Gamification is everywhere in learning right now. Not even just in learning, I keep getting messaged about streaks and challenges from the chess app on my phone. My health tracking app tries to make me play games, when all I want is to see my sleep ratios. And I wonder if it's a personal thing, that it's all annoying me.
There are a lot of different types of gamification - streaks, badges, leaderboards. The claims from companies using gamification in learning are big - more engagement, better retention, higher completion rates. But I wanted to look at what the research actually says.
Unfortunately there's not a clean answer. And for workplace learning specifically - we don't know much at all.
The Headline Finding
A piece of research examined 41 different studies on gamification in learning source.
It's worth noting all studies were about education, not workplaces.
While this study found gamification had positive outcomes, there were caveats. It works better in certain situations: primary school aged children, science, offline. And it needed to be longer than one semester. Unsurprisingly, the design matters greatly - some designs actually have negative effects. For example, surface-level gamification - making things look and feel game-like without any real game structure underneath - actually made learning outcomes worse. Clicking buttons and dragging things around looks like engagement. It isn't.
And perhaps most interestingly - the strongest effect was on motivation and engagement, not learning outcomes. Which matters, because wanting to complete something and actually learning something are very different things.
The Streaks Problem
Streaks are the most researched gamification element - and the most revealing. The evidence is clear that they work for habit formation and daily engagement. We're all scared of Duo's daily reminders. Duolingo's own data shows users who maintain a streak for 7 days are significantly more likely to stay engaged long term.
But a Journal of Consumer Research study found something more uncomfortable - users can start viewing extending the streak as more important than the underlying activity. The goal shifts from learning to not breaking the number.
Cognitive science calls this the illusion of mastery. Low-effort daily repetition feels productive. It doesn't produce durable learning.
Duolingo introduced streak freezes and weekend amulets to manage streak anxiety - the psychological pressure of an impending break. Which is an admission that the mechanic can tip from motivating to stressful.
And we all know people with 100s of days streaks who can't speak a language (myself included). But missing a streak stops people going back - day 1 is tough.
The Leaderboard Problem
Leaderboards are the most divisive element - and the research reflects that. For some people, leaderboards are amazing motivation, for others, it's demoralising.
People who respond well to leaderboards tend not to be focusing on the learning. The leaderboard shifts focus from am I getting better to am I beating everyone else.
Those motivated by learning (the actual goal) do not respond as well. But the big issue is the bottom of the leaderboard. It actually has a name - discouragement by peer excellence. If the gap to the top feels out of reach, the leaderboard stops being motivating and starts being demoralising.
But research shows team leaderboards perform better than individual ones . Team leaderboards promote team spirit and collaborative learning. Time-bound leaderboards (weekly rather than all-time) reduce the discouragement effect. But yet again, design matters more than the mechanic.
Gamification Can Actually Make Things Worse
There's a theory in motivation psychology - self-determination - which says people need autonomy, competence and relatedness to be motivated. Gamification can support all three. It can also undermine all three, depending on how it's designed.
A survey of nearly 300 employees (across several industries) found gamification that feels like it's being done to you rather than for you can make things worse. The examples given being points and badges were perceived as controlling.
Research by Jordan Etkin at Duke found that quantifying activities we're already motivated to do can drain the enjoyment out of them. If you love something and someone starts giving you points for it, you start doing it for points.
Which explains what we see - being forced to do gamified mandatory training where autonomy already feels low to begin with. Adding extra layers of control on top does not help (but we think relevancy definitely does).
The Workplace Research Gap
Most gamification research is on students, not employees. A review of existing research noted that gamification in corporate learning remains comparatively underexplored and fragmented. Many prior studies use small samples, student populations, or unvalidated measurement instruments.
The elements with more research - streaks and leaderboards - aren't the ones most relevant to workplace learning. The research on progress bars, badges, quests, social learning and celebration mechanics is thinner, more mixed, or mostly conducted outside work contexts.
Which is why we're always running our own pilots, and building our body of research (even if it's not academically published).
So Does Gamification Work?
- For engagement - yes, often.
- For actual learning - sometimes.
- For workplace learning specifically - we don't have enough good evidence to be confident either way.
What the research does suggest is that design and context matter more than the mechanic. Gamification that supports autonomy, feels meaningful, and connects to something the learner actually cares about has a better chance of working. Gamification bolted on to bad content, or designed to drive logins rather than learning, probably doesn't.
For the Taught by Humans take on what we actually do and why - Why We Don't Go Hard on Gamification at Taught by Humans.
For the full breakdown of each element - what it is, how it works, pros, limitations and when it works best - see our Gamification in Workplace Learning resource.