Yesterday, Techcrunch announced that Mint was adding gameplay to its service in the form of a financial fitness score.   The Techcrunch post already pointed to Foursquare as a service that is making very effective use of gameplay to motivate activity and engagement in the system.  I have also found this to be true for TheSixtyOne, which awards points for many different kinds of behavior.  I believe we will see many more sites adding gameplay components going forward, much like sites added social features over the last few years.

There are now several generations of users who have grown up with video games (and it is certainly true for all coming generations).  Elements such as points, quests, leader boards, challenges will seem completely natural to them and provide a higher level of engagement.  In fact, Katie Salen who co-authored Rules of Play, a book about game design, is starting a High School in New York where the curriculum and instruction will be organized around quests and other gameplay concepts.

Much as was the case with adding social elements, the more successful implementations will be the ones that design the gameplay deeply into the service instead of just “bolting it on."  For instance, TheSixtyOne is building its service with gameplay as an essential component from day one.  Someone else, like say Amiestreet, has added a rewards system to an existing service but it’s not all that playful (also uses real money) and relates only to a single behavior (recommending a song).