Gabe Zichermann

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Gabe Zichermann (born May 20, 1974) is a Canadian-American author, public speaker, and businessman who helped popularize gamification—the idea of using game ideas and rewards to engage people in non-game settings like work and learning.

Career highlights include leadership and marketing roles in tech and media. He was vice president of strategy and communications at Trymedia, marketing director at CMP Media where he oversaw Gamasutra and Game Developer magazine, and he founded RMBR to bring game mechanics to photo sharing. He also served as chief marketing and strategy officer at Boonty, co-directed the New York chapter of the Founder Institute, and sat on the board of StartOut.org. Zichermann co-founded and leads Dopamine, Inc., and is the CEO of Gamification.co, where he runs the annual Gamification Summit and delivers the keynote each year.

Zichermann is known as one of the best-known advocates of gamification. He believes game elements can be used to improve engagement in business and education, transforming activities into experiences that feel rewarding. He cites examples in education and research projects like Foldit to show how game mechanics can motivate people to tackle difficult problems. He argues that the engaging, rewarding nature of games taps into fluid intelligence and dopamine release, and that gamification can have positive effects beyond entertainment, though he also acknowledges potential downsides.

He describes business software that uses game mechanics as “funware” and notes that platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn incorporate rewards to encourage interaction. He thinks gamification will be especially appealing to Millennials who grew up with video games and may want to stay in a game-like environment at work. Some critics, like Ian Bogost, challenge the concept and prefer terms such as “exploitationware.”

Publications include co-authored Game-Based Marketing: Inspire Customer Loyalty Through Rewards, Challenges, and Contests (2010) with Joselin Linder; Gamification by Design: Implementing Game Mechanics in Web and Mobile Apps (2011) with Christopher Cunningham; and The Gamification Revolution: How Leaders Leverage Game Mechanics to Crush the Competition (2013) with Linder.

Education-wise, Zichermann attended the University of Waterloo, earning a BIS in Human Intelligence, Gifted Education, and Statistics, and he holds an MBA from Rollins College.