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Gabe Zichermann, chair of the (a bit too expensive) Gamification Summit, has written a short blog post on the purpose of gamification.  An interesting quote:  “gamification’s main purpose is to help people get from point A to point B in their lives — whether that’s viewed through the lens of personal growth, societal improvement or marketing engagement. We all have the intrinsic desire to be the best possible people we can be, and to make the world in our image of its maximum potential. However, most of us lack the systems thinking (and discipline) required to get to that goal. What games do well is expose complex, learnable systems that users can engage with to achieve personal mastery — and thus accomplish something aspirational.”

The idea of helping users go from point A to point B is interesting.  My question is, who gets to decide what “point B” is?  Businesses looking to drive engagement and increased customer loyalty with a product clearly have a very different goal (and motive) in moving a person to the destination state compared to educators and others trying to harness the power of gamification for “personal growth” or “societal improvement,” as Zichermann describes.  Do players even have a clear sense of what their goals are when they participate in gamfied experiences?

I often ask people why they use gamified apps like FourSquare.  Here’s a quick poll for all you FourSquare users.  If you use FourSquare, why do you do it?  What is your primary motivation for doing so?