Wow. I feel like Jane McGonigal would hate this. Especially her video being used to promote it. Jane has said publicly that she wants to design games that change the world, not just "pointify" current products. I highly recommend watching Jesse Schell's talk on the Gamepocalypse (a vivid vision of the dystopic result of gamification). In fact, I believe Jane and Jesse are debating it at a conference later this year. Would be interesting to hear their thoughts on this.
To be fair, it looks like this page suggests a lot more than just adding points to things. I am reading it as a primer on human psychology.
The real question in my mind is this: What causes X behavior in my audience? The good guy in me wants to make things fun for people, to arouse excitement and enjoyment. What arouses these emotions in them?
Thus is gamification more of an art. You cannot just add some points and badges to a product and expect it to take off. You must appeal to the pleasure centers in ways that make sense.
It is interesting to see listed on this site what kinds of things have been proven to cause these favorable reactions in people. Maybe there are some fundamental concepts we can derive from the long lists. Maybe we can boil them down to some core principles vaguely reminiscent of Skinner. With this study, we are going to learn more about ourselves, our base, instinctual needs.
This is cool stuff. Why should anyone hate it? Perhaps there should be a disclaimer: "Don't read this as a list of TODOs. Read it as a guide towards proven motivators, and adapt what makes sense for your needs." This whole thing is entertainment. And as in all entertainment, various motivators will come in and out of fashion, be great today and boring tomorrow. This is a moving target.
