The role of game modality in the outcomes of gamification: A research agenda

The interest in gamification is growing every year, as demonstrated by the continuous increase in scientific and commercial outputs. Along with the number of publications, researchers have produced a significant amount of gamification frameworks, with the intent of guiding designers in the creation of gameful systems. Despite the differences between frameworks, and the fact that a holistic framework is still missing, there is one feature common to all the schemes: the consideration for the game modality, intended as different types of social interaction between users (individual, cooperative, competitive, and cooperative-competitive), is none or limited. The current paper represents an attempt to underline the importance of game modality in gamification, presenting evidence about the impact that the modality has on social, behavioral, and psychological outcomes in traditional activities, video games, and gameful systems, along with a research agenda aimed at deepening the knowledge of this connection.