Towards Adaptive Gamification in Small Online Communities

Gamification is well-known for increasing users’ motivation. This is especially important for users of web and mobile applications. However, most of the current approaches do not consider the characteristics and needs of each user. In online small communities, where the number of users and interactions is quite limited, motivation is even more important to avoid any risk of standstill and personalization may be helpful. In this paper, we propose a general framework for adaptive gamification for small online communities. The framework considers specific characteristics of users and their interactions to provide which specific game mechanics may be the most suitable for each user. As a key component of this framework, different algorithms can be used for adaptive gamification. Therefore, we tested the performance of different algorithms under simulated conditions to assess the adequateness for small online communities.