By Brian Greenupdated October 27, 2025
From blockchain platforms to health apps, gamification is permeating everywhere. What if this often underrated game mechanic actually held the keys to mass Web3 adoption and lasting behavior change?
Blockchain: simplifying entry into a complex world
Web3, with its promises of decentralization and transparency, remains a dark technical forest for many. Alphanumeric addresses, wallets, smart contracts… Few people enter without trying their way. This is where gamification finds its place: transforming interaction with blockchain into an intuitive and engaging experience.
A mechanism that is already familiar in other industries.
Before breaking into technology or healthcare, gamification has long been experimented with in more established sectors. In the world of gaming, for example, platforms like this Swiss online casino have perfected the art of capturing attention through progression systems, bonuses, and implicit storytelling. However, this know-how, sometimes criticized, has made it possible to identify what really works to maintain commitment.
Today, these industries serve as a large-scale laboratory for other sectors seeking to retain their users while supporting them to achieve sometimes complex or abstract goals.
A generational issue
It is no coincidence that these approaches especially attract thirty-somethings, who are very present in cryptocurrencies. They grew up with video games, progression mechanics, challenges and rewards. Behavioral economics has long shown that the environment influences the decision. By incorporating familiar elements, Web3 developers reduce strangeness and encourage exploration.
Older users are less receptive to this playful language. Hence a generational divide that could influence large-scale adoption.
Rewards, quests and immersion: the Kwit effect
The same logic works in radically different contexts. The Kwit app, for example, uses game codes to help its users quit smoking. More than 4 million people have found an alternative to traditional approaches. Points, levels, narrative: every small victory is valued, every failure becomes a step in a coherent narrative.
Here we touch on something deeper: the mobilization of emotions. Gamification works not just because it’s fun, but because it creates attachment, meaning, and sometimes even a feeling of identity progression.
When games become social
In both cases – blockchain or health – another ingredient makes the difference: the community. Leaderboards, peer challenges, or encouragement exchanges reinforce engagement. It is a powerful lever, well known from sports platforms or social networks, now integrated into much more ambitious approaches.
But not everything is so simple. Handing out badges is not enough. If the game does not have a clear purpose, the commitment disappears as quickly as it was established. This is the trap of “badgification”: believing that rewarding is enough to create motivation.
When artificial intelligence comes into play
With the integration of AI, gamification is entering a new phase. The routes are no longer fixed but adapt in real time. The experience becomes personalized, almost organic. This allows us to satisfy the specific needs of each user, whether new or already started, motivated or undecided.
The game evolves: the further you progress, the more the challenges are adjusted. And the once generic narration adapts to the user’s input, creating an immersion that few traditional interfaces can match.
Towards a new behavioral interface
When you look closely, gamification, in its finest form, is not a gimmick. It stands out as a behavioral interface in itself, capable of guiding the user, educating them, motivating them, also increasing their risk taking… sometimes better than a manual, an advertisement or a tutorial.
And this is precisely what Web3 often lacks. A human, emotional, almost playful layer. Something that makes these technologies more accessible without distorting them.
The tools are there, the references too. It remains to articulate them intelligently, so that Web3, far from being a matter of technophiles, becomes a truly living and inhabited space.
