Leaderboarded Archives - Gamified UK

Leaderboards are evil. They create competition in environments that may not benefit from competition. They make more losers than winners and only engage the top 10 players on the board. Right? (out of context quotes ahoy!)

Well, yes and no.

In reality it is not quite as simple as that. It all comes down to intent, presentation and interpretation. If the point of your leaderboard is to create unnatural competition between groups of people, then you may find you don’t get the results you expect. Not everyone wants to compete, so if that is your intent you will often find very short lived engagement. As soon as people find they are not in the top ten, you tend to find they lose interest. The competition then revolves around the top players, leaving the rest actually disengaged from the process. Read More ...

Leaderboards are an effective way to show a user quickly where they currently stand within a gamified system. A fun example is the Gamification Gurus leaderboard from the company Leaderboarded. Each month they release an update that shows who has been active in the gamification world that month. It is a great example of a leaderboard being used in isolation – without all of the points and badges that are often associated with simple gamification.

Many blogs and websites these days make use of a comment system called Disqus to manage their comments. It has a few plug-ins that you can easily add to your site if you are using it for comments. One is a Top Commenter’s box. If you look at my blog, you should see it in the side bar. It shows people, at a glance, who is posting the most comments on your pages. Read More ...