A systematic mapping study of gamification models oriented to motivational characteristics

Context: Gamification focuses on the improvement of users' engagement when performing tasks by making use of game mechanics and elements in order to increase their motivations. Many researches have developed gamification models supporting a variety of motivational characteristics to provide engagement solutions for different areas. Objective: This paper carries out a systematic mapping in the field of gamification, looking for models with motivational characteristics in an attempt to characterise the state of the art of this field, identifying gaps and tendencies for further research. Method: We carried out a systematic mapping aiming at finding the primary studies in the existing literature, which were later classified and analysed according to twelve criteria. Results: We analysed 70 papers that resulted in 17 primary studies, published until September 2016. Most of them focus on Education, making use of Gamification to increase the motivation of a learning process. The gamification mechanics and elements most used were Badges/Achievements and Points/ExperiencePoints(XP), and most of the studies were not validated, thus not providing empirical evidence of the impact of gamification. Conclusions: Existing research in the field is somehow preliminary, and more research effort to analyse the applicability of the models and their respective evaluations would be needed.