skip to main content
10.1145/3434780.3436665acmotherconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PagesteemConference Proceedingsconference-collections
research-article

Personalized gamification: A literature review of outcomes, experiments, and approaches

Published: 22 January 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Personalized gamification has gained substantial interest due to the expectation that it can improve gamification's success. Considering some secondary studies on this topic, they lack to present the characteristics of empirical studies and some aspects on how personalization approaches were designed. In this paper, we present a literature review based on previous research to address these gaps. Based on our analysis, our results provide: insights on how experiments to compare personalized gamification and non-personalized gamification are designed and evaluated; evidence on the effectiveness of personalized gamification found in primary studies; and an overview of how personalization approaches were designed. Our analysis converged in possible guidelines and a research agenda revealing five main needs: i) empirical studies comparing one size fits all and personalized gamification; ii) qualitative user studies; iii) personalization approaches that consider contextual characteristics as well as iv) rely on a broader, unambiguous set of game elements; and v) a benchmark of established resources to increase research reproducibility.

References

[1]
Rasha Najib Aljabali and Norasnita Ahmad. 2018. A Review on Adopting Personalized Gamified Experience in the Learning Context. In 2018 IEEE Conference on e-Learning, e-Management and e-Services (IC3e). IEEE, 61–66.
[2]
Shurui Bai, Khe Foon Hew, and Biyun Huang. 2020. Is gamification “bullshit”? Evidence from a meta-analysis and synthesis of qualitative data in educational contexts. Educational Research Review (2020), 100322.
[3]
Johan Baldeón, Inmaculada Rodríguez, and Anna Puig. 2016. LEGA: A LEarner-centered GAmification Design Framework. In Proceedings of the XVII International Conference on Human Computer Interaction (Salamanca, Spain) (Interacción ’16). ACM, New York, NY, USA, Article 45, 8 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/2998626.2998673
[4]
Simone S Borges, Riichiro Mizoguchi, Vinicius HS Durelli, Ig I Bittencourt, and Seiji Isotani. 2016. A link between worlds: Towards a conceptual framework for bridging player and learner roles in gamified collaborative learning contexts. In Advances in Social Computing and Digital Education. Springer, 19–34.
[5]
Klaudia Bovermann and Theo J Bastiaens. 2020. Towards a motivational design? Connecting gamification user types and online learning activities. Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning 15, 1 (2020), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-019-0121-4
[6]
Charles Butler. 2014. A framework for evaluating the effectiveness of gamification techniques by personality type. In International Conference on HCI in Business. Springer, 381–389.
[7]
Geiser Chalco Challco, Dilvan A Moreira, Riichiro Mizoguchi, and Seiji Isotani. 2014. An ontology engineering approach to gamify collaborative learning scenarios. In CYTED-RITOS International Workshop on Groupware. Springer, 185–198.
[8]
David Codish and Gilad Ravid. 2014. Personality based gamification-Educational gamification for extroverts and introverts. In Proceedings of the 9th CHAIS Conference for the Study of Innovation and Learning Technologies: Learning in the Technological Era, Vol. 1. 36–44.
[9]
Lamya F Daghestani, Lamiaa F Ibrahim, Reem S Al-Towirgi, and Hesham A Salman. 2020. Adapting gamified learning systems using educational data mining techniques. Computer Applications in Engineering Education 28, 3 (2020), 568–589.
[10]
Mouna Denden, Ahmed Tlili, Fathi Essalmi, and Mohamed Jemni. 2017. Educational gamification based on personality. In 2017 IEEE/ACS 14th International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA). IEEE, 1399–1405.
[11]
