What Scientists Are Doing With Games

Key points

Scientists today are using games in dizzyingly diverse ways.

This goes beyond gamification to exploit untapped dimensions of games.

Applications include therapies, research tools, public health interventions, and more.

This trend looks set to continue as successes spur interest and new technology is brought to bear.

The term gamification, which means applying game design principles in other contexts, became a buzzword about 15 years ago, mainly driven by companies offering to gamify business processes.

The approach aims to leverage game mechanics to increase engagement and motivation ("Get on the leader board!" "Gain power-ups!" "Level up your character!"), so it naturally became popular in education . Multiple studies show that incorporating game elements into lea