Playing with Science: Gamised Aspects of Gamification Found on the Online Citizen Science Project – Zooniverse

This paper examines incidents of play, socialisation, fun and amusement to consider how these forms of social interaction relate to the serious gaming elements of the citizen science platform. Through an ethnographic study we reveal how participants of citizen science projects demonstrate aspects of ‘Gamised’ behaviour. ‘Gamised’ behaviour is defined as user generated play in a digital platform and contrasts to incidents of ‘gamification’ where a platform designer purposely embeds games into a computer platform. The paper therefore examines incidents of play, socialisation, fun and amusement and compares them with the serious gaming elements of the citizen science platform.