M. Denden, A. Tlili, F. Essalmi, and M. Jemni. 2017. An investigation of the factors affecting the perception of gamification and game elements. In 2017 6th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology and Accessibility (ICTA). IEEE, Muscat, Sultanate of Oman, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1109/ICTA.2017.8336019
[12]
Mouna Denden, Ahmed Tlili, Fathi Essalmi, and Mohamed Jemni. 2018. Does personality affect students’ perceived preferences for game elements in gamified learning environments?. In 2018 IEEE 18th International Conference on Advanced Learning Technologies (ICALT). IEEE, 111–115.
[13]
Christo Dichev and Darina Dicheva. 2017. Gamifying education: what is known, what is believed and what remains uncertain: a critical review. International journal of educational technology in higher education 14, 1 (2017), 9.
[14]
Fernando Timoteo Fernandes and Plinio Thomaz Aquino Junior. 2016. Gamification aspects in the context of electronic government and education: A case study. In International Conference on HCI in Business, Government, and Organizations. Springer, 140–150.
[15]
Lauren S Ferro, Steffen P Walz, and Stefan Greuter. 2013. Towards personalised, gamified systems: an investigation into game design, personality and player typologies. In Proceedings of The 9th Australasian Conference on Interactive Entertainment: Matters of Life and Death. ACM, 7.
[16]
Paul Garner, Sally Hopewell, Jackie Chandler, Harriet MacLehose, Elie A Akl, Joseph Beyene, Stephanie Chang, Rachel Churchill, Karin Dearness, Gordon Guyatt, 2016. When and how to update systematic reviews: consensus and checklist. bmj 354 (2016), i3507.
[17]
Mohammad Hajarian, Azam Bastanfard, Javad Mohammadzadeh, and Madjid Khalilian. 2019. A personalized gamification method for increasing user engagement in social networks. Social Network Analysis and Mining 9, 1 (2019), 47.
[18]
Stuart Hallifax, Serna Audrey, Marty Jean-Charles, Lavoué Guillaume, and Lavoué Elise. 2019. Factors to Consider for Tailored Gamification. In CHI Play. ACM, Barcelona, Spain, 559–572. https://hal.archivesouvertes. fr/hal-02185647
[19]
Stuart Hallifax, Audrey Serna, Jean-Charles Marty, and Élise Lavoué. 2019. Adaptive Gamification in Education: A Literature Review of Current Trends and Developments. In Transforming Learning with Meaningful Technologies, Maren Scheffel, Julien Broisin, Viktoria Pammer-Schindler, Andri Ioannou, and Jan Schneider (Eds.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 294–307.
[20]
Juho Hamari, Jonna Koivisto, Harri Sarsa, 2014. Does Gamification Work?-A Literature Review of Empirical Studies on Gamification. In HICSS, Vol. 14. 3025–3034.
[21]
Muhammad Awais Hassan, Ume Habiba, Fiaz Majeed, and Muhammad Shoaib. 2019. Adaptive gamification in e-learning based on students’ learning styles. Interactive Learning Environments (2019), 1–21.
[22]
Barryl Herbert, Darryl Charles, Adrian Moore, and Therese Charles. 2014. An investigation of gamification typologies for enhancing learner motivation. In 2014 International Conference on Interactive Technologies and Games. IEEE, 71–78.
[23]
Tomislav Jagušt, Ivica Botički, and Hyo-Jeong So. 2018. Examining competitive, collaborative and adaptive gamification in young learners’ math learning. Computers & education 125 (2018), 444–457.
[24]
Yuan Jia, Bin Xu, Yamini Karanam, and Stephen Voida. 2016. Personality-targeted gamification: a survey study on personality traits and motivational affordances. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 2001–2013.
[25]
Michael D Kickmeier-Rust, Eva-C Hillemann, and Dietrich Albert. 2014. Gamification and smart feedback: Experiences with a primary school level math app. International Journal of Game-Based Learning (IJGBL) 4, 3 (2014), 35–46.
[26]
Barbara Kitchenham. 2004. Procedures for performing systematic reviews. Keele, UK, Keele University 33, 2004 (2004), 1–26.
[27]
Ana Carolina Tomé Klock, Isabela Gasparini, Marcelo Soares Pimenta, and Juho Hamari. 2020. Tailored gamification: A review of literature. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 144 (2020), 102495.
[28]
Ana Carolina Tomé Klock, Marcelo Soares Pimenta, and Isabela Gasparini. 2018. A systematic mapping of the customization of game elements in gamified systems. Anais do Simpósio Brasileiro de Jogos e Entretenimento Digital (2018).
