Nearly 80% of gamified applications will not be able to meet the business objectives by 2014, due to lack of design talent, according to a new report from Gartner.

Gamification is the deployment of game to non-game contexts to enhance the involvement of engagement and it may include customer engagement, employee performance, training and education, innovation management and personal development.

Gartner research vice president Brian Burke said that the main challenge faced by the project managers and sponsors responsible for gamification initiatives is the lack of game design talent concerning gamification projects.

"Poor game design is one of the key failings of many gamified applications today," Burke said.

"The focus is on the obvious game mechanics, such as points, badges and leader boards, rather than the more subtle and more important game design elements, such as balancing competition and collaboration, or defining a meaningful game economy.

"As a result, in many cases, organizations are simply counting points, slapping meaningless badges on activities and creating gamified applications that are simply not engaging for the target audience.

The real challenge for the developers is to develop player-centric applications that aim at the motivations and rewards to completely engage players.

Gamification assists all areas of benefits in achieving three broad objectives that assist in changing behaviour, develop skills and allow innovation.

"As gamification moves from being leveraged by a limited number of leading-edge innovators to becoming more broadly adopted by early adopters, it is important that CIOs and IT leaders understand the underlying principle of gamification and how to apply it within the IT organization," Burke said.