Are Gamification Projects Different? An Exploratory Study on Software Project Risks for Gamified Health Behavior Change Support Systems

Gamification is increasingly utilized in information systems to afford positive experiences that are typically perceived from playing games. Despite potential benefits, gamification projects have shown to be prone for failure which may lead to severe harmful effects for its users. In traditional software projects, project managers try to mitigate failure through project risk management. However, gamification projects bring with them several differences in comparison to traditional software projects and it is unclear how extant knowledge may be transferred. We address this issue by conducting ten semi-structured interviews with experts involved in the development of gamified health behavior change support systems. Our results indicate that gamification has substantial impacts on various risk factors. We contribute to gamification and project management literature as we are among the first who conceptualize gamification projects as special software projects with different project risk factors.