[29]
Antti Knutas, Jouni Ikonen, Dario Maggiorini, Laura Ripamonti, and Jari Porras. 2016. Creating student interaction profiles for adaptive collaboration gamification design. International Journal of Human Capital and Information Technology Professionals (IJHCITP) 7, 3 (2016), 47–62.
[30]
Jonna Koivisto and Juho Hamari. 2019. The rise of motivational information systems: A review of gamification research. International Journal of Information Management 45 (2019), 191–210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.10.013
[31]
Elise Lavoué, Baptiste Monterrat, Michel Desmarais, and Sébastien George. 2018. Adaptive gamification for learning environments. IEEE Transactions on Learning Technologies 12, 1 (2018), 16–28.
[32]
Jonathan Lazar, Jinjuan Heidi Feng, and Harry Hochheiser. 2017. Research methods in human-computer interaction. Morgan Kaufmann.
[33]
De Liu, Radhika Santhanam, and Jane Webster. 2017. Toward Meaningful Engagement: A Framework for Design and Research of Gamified Information Systems. MIS quarterly 41, 4 (2017), 1011–1034.
[34]
Andrzej Marczewski. 2018. Even Ninja Monkeys Like to Play: Unicorn Edition. Gamified UK (2018).
[35]
Michael Meder, Till Plumbaum, and Sahin Albayrak. 2017. A Primer on Data-Driven Gamification Design. In Proceedings of the Data-Driven Gamification Design Workshop. CEUR-WS.org, 12–17.
[36]
Baptiste Monterrat, Michel Desmarais, Elise Lavoué, and Sébastien George. 2015. A player model for adaptive gamification in learning environments. In International conference on artificial intelligence in education. Springer, 297–306.
[37]
Baptiste Monterrat, Elise Lavoué, and Sébastien George. 2014. Toward an adaptive gamification system for learning environments. In International Conference on Computer Supported Education. Springer, 115–129.
[38]
Baptiste Monterrat, Elise Lavoué, and Sébastien George. 2017. Adaptation of gaming features for motivating learners. Simulation & Gaming 48, 5 (2017), 625–656.
[39]
A. Mora, G. F. Tondello, L. E. Nacke, and J. Arnedo-Moreno. 2018. Effect of personalized gameful design on student engagement. In 2018 IEEE Global Engineering Education Conference (EDUCON). 1925–1933. https://doi.org/10.1109/EDUCON.2018.8363471
[40]
Lennart E Nacke, Chris Bateman, and Regan L Mandryk. 2014. BrainHex: A neurobiological gamer typology survey. Entertainment computing 5, 1 (2014), 55–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.entcom.2013.06.002
[41]
Lennart E Nacke and Christoph Sebastian Deterding. 2017. The maturing of gamification research. Computers in Human Behaviour (2017), 450–454.
[42]
Fiona Fui-Hoon Nah, Qing Zeng, Venkata Rajasekhar Telaprolu, Abhishek Padmanabhuni Ayyappa, and Brenda Eschenbrenner. 2014. Gamification of education: a review of literature. In International conference on hci in business. Springer, 401–409. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07293-7_39
[43]
Wilk Oliveira and Ig Ibert Bittencourt. 2019. Tailored Gamification to Educational Technologies. Springer Nature.
[44]
Wilk Oliveira, Armando Toda, Paula Toledo, Lei Shi, Julita Vassileva, Ig Ibert Bittencourt, and Seiji Isotani. 2020. Does Tailoring Gamified Educational Systems Matter? The Impact on Students’ FlowExperience. In Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. ScholarSpace, 1226–1235.
[45]
Rita Orji. 2014. Exploring the Persuasiveness of Behavior Change Support Strategies and Possible Gender Differences. In BCSS@PERSUASIVE. 41–57.
[46]
Rita Orji, Lennart E Nacke, and Chrysanne Di Marco. 2017. Towards personality-driven persuasive health games and gamified systems. In Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. 1015–1027.
[47]
Rita Orji, Gustavo F Tondello, and Lennart E Nacke. 2018. Personalizing persuasive strategies in gameful systems to gamification user types. In Proceedings of the 2018 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. ACM, 435. https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3174009
[48]
