Do points, levels and leaderboards harm intrinsic motivation?: an empirical analysis of common gamification elements
Abstract
It is heavily debated within the gamification community whether specific game elements may actually undermine users' intrinsic motivation. This online experiment examined the effects of three commonly employed game design elements -- points, leaderboard, levels -- on users' performance, intrinsic motivation, perceived autonomy and competence in an image annotation task. Implementation of these game elements significantly increased performance, but did not affect perceived autonomy, competence or intrinsic motivation. Our findings suggest that points, levels and leaderboards by themselves neither make nor break users' intrinsic motivation in non-game contexts. Instead, it is assumed that they act as progress indicators, guiding and enhancing user performance. While more research on the contextual factors that may potentially mediate the effects of game elements on intrinsic motivation is required, it seems that the implementation of points, levels, and leaderboards is a viable means to promote specific user behavior in non-game contexts.
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Despite concerns that some commonly used game mechanics might reduce participant motivation, we saw no evidence that this was the case.
“Furthermore, despite concerns that some commonly used game mechanics might reduce participant motivation [72] (such as by having a visibly low score [73]), we saw no evidence that this was the case.”
From Gamification of Cognitive Assessment and Cognitive Training: A Systematic Review of Applications and Efficacy (2016) · cites this paper as [72]
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- Authors
- Mekler, E. D., Brühlmann, F., Opwis, K., & Tuch, A. N.
- Affiliations
- University of Basel (CH)
- University of Copenhagen (DK)
- Venue
- Proceedings of the First International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications
- Publisher
- ACM
- Published
- 2013-10-02
- Pages
- 66-73
- OpenAlex
- W1988677395
- Cited by
- 314
- References
- 22
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 27 · 2023: 26 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 30 · 2020: 27 · 2019: 29 · 2018: 32 · 2017: 25 · 2016: 26 · 2015: 28 · 2014: 1
- FWCI
- 39.69
- Type
- conference paper
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- International Conference on Gameful Design, Research, and Applications (Gamification) (publishedVersion)
- edoc (University of Basel) (acceptedVersion)
- Research at the University of Copenhagen (University of Copenhagen) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Swiss National Science Foundation (PBBSP1 144196)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Educational Games and Gamification
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Games and Media
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Motivation and Self-Concept in Sports
- Keywords
- gamification, intrinsic motivation, points, leaderboards, levels, game elements, perceived autonomy, perceived competence, image annotation, user performance, progress indicators
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