This piece articulates what Hodos has been feeling for sometime – gamification is more than just points and leaderboards – it’s about “mak[ing] fun and learning indistinguishable.”
A typical “gamification” concept goes something like this: Take an existing set of activities – say banking, or exercise, or rote schoolwork (the more mundane the better, apparently) – apply a set of “game rewards” in the form of points (or leveling, or badges), and as if by magic the world will become more fun, workers more efficient, and learning more effective.
Successful examples of gamification are “based on this philosophy of finding the game in learning: The core of the game [is] the same activity as the core of the competency we were tackling… [by] uniting good game mechanics and learning.” explains Michael John of GlassLab in this Techcrunch article.