Comment by TeMPOraL
I'm of two minds about it. Duolingo is off-putting for me, not because of gamification as a concept, but rather because of their particular implementation - with tons of clearly user-abusive bullshit with gems and chests and watching ads and shit.
I used to not care for gamification because I knew that my brain is resistant to it in activities that aren't otherwise rewarding on their own. Like, I quickly realize I'm just tricking myself, and then it stops working. But somewhere over the years, I must have burned out of my dopamine reserves or something, because apps like Anki feel now actively off-putting, in the sense that I lose all energy just looking at them. Memorizing cards gets tricky when your eyes just glaze over them and nothing is loaded even to short-term memory, much less long-term. So at this point I'd appreciate even a little bit of immediate feedback and some progress tracker that evokes ever so slightly positive feelings.
>But somewhere over the years, I must have burned out of my dopamine reserves or something, because apps like Anki feel now actively off-putting, in the sense that I lose all energy just looking at them
This resonated with me. I think the decline in excitement towards learning, that we used to do without thinking about it, happens naturally with aging.
Evolution doesn't reward older humans that much for learning so most of us don't feel that same excitement. Compare this to when we're young and need to learn fast, so the dopamine rewards are off the charts.
Consider all of the retirees who spend hours at slot machines (or virtual ones like Candy Crush) to get that dopamine fix as easily as possible.
Maybe a more tasteful gamification balance can be found.