Defining gamification: From lexical meaning and process viewpoint towards a gameful reality

In a state where games and their elements have been extensively used not only for pleasure but also for other purposes, gamification still has some pros and cons about its definition, which might influence people's decisions on their game-related strategies to improve their performance. This work tries to define gamification by using lexical meaning approach as the starting point and viewing it from a process viewpoint. Lexical meaning approach interprets gamification as a process or a product of the process. From this perspective, gamification can be viewed as a process that adds certain characteristics to an object that makes the object different from its previous condition and feasible to be formalized. Furthermore, the resulting definition is tested by comparing it to other existing gamification definitions and the understanding that constructs the definition is used as the foundation to explain the differences between gamification and serious games. This paper then defines gamification as a process that integrates game elements into gameless objects in order to have gameful characteristics. There will be a situation where gamification will produce a state of gameful reality: a situation in the real world where people can feel the significant presence of gamefulness in their daily life.

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