Howdy from America! That sounds more 'texan' than I had hoped. Imagine it with a British accent for additional humor.

Hello! From Wermland my self. ^^ I will read and write some more later because it's in the middle of the night and right now I'm a bit overwhelmed by the game that I am currently playing etc. (EVE Online)

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On the scale of time, that's not far away indeed. I'm aware a lot can happen between now and then - there's not a lot I can be doing about that, right now. Almost every use I've occured of "gamerfication" is abused in one way or another - a few smaller projects aside - or simply postitively reinforces bad habits in the name of attempting to establish good habits. Take for example LifeRPG, I'm willing to accept that has uses, for some people - and I'm not suggesting that this is definitely malware as I couldn't be bothered with more than a casual glance at the project, and it is open source, but have you read the data collection policies? I didn't notice any published.There's a reason it'll be accessing the network, and commonly it's for more that updates. You actually observed the traffic that tunnels back? Interesting it wants to access the vibromotor, as it's possible to use that as a stealth listening device - Such things can be powerful tools, but not in any particular way that would benefit you. The most powerful tool however is your mind, and that doesn't require additional third party software to operate. The people who would volunteer for the sake of gratification do so for the wrong reasons and thusly it's inevitable that the days they don't hear "thank-you" will bother them. People doing it for the right reasons would care less. It's also inevitable that by adressing an internal deficit with external stimulation they will never solve the root cause of the issue and continually cause themselves more harm seeking to fill the percieved void. Like any other junkie chasing a fix. That needs treating, not encouraging. The lab rats given a button to feed them opium soaked feed on demand were happy rats - but were they healthy? You should be able to gain sufficient motivation from the task itself, or at least the outcome of. If you are unable and assuming there is genuine merit to the task then there's likely another issue that would more prominently require addressing and I consider it's highly unlikely that a game would be productive in adressing that - unless that's purely a minor distractional escapism/break - and that's just "mild entertainment" IMHO. Again, games - and indeed all forms of entertainment - have a purpose, and they also have a place. I just don't happen to think this place is a governmental department. In the case of educational software, I can see a legitimate facet for sub catagories in the educational ministry. Ones aimed at otherwise self improvement could potentialy nest into Science/Psychological Sciences. etc. The magical thing about storing individual posts in a DB, then linking the threads together from them, as opposed to actual individual pages, is it's possible for multiple sub-sections to be collated together(as well as saving a *lot* of space) - and that I could accept as possibly warrenting it's own catagory on the forum, at least. But first it'd make sense to establish a games sub-catagory in all applicable places - then having a collection of somehtings to link into one locaiton you can do so. For "games" to be productive in any way beyond pure entertainment then there's likely to be heavy crossover with input and questions to the relevant ministry from the game's developers, and such would simply be part of their domain. Again, I don't distrust gamerfication, I simply observe it's prominence for abuse and can also see a better path. People may trick and manipulate themselves regularly, but is that actually clever? Especially when it's possible to achieve the same ends without the trickery in almost every legitimate, non-devious case. All that results is a condition wherin people are unable to do things without constant external stimulous and or feedback. I intentionally select "should" for the recognition of that which is actuality isn't entirely optimum. There are ways and means of correcting this, but it's not by reinforcing patterns that lead to this path. With the specification "game technology" my mind did instantly jump to computer games, as opposed to dice, cards, go etc. The keyword, ofc, being technology and simulating anything via cards and dice isn't going to warrent itself as reliable parody to reality in the larger number of cases.

@EyeR You say 2025 to 2055 as if that was anyway near "close" and considering I live in Rio de Janeiro and hear gunfighting almost every month, sometimes more than twice in a single week and have been robbed at gunpoint or with a knife a few times already, dying of old age is the least of my worries in the meantime. I also prefer to work to make it happen, but to make it happen there must also be a lot of interest by a lot of people and games, besides all their uses you are completely disregarded which, as I mentioned, have been proven, can indeed be used exactly for that as well. Your distrust of gamefication is astounding for you are talking about it as something bad for it has been used badly? So nuclear generators are inherently evil because nuclear bombs exist and fusion is the utmost evil because of super novas? You might believe that "a task within itself should be it's own reward" but it is a "should" for you and "unfortunately" it is not. Each person will always think differently and no matter how much something is needed, there is always the old human habit of "procrastination" no matter how much someone might know how very much needed something is. Gamerfication doesn't impact only those unable to ascertain the long term. It impacts anyone who allows it to as well or anyone which wishes to employ it. I'm saying that by experience for I have a real good notion of the impact of every single one of my actions, no matter how small, in the long term, and I use a free app called "LifeRPG" which is basically a gamefication of life which helps me a lot in keeping track of what I have to do, finding extra motivation through my gaming habits, avoiding procrastination and was even a powerful tool in helping me overcome depression. Volunteers lending their time to charities do indeed search for a gratification. Not from others, but from themselves. If they do something for the feeling of accomplishment, that in itself is a reward they are giving themselves and the "treat" they use as motivation to fulfill the task at hand. It would be no different if they had a "vow" to themselves to buy a chocolate cake after as a reason to volunteer and there are those who do so for hearing a "thank you" and would feel their day ruined if they helped and no one was grateful. There are people of very different types. People climb mountains for the exercise, the view, the experience and the feeling of accomplishment. All of those are self-rewards but rewards none-the-less. The research I've told about have all been peer-reviewed as far as I know of, your distrust means nothing over that. It doesn't make the researches even less trust-worthy. Gamefication doesn't mean you will not "understand what you are doing and why", it means you will have a gamefied system to help you understand and feel better motivated. You not only distrust it, you don't even understand it. "being tricked, coerced, or manipulated"? People do that to themselves and each other every single day at all times and have always done so in order to fulfill things that need to be done. Your "shoulds" are only that. "SHOULD". Your idea of a "perfect ideal" and not even close to "truth" or "possibility". The fact that you use "should" is already prrof that you subconsciously already know that. You can see value in one way because that is the only way you see worth to your endeavours but you don't understand it even closely enough to even have a well devised argument over it, resourcing to "should's" "must" and mistrust. If you are talking about "computer simulations", maybe that could be right, but I'm talking "simulation" and "games" have existed way before computers and have always been used as "simulations" to teach real world situations. Animals simulate fights by "playing" a "fighting game" with their siblings. Games exist in nature way before we Homo-Sapiens have come to existence, we just created more complex games and better defined what a "simulation" is and created different kinds of it, but yeah, simulations derived from games since animals played with each other to simulate combat. I guess its your research and logic skills that might need some checking.