Kiemute Oyibo, Rita Orji, and Julita Vassileva. 2017. The influence of culture in the effect of age and gender on social influence in persuasive technology. In Adjunct publication of the 25th conference on user modeling, adaptation and personalization. 47–52.
[49]
Kiemute Oyibo, Rita Orji, and Julita Vassileva. 2017. Investigation of the Persuasiveness of Social Influence in Persuasive Technology and the Effect of Age and Gender. In PPT@ PERSUASIVE. 32–44.
[50]
Kiemute Oyibo, Rita Orji, and Julita Vassileva. 2017. Investigation of the social predictors of competitive behavior and the moderating effect of culture. In Adjunct publication of the 25th conference on user modeling, adaptation and personalization. 419–424.
[51]
Luiz Rodrigues, Robson Bonidia, and Jacques Duílio Brancher. 2020. Procedural versus human level generation: Two sides of the same coin? International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 141 (2020), 102465. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2020.102465
[52]
Luiz Rodrigues, Wilk Oliveira, Armando Toda, Paula Palomino, and Seiji Isotani. 2019. Thinking Inside the Box: How to Tailor Gamified Educational Systems Based on Learning Activities Types. In Proceedings of the Brazilian Symposium of Computers on Education. SBC, 823–832. https://doi.org/10.5753/cbie.sbie.2019.823
[53]
Fatemeh Roosta, Fattaneh Taghiyareh, and Maedeh Mosharraf. 2016. Personalization of gamification-elements in an e-learning environment based on learners’ motivation. In 2016 8th International Symposium on Telecommunications (IST). IEEE, 637–642. https://doi.org/10.1109/ISTEL.2016.7881899
[54]
Michael Sailer and Lisa Homner. 2020. The Gamification of Learning: a Meta-analysis. Educ Psychol Rev 32 (2020), 77–112.
[55]
Isabelle Savard and Riichiro Mizoguchi. 2019. Context or culture: what is the difference? Research and Practice in Technology Enhanced Learning 14, 1 (2019), 1–12.
[56]
Hallifax Stuart, Elise Lavoué, and Audrey Serna. 2020. To tailor or not to tailor gamification? An analysis of the impact of tailored game elements on learners’ behaviours and motivation. In 21th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Education.
[57]
Bahar Taspinar, Werner Schmidt, and Heidi Schuhbauer. 2016. Gamification in education: a board game approach to knowledge acquisition. Procedia Computer Science 99 (2016), 101–116.
[58]
Armando M Toda, Ana CT Klock, Wilk Oliveira, Paula T Palomino, Luiz Rodrigues, Lei Shi, Ig Bittencourt, Isabela Gasparini, Seiji Isotani, and Alexandra I Cristea. 2019. Analysing gamification elements in educational environments using an existing Gamification taxonomy. Smart Learning Environments 6, 1 (2019), 16. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40561-019-0106-1
[59]
Gustavo Fortes Tondello. 2019. Dynamic Personalization of Gameful Interactive Systems. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Waterloo.
[60]
Gustavo F Tondello, Alberto Mora, Andrzej Marczewski, and Lennart E Nacke. 2019. Empirical validation of the gamification user types hexad scale in English and Spanish. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 127 (2019), 95–111.
[61]
Gustavo F Tondello, Alberto Mora, and Lennart E Nacke. 2017. Elements of gameful design emerging from user preferences. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play. ACM, 129–142. https://doi.org/10.1145/3116595.3116627
[62]
Gustavo F Tondello, Rita Orji, and Lennart E Nacke. 2017. Recommender systems for personalized gamification. In Adjunct Publication of the 25th Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization. ACM, 425–430. https://doi.org/10.1145/3099023.3099114
[63]
Gustavo F Tondello, Rina RWehbe, Lisa Diamond, Marc Busch, Andrzej Marczewski, and Lennart E Nacke. 2016. The gamification user types hexad scale. In Proceedings of the 2016 annual symposium on computer-human interaction in play. ACM, 229–243. https://doi.org/10.1145/2967934.2968082
[64]
Andrea C Tricco, Erin Lillie, Wasifa Zarin, Kelly K O'Brien, Heather Colquhoun, Danielle Levac, David Moher, Micah DJ Peters, Tanya Horsley, Laura Weeks, 2018. PRISMA extension for scoping reviews (PRISMA-ScR): checklist and explanation. Annals of internal medicine 169, 7 (2018), 467–473.

