Enhancing Community Engagement Through Game Play

A good article, but I see two separate issues being addressed here. One is gamification, which addresses engagement and motivation and is usually used in the context of instruction/education. The other is community engagement. I may be wrong, but my impression is that using gamification to build community is very challenging and costly, and could probably be achieved more efficiently through other means. The author addresses these means when speaking of user-contribution. Blogs, community forums, badges, earning participation points...these are all ways to encourage users to create and share content and collaborate. While these elements CAN be integrated with gamification, they can work just as well and probably better on their own if the goal is engagement in a community. Save the games for teaching or entertainment.