**9. Conclusions**

When reflecting upon the topics covered in this chapter, a number of conclusions have been reached. These are summarised here in the hope that they accrete in some small way to the research discourse pertaining to gamified systems in cultural spaces.

Firstly, challenge has been identified as a key characteristic of play within gamified systems and has been observed to exert a powerful motive influence on participants in terms of continued participation and enjoyment. This has both positive and negative implications. For challenge to have a positive impact upon engaged experience, it must fall within a Goldilocks Zone, at a point, between boredom and anxiety, being not too hard, or too soft, but just right. Achieving this is complicated by the diversity of audiences present within a visiting public. The CHESS project, above, developed strategies to align interest with topic offered: a similar strategy would be possible with a menu of challenge levels although there are barriers to achieving this such as time and potential bias, which make this a difficult proposition.

Arguably, one in seven is a reasonable statistic for completion of a challenge game in a heritage setting within a limited timeframe and where the individual has numerous competing priorities vying for their attention. The High Tea project worked around the negatives of the heritage context by making the game accessible outside of the setting, so that the visitor could navigate the game in their own time and space. As above, context is everything. Game player motivation and perseverance levels are very different when sitting on a comfortable sofa at home with plenty of time and few distractions than when playing a game in a culturally significant space with a myriad of competing experiential offerings. The game designer can factor in levels as in the Chess Project, allows the game to be played beyond the heritage context as in the High Tea setting above or incorporate game elements where completion is not defined by the designer but is the subjective decision of the game player—by the incorporation of creative elements.

Creation was observed to be the most significant pleasure in the case of the TNAR project, with participants at their most engaged when creating their own spaces. It was also at this point that the mechanism of the game most succinctly aligned with the educational intention in that the pleasure the participant experienced, and which motivated them to continue, was also the mechanism by which the educational information (the task) was delivered. This is perhaps the key conclusion here, and one that has relevance to the debate about what gamification is and should be. One in which a nuanced appreciation of the desired outcome, the pleasure the player is expected to experience and the gamified mechanism used to achieve this is required. This is in part a response to the debate outlined in Section 2, in that gamification is not a silver bullet to motivate, and that a mismatch between mechanism and outcome can in fact do the reverse; demotivate and disengage or even make it more difficult or confusing the attainment of the learning goal, as perhaps, for novice gamers, was the case with the text-based sections of TNAR.

When all the above factors align, when the game is suitably presented for its context, when participants are time confident, when the participant is challenged to the correct degree, motivation to play and to continue playing to the end is achieved and the educational goals embedded in the experience will be delivered; then, the task is gamified. The alternative is a gamified creative gameplay that can, as in the TNAR project creative component, deliver meaningful educational content. In either case, the task being gamified must be integrated into the system itself, for points and leaderboards do not an effective game make. As with the High Tea project, when the playable moments within the system that elicit pleasure at the same time constitute the task these things align and positive experience and positive learning outcomes are achieved.
