Badges, points and challenges show up in every sales tool. A literature review of 24 empirical studies shows when gamification works, and why points alone will not make your team more motivated.
Badges, points, leaderboards and challenges have become standard equipment in modern sales tools. The promise: more motivation, more activity, more revenue. But what does the research actually say?
Gamification means applying game elements outside of games. That definition comes from Deterding et al. (2011) and has been the standard in the research field ever since. The idea is simple: games keep people engaged for hours, so why would the mechanisms behind them not work for work?
The most cited test of that promise is the literature review by Hamari, Koivisto and Sarsa (2014). They analysed 24 empirical studies on gamification and found a predominantly positive picture: gamification often works. But the authors add a caveat that is rarely repeated in marketing material: the effect depends heavily on the context in which gamification is deployed and on the users who work with it.
A follow-up study by Koivisto and Hamari (2019), covering 273 studies, confirmed that pattern. Positive results dominate, but many studies also report mixed or even negative effects. Gamification is not a switch you flip, it is a design choice with side effects.
The sharpest experiment on how individual game elements work comes from Mekler et al. (2017). They had participants perform a task with or without points, levels and leaderboards. The result: the game elements increased performance, but did not strengthen intrinsic motivation. Points act as an extrinsic incentive, comparable to a deadline or a bonus, not as a source of lasting motivation.
That matters more than it sounds. A meta-analysis of 128 experiments by Deci, Koestner and Ryan (1999) showed that expected, tangible rewards can crowd out existing intrinsic motivation. If you shower a salesperson who loves the craft with external incentives, you risk undermining exactly that love for the craft.
Self-determination theory by Ryan and Deci (2000) explains why. Lasting motivation arises from three basic psychological needs: competence (I am getting better at this), autonomy (I chose this myself) and relatedness (I belong here). Game elements work when they feed those needs, and fail when they ignore or undermine them.
Sailer et al. (2017) demonstrated experimentally that different game elements serve different needs. Badges and performance graphs strengthen the sense of competence. Team narratives and shared goals strengthen relatedness. Whoever designs gamification is not choosing for or against motivation, but determining which need gets addressed.
Practitioner frameworks such as the Octalysis model by Chou (2015) make a useful distinction between white-hat drives (progress, meaning, creativity) and black-hat drives (scarcity, unpredictability, fear of loss). Black-hat techniques work brilliantly in the short term, and that is exactly the problem. They lean on the finding by Kahneman and Tversky (1979) that people weigh losses more heavily than gains. A streak you can lose feels more urgent than a badge you can earn.
For a sales team that has to work with that tool every day, this is a recipe for exhaustion. Pressure from fear is chronic, pressure from a sprint that ends is temporary. That is why thoughtful implementations deliberately choose white-hat elements only. You can read how we made that trade-off ourselves on our page about the science behind our gamification.
The research literature translates into four practical rules. One: reward craftsmanship, not activity. A badge for a first signed deal means something, a badge for logging in a hundred times does not. Two: keep money and badges separate, or you will buy away your intrinsic motivation. Three: make participation voluntary and show someone's progress to that person first. Four: measure the effect in your own context, because the research is clear about one thing: context determines whether it works.
Gamification is neither a miracle cure nor a gimmick. It is a tool that can feed or damage psychological needs, depending on how you design it. The science provides the design rules. The discipline to stick to them has to come from the team itself.
Chou, Y. (2015). Actionable gamification: Beyond points, badges, and leaderboards. Octalysis Media.
Deci, E. L., Koestner, R., & Ryan, R. M. (1999). A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 627-668. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.125.6.627
Deterding, S., Dixon, D., Khaled, R., & Nacke, L. (2011). From game design elements to gamefulness: Defining "gamification". Proceedings of the 15th International Academic MindTrek Conference, 9-15. https://doi.org/10.1145/2181037.2181040
Hamari, J., Koivisto, J., & Sarsa, H. (2014). Does gamification work? A literature review of empirical studies on gamification. Proceedings of the 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 3025-3034. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2014.377
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47(2), 263-291. https://doi.org/10.2307/1914185
Koivisto, J., & Hamari, J. (2019). The rise of motivational information systems: A review of gamification research. International Journal of Information Management, 45, 191-210. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.10.013
Mekler, E. D., Brühlmann, F., Tuch, A. N., & Opwis, K. (2017). Towards understanding the effects of individual gamification elements on intrinsic motivation and performance. Computers in Human Behavior, 71, 525-534. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.08.048
Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55(1), 68-78. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.55.1.68
Sailer, M., Hense, J. U., Mayr, S. K., & Mandl, H. (2017). How gamification motivates: An experimental study of the effects of specific game design elements on psychological need satisfaction. Computers in Human Behavior, 69, 371-380. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2016.12.033