hand, competition can also potentially
increase task performance (at least on the short term). Therefore,
competition is a complex issue, and currently, there has been a gap in
our knowledge concerning the benefits and detriments of competition. In
"When Competition is the Loser", Robin Brouwer untangles how intra-team
competition affects perceived task complexity, perceived psychological
safety, level of team conflict as well as team performance. The use of
information systems and services in healthcare is one of the largest and
most impactful areas in HICSS-related sciences. Gamification especially
can be seen as a crucial development in this area since one of the main
strengths of gamification has been deemed to be its ability to motivate
people to take on and maintain difficult habits. In "Design Strategies
for Gamified Physical Activity Applications for Older Adults", Dennis
Kappen, Lennart Nacke, Kathrin Gerling and Lia Tsotsos explore and
suggest design guidelines as to how playful and gameful systems could be
harnessed to motivate older adults to maintain physical activity and
wellbeing. The authors specifically investigate needs and preferences
regarding technologies that support physical activity via
semi-structured interviews with 19 older adults and a focus group.
Similarly, another promising application areas of gamification has been
regarded to exist in supporting sustainable and safe behaviors. In "The
Impact of Gamification-Induced Emotions on In-Car IS Adoption -- The
Difference between Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants", Carolin
Ebermann, Everlin Piccinini, Benjamin Brauer, Sebastian Busse and Lutz
Kolbe investigate how users' experiences and interactions in an in-car
gamification system vary based on their 'digital nativeness' and thus
attempt to find optimal ways to design driving-related gamification
systems for different kinds of users. Alongside with more traditional
game design elements, virtual economies with their virtual currencies
and virtual goods have also been shaping gamification designs. In "Why
do People Buy Virtual Goods? A Literature Review", Juho Hamari and Lauri
Keronen seek to address the question of why do people purchase virtual
goods by investigating and synthesizing past (quantitative) literature.
Firstly, the study provides an overview to the literature, what, how and
where the phenomenon has been studied before. Secondly, by combining
results of past literature, the study aims to provide a more reliable,
literature spanning look at which factors drive purchase behavior
towards virtual goods.