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)User-centered personalized gamification: an umbrella reviewUser Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction10.1007/s11257-024-09423-z35:1Online publication date: 20-Jan-2025
  • (2024)Brazilian Teachers’ concerns towards the use of Gamification in Education: perceived barriers to its adoptionRevista Brasileira de Informática na Educação10.5753/rbie.2024.322832(510-532)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Game Design Concepts: A Tertiary Literature ReviewCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678794(139-144)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
  • Show More Cited By

Recommendations

Comments

Information & Contributors

Information

Published In

cover image ACM Other conferences
TEEM'20: Eighth International Conference on Technological Ecosystems for Enhancing Multiculturality
October 2020
1084 pages
ISBN:9781450388504
DOI:10.1145/3434780
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

Publisher

Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 22 January 2021

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Check for updates

Author Tags

  1. Gamification
  2. literature review
  3. personalization
  4. tailoring

Qualifiers

  • Research-article
  • Research
  • Refereed limited

Funding Sources

Conference

TEEM'20

Acceptance Rates

Overall Acceptance Rate 496 of 705 submissions, 70%

Contributors

Other Metrics

Bibliometrics & Citations

Bibliometrics

Article Metrics

  • Downloads (Last 12 months)190
  • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)21
Reflects downloads up to 20 Jan 2025

Other Metrics

Citations

Cited By

View all
  • (2025)User-centered personalized gamification: an umbrella reviewUser Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction10.1007/s11257-024-09423-z35:1Online publication date: 20-Jan-2025
  • (2024)Brazilian Teachers’ concerns towards the use of Gamification in Education: perceived barriers to its adoptionRevista Brasileira de Informática na Educação10.5753/rbie.2024.322832(510-532)Online publication date: 8-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Game Design Concepts: A Tertiary Literature ReviewCompanion Proceedings of the 2024 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play10.1145/3665463.3678794(139-144)Online publication date: 14-Oct-2024
  • (2024)Digital Twins of Socio-Technical Ecosystems to Drive Societal ChangeProceedings of the ACM/IEEE 27th International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems10.1145/3652620.3686248(275-286)Online publication date: 22-Sep-2024
  • (2024)Systemization of Knowledge (SoK): Creating a Research Agenda for Human-Centered Real-Time Risk Detection on Social Media PlatformsProceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3613904.3642315(1-21)Online publication date: 11-May-2024
  • (2024)Nudge theory on intrapreneurship: a conceptual viewJournal of Entrepreneurship in Emerging Economies10.1108/JEEE-09-2023-0355Online publication date: 21-May-2024
  • (2024)Uncovering the theoretical basis of user types: An empirical analysis and critical discussion of user typologies in research on tailored gameful designInternational Journal of Human-Computer Studies10.1016/j.ijhcs.2024.103314190(103314)Online publication date: Oct-2024
  • (2024)Augmented Reality Interactive Experiences for Multi-level Chemistry UnderstandingInternational Journal of Child-Computer Interaction10.1016/j.ijcci.2024.100681(100681)Online publication date: Sep-2024
  • (2024)Real-time Incentivizing Survey Completion with Game-based Rewards in Experience Sampling Research May Increase Data Quantity, but Reduces Data QualityComputers in Human Behavior10.1016/j.chb.2024.108360(108360)Online publication date: Jul-2024
  • (2024)Long-Term Gamification: A SurveyHCI in Games10.1007/978-3-031-60692-2_3(32-43)Online publication date: 29-Jun-2024
  • Show More Cited By

View Options

Login options

View options

PDF

View or Download as a PDF file.

PDF

eReader

View online with eReader.

eReader

HTML Format

View this article in HTML Format.

HTML Format

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Share this Publication link

Share on social media