Rather than just benefitting themselves and solving their business problems, some companies are giving back to the communities connected to their industry by using games for the greater good. For example, Opower, a Software-as-a-Service company that works with utility providers, has been using Facebook to encourage people to track and share their energy consumption and compete to be the most energy efficient. RecycleBank is a company that rewards people with gift cards and discounts to stores and restaurants for being green by recycling paper or using less energy in their homes.

While social networking has already demonstrated its efficiency in e-learning, gamification, which is the use of game-thinking and playful design in non-game contexts, has only shown its potential as a motivational tool. This paper presents the results of testing both social networking and gamification in an undergraduate course, comparing them in terms their effect on students' academic achievement, participation and attitude. The effects of a gamification plugin deployed in a learning management system were compared to those of a social networking site in the same educational setting. We found that both approaches presented better performance than a traditional e-learning approach in terms of academic achievement for practical assignments, but that, when it came to assessing knowledge, the traditional e-learning approach was better. Also challenging current assumptions, participation rates and scores remained low with the new tools, although students' attitudes were positive. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Gamers are known to be particularly motivated people who practice self-discipline, learn well on their own, and find endless reserves of motivation, even when it involves repetitive tasks.  It’s a natural extension to watch gamers and think, ‘How can we leverage what is great about games in order to encourage people to do necessary or desirable things?’  Clearly not everything can be turned into a game, but why not pick specific elements that we know and love in games and apply them to other tasks or applications?