This paper was presented at the SBGames 2012, the Brazilian Symposium of Games and Digital Entertainment, and it can be downloaded here. Here is its abstract:
The discussion around gamification has been gaining
strength in recent years, and game scholars are
focusing on the term and the phenomena it describes.
The main goal of this paper is to contribute to this
discussion by understanding the gamification
phenomenon from the perspective of the persuasive
questions it poses, both as a discursive term and as
persuasive systems. The paper shortly reviews current
debates around the gamification term and present
definitions, as a basis for the analysis of gamification
and persuasion. A description of the rhetorics of
gamification is then made, discussing the positioning
of gamification in relation to video games and larger
cultural and societal contexts. Next, the persuasive
characteristics of gamification systems are analyzed
using concepts of persuasive technologies and
procedural rhetorics, highlighting the connections
between those characteristics and the gamification
rhetorics described.