A Review of Introducing Game Elements to e-Participation

In light of a disturbingly low political participation, governments around the world try novel approaches to re-encourage citizens to make use of their democratic rights. A currently popular strategy is the implementation of digital participation platforms. Since the emergence of these tools, a true success has yet to be confirmed. One attempt to increase the usage of digital participation tools and therefore eventually also the overall level of public participation, is the incorporation of game-related elements. This paper reviews recent academic projects concerning gamified participation tools and reports on preliminary results. Overall, it should not be assumed that gamification works similar in all domains, different user groups react different to game aspects and some elements might even be harmful towards the overall objective. Therefore, it is important to analyze one's context and target groups before turning to gamification. Moreover, game elements need to be chosen carefully and situated in the context.