Implicit vs Explicit Gamification: Serious Games, Advergames & Gameful Design Explained

What counts as “gamification”, and what doesn’t? If you’ve ever debated whether serious games, advergames, or gameful design belong under the gamification umbrella, you’re not alone. This question has sparked more arguments in the industry than almost any other. But what if the debate itself is missing the point?

In this post, Yu-kai Chou cuts through the terminology wars and offers a more useful framework: Implicit vs. Explicit Gamification. Instead of arguing classifications, this distinction helps you choose the right approach for your audience and your goals.

About the Creator of the Octalysis Framework

Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.

Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.

His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.

(Below is a snippet of Actionable Gamification — Beyond Points, Badges, and Leaderboards. If you like this blog post, you will love the book.

This is also an expanded version of my guest post at Gamification.co.)

The Serious Games and Advergames Debate

One of the most popular debates and criticisms in the gamification industry is what counts as gamification and how it relates to Serious Games and Advergames.

Serious games are games designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment — games built for training, education, healthcare, and other productive outcomes.

Advergames are video games that contain advertisements for a product, service, or company. They function as interactive ad campaigns that draw potential customers to a website or business.

When I refer to “shoot-the-duck banner ads” as early and embarrassing forms of marketing gamification, those banner ads are technically classified as Advergames.

Both definitions contain the word “a game,” which seems to go against the core essence of what “gamifying” something means.

In my own work, I’ve argued that you can gamify anything involving human motivation, as long as it is not already a game — just like how you can’t liquefy liquid. You can, however, apply better game design to existing games.

Since advergames and serious games are “games,” by that standard you can’t really gamify them. Right?

The Semantics of Gamification vs. The Value of Gamification

To me this discussion is non-productive. I would rather spend my time learning about and harnessing the power of games to change the world for the better, instead of debating over classifications of terms.

What good have you created in the world when you spend your day arguing whether something is “a game made for traveling” or “travel gamified”?

But some people insist: “No. That great example is a serious game! Gamification is just limited to these things that are really lame.”

Why do people first define gamification as something lame, and then call it lame?

For many years I have also worked on serious game projects and advergames. If I can use that knowledge and experience to help the world, why limit what I can do as a gamification professional just because of some definitions?

Technically, I have three years of serious games experience, three years of loyalty program experience, and six years of gamification experience, consisting of two distinct periods. Throughout that entire time, I was driven by the same vision of applying game principles to impact the world.

Call me lazy, but I’d rather just refer to my work as gamification and start producing results that make a difference instead of arguing about what I can and cannot do as a gamification professional.

I’ve written before about how I (along with many “gamification professionals”) am not a big fan of the word “Gamification.” It’s simply the term the industry adopted.

I’ve preferred the term “Human-Focused Design” (as opposed to Function-Focused Design) — a design process that remembers the human motivations within the system.

Serious Games Is a Bad Name Too

I also dislike the term “serious games,” as it implies that pure games are not serious — something that millions of dedicated gamers would heavily disagree with.

Think how many sports athletes would be offended if they played basketball for a charitable cause and people called that the “Serious Sports” industry.

Then there are the more “corporate-appealing” terms like Motivational Design, Behavioral Economics, or Loyalty Programs, which all overlap significantly with the vague term “gamification.”

Many people claim that Loyalty Programs are not gamification but would then argue that airline reward miles represent one of the best gamification examples — a contradiction that highlights how arbitrary these semantic boundaries really are.

Gameful Design: An Ascended Form of Gamification?

Following these semantic battles, researchers like Sebastian Deterding and Jane McGonigal disagreed so strongly with mainstream gamification practices that they wanted nothing to do with the term.

They prefer “Gameful Design” to “Gamification,” which they sometimes regard as the ascended form of gamification. According to Deterding’s foundational 2011 paper “From Game Design Elements to Gamefulness,” gamification should promote genuine engagement through structured goals and feedback — not just superficial reward mechanics.

Along with Deterding and McGonigal, many other critics claim that mainstream gamification implementations are uninspiring and manipulative.

Instead of arguing about what is and isn’t included in umbrella terminologies, wouldn’t it be much more productive for everyone to say, “Let’s make everything better with the lessons we’ve learned through so many hours of gameplay in our lives”?

Of course, people inevitably have long discussions on semantics. So it makes sense to have a structured way of thinking through the entire conversation so you can communicate with colleagues and stakeholders.

Tomato: Fruit or Vegetable?

In my opinion, serious games and advergames should actually be included in gamification, as they are using game design to achieve a non-game productive result.

There is often a blurry line between the “is a game” versus the “is not a game” spectrum.

For instance, sometimes it is difficult to say whether something is a “game” that trains people, or rather just “training that is gamified.” You could say that a game training employees in good conduct is a “serious game,” but you could also say they decided to gamify their training program.

According to my own definition, you could “gamify” training by introducing a “serious game,” but you can’t gamify that serious game once it already exists. Since it is already a game, you can only apply better game design to it.

Some people argue that for Serious Games, you need to STOP your current activity and then go to a game to achieve the desired effects, whereas gamification pushes you towards the desired effects as you go.

This distinction breaks down when it comes to training. Did you “stop” your training to go into a serious game and do training? Or has the serious game become your training — meaning the training was gamified?

You can see how this conversation quickly becomes non-constructive.

Learning from Games to Solve Real Problems

In my TEDx talk in Lausanne, Switzerland, I brought up 8 world-changing concepts in gamification, each representing one of the 8 Core Drives in the Octalysis Framework.

My favorite gamification example for Core Drive 3: Empowerment of Creativity & Feedback was the “Serious Game” FoldIt. In 2011, FoldIt players solved the structure of an HIV retroviral protease in just three weeks — a problem that had stumped scientists for over a decade. To some purists, calling FoldIt a gamification example might have caused a heart attack.

My example for Core Drive 5: Social Influence & Relatedness was DragonBox, which teaches algebra to children as young as five through visual puzzle mechanics — now part of the Kahoot! family of learning apps.

For Core Drive 8: Loss & Avoidance, it was “Zombies, Run!” — a fitness game that motivates you to run harder by simulating a zombie apocalypse in your earbuds. Some don’t consider these gamification examples since they are already games (as opposed to just plastering badges on something boring).

Again, if there is a way to use things we have learned from games to make the world better, why work so hard to limit yourself?

The audience clearly did not care about the semantic debate. They were inspired about the potential of evolving everything in our lives into something fun and dynamic — more game-like.

And for the record, a tomato is biologically a fruit but culinarily treated as a vegetable. It probably matters more to the expert horticulturist than to people who just care about preparing a healthy and delicious meal.

Explicit Gamification: Games That Fulfill Non-Game Purposes

Moving away from what is and isn’t gamification, I think it is more productive to differentiate types of gamification based on how they are executed and how different types of players respond to them.

The two types of gamification implementations in my own work are “Implicit Gamification” and “Explicit Gamification.”

Explicit Gamification involves strategies that use applications that are obviously game-like. Users acknowledge they are playing a game and generally need to opt into playing.

An example is Dikembe Mutombo’s 4½ Weeks to Save the World. This quirky “Advergame” launched by Old Spice in 2012 featured the renowned basketball legend trying to save the world in an 8-bit video game before the anticipated “end of the world.” The game generated over 6 million plays with an average session length of 8 minutes 37 seconds — remarkable engagement for an advertisement.

Of course, Old Spice powerups and placements appeared repeatedly within the game.

This is a clear example of not only applying game design techniques into marketing, but using a game itself to do the marketing.

McDonald’s Monopoly Game is also a good example of explicit gamification. Everyone knows they are playing a game, but the purpose is to get people to return to McDonald’s and eat more fries. Nothing subtle there. We examine this game in more detail in a discussion of Game Technique #16: Collection Sets.

Other examples of Explicit Gamification include the serious game FoldIt (which facilitated breakthrough AIDS research), AutoDesk’s Undiscovered Territory (a gamified training experience for 3ds Max that resulted in a 15% increase in buy clicks and 29% higher channel revenue), and Repair the Rockaways — a game similar to FarmVille where the bricks available were determined by real donations supporting Hurricane Sandy repairs.

These examples are all games where people play and opt in — hence “explicit” gamification.

The advantage of explicit gamification is that the product is generally more playful and allows the designer more creative freedom.

The disadvantage is that it could be seen as childish, non-serious, or distracting for some target users such as enterprise firms, banks, or manufacturers. Some corporate managers, upon seeing graphical gameplay, immediately feel an aversion to it — though if designed well, an interactive “game” can keep the target user engaged for longer and lead to better business results.

Also, implementing great explicit gamification usually requires more resources to create a high-quality game.

Implicit Gamification: Human-Focused Design That Uses Game Elements

Implicit Gamification is a form of design that subtly employs gamification techniques and the 8 Core Drives of Octalysis into the user experience.

Implicit Gamification techniques are filled with game design elements that are sometimes invisible to the user. This is like a doorknob — the best designs are the ones you aren’t even aware of but simply use to open the door.

Implicit Gamification examples are discussed frequently in gamification literature: the LinkedIn Progress Bar, the intrinsic motivation that drives Wikipedia, competitive bidding and feedback systems on eBay, social comparison in OPower, and Unpredictability and Scarcity within Woot!

Upon seeing the progress bar on LinkedIn, most people won’t say, “Ah, they’re making me play a game! I don’t want to play games.”

The Progress Bar gently builds a Win-State for the user and motivates them to get closer and closer towards the goal.

Of course, many of the points, badges, leaderboards, and levels commonly seen in products are examples of implicit gamification.

The advantage of implicit gamification is that it is technically easier to implement and can be appropriate in most contexts.

The disadvantage is that this very convenience can lead to “lazy” design where subtle game dynamics are incorrectly designed and sloppily put together — resulting in something ineffective for driving business metrics.

Implicit vs. Explicit Gamification: Which Should You Choose?

One type of gamification is not inherently better than the other. The right choice depends on the purpose of the project and your target market.

Some groups enjoy participating in games; some don’t. Some users want that adrenaline rush when purchasing, while others want to expand their creativity and master a learning curve.

All 8 Core Drives can be implemented into both Implicit and Explicit Gamification campaigns. The key is matching the approach to your audience’s expectations and the context of the experience.

If you’re designing for a corporate training environment, implicit gamification (progress bars, achievement unlocks, social comparison) may be more appropriate. If you’re building a consumer marketing campaign where playfulness is welcomed, explicit gamification can create memorable, shareable experiences.

Related Reading

• The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
• What is Gamification? Definition, Examples & Framework
• White Hat vs Black Hat Gamification
• Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges & Leaderboards
• 90+ Gamification Examples & Cases with ROI Stats
• Points, Badges & Leaderboards: The Gamification Fallacy
• Bartle’s 4 Player Types and the Octalysis Framework

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