Feasibility of a program that helps evaluate the effects of gamification

Abstract: Gamification is a modern concept which refers to the act of adding game elements to a nongame environment. Especially interesting is gamification when applied to a learning environment in the form of game based learning (GBL). GBL has proven to be successful and increases both student motivation and student result. However, most GBL-platform uses premade games with several gamifications implemented and it is not clear which specific gamification that contribute to positive results. This thesis investigates if it is feasible to create a program that tests isolated gamifications and their combinations. To accomplish this a test program was created using python with the pygame library. The program was a math tool, visualizing vector addition with the possibility to add several gamifications. This would allow researchers to test individual gamifications and their synergies. Out of a feasibility perspective two different types of gamifications was defined, mutual exclusive and depentent. The program was deemed feasible with the implementation of any number of mutual exclusive gamifications but only a restricted number of dependent ones. Dependent gamifications was found to increase the workload exponentially and should therefore be kept to a minimum. Python was found to be an ill suited choice as many features had to be implemented from scratch. Instead a game engine like Unity or Unreal Engine would be preferable since there exists several premade assets that are easy to use.