Wow, what a trip – it turns out an author I love has actually been writing a lot about the intersection of game mechanics and functional applications. Here’s a summary covering what she cares about: How Game Mechanics Can Make Your App More Fun. And here’s a great Powerpoint detailing the ideas: Shufflebrain slides.
I originally read Amy Jo Kim’s book called Building Communities back in the day, which I often cited in nerdy conversations with other tech people. So it’s interesting to see her develop more concrete ideas than I have on something I previously thought was pretty original :)
Anyway, read her examples – seems like much of it comes from eBay, MySpace, and Flickr. Those are obviously companies with very strong communities that have been able to exploit a couple game-like mechanics on their sites.
Definitely worth reading!!