The term ludic (lúdico in Portuguese) comes from the Latin “iocus” However, as its spelling and phonetics are similar to the word “ludus” (the Latin word from which the Portuguese word for “game” is derived), its conceptual definition can be complex, and may imply that play and game are synonymous (leading to a confusion of “ludic” with “game”).

The association of “ludic” with “game” is observed in other languages. In French the verb jouer resembles the root of the word “game”, and is associated with play. English has the word ludic, which is a literal translation of lúdico (in Portuguese), but English also uses the term playful, in addition to the word play, which refers to fun, and which is sometimes translated as playing, and “game” which is or should be the word used for the Portuguese jogo. According to Leite (2017), the word game in English is generally used for a type of game with rules, unlike play, which also means game, but in the sense of fun, pleasure, ludic, and does not necessarily have rules.

However, based on the work of Kishimoto (2011), Caillois (2017), and Leite (2022), a difference can be observed between “ludic” and “game”. The former is an intuitive, free and natural activity that aims to have fun (entertainment), and it is associated with games involving objects, narratives, and/or images of the subject. The latter is a formal activity with clear rules and whose central objective is competition.

These assumptions suggest that “game” may have its origins in “ludic” and that when a game is formalized, given specific rules and its aim is competition rather than fun, a game is created. Ludic is organic, free for fun, and it occurs through games. Games are formal and have competition rules. A game can be understood as something with no definition, as the player is seeking enjoyment. This can be confused with ludic, but if there are rules, the activity is characterized as a game.

The statement that ludic is the origin of the game and not vice versa is based on Huizinga (2019), who affirms that play is older than culture. However, he refers to “play”, the ludic. Hence, ludic would be older than culture and, consequently, older than the game.

Nevertheless, it is important to consider that due to the natural quality of ludic activity, the aspects, characteristics, and elements that constitute it are multiple, flexible, and complex. However, ludic activity must be aimed at fun (or not). In this sense, Luckesi (2022) explains that an activity may be ludic for one individual, but not for another. He thus highlights that the ludic process is associated with the psychological singularities of each individual, corroborating the idea of a natural, organic process, free for entertainment.

In view of this, it is pragmatic to recognize that the ludic can be applied to different actions or activities, such as health treatments and/or education, so that it can be a process of improvement for those involved (Kishimoto, 2011; Luckesi, 2022). Some examples might be the use of theatrical scenarios to explain content (in the field of education) or for recreation for people undergoing health treatment (in the field of health). We could therefore suggest that the ludic promotes entertainment (fun), so the activity can be ludic at certain times, not at others, and it will depend on the objective of the action. The “magic cube” (Rubik’s Cube) is one example of this. The Magic Cube (Figure 1) is an easy-to-use hands-on material that anyone can use. The pieces of the Magic Cube articulate with each other through a central piece, allowing the user to rotate the cube 360 degrees vertically and horizontally.

Figure 1
Magic cube

The Magic Cube was created in the 1970s by Erno Rubik as an educational tool for architecture classes, specifically to demonstrate concepts of three-dimensionality (Zeng et al., 2018). In teaching mathematics, the Magic Cube allows teachers and students to explore concepts involving plane and spatial geometry. Rubik’s Cube has become a very popular toy, a ludic object (allowing different people to have fun). However, assembling Rubik’s Cube is challenging, and not everyone can have fun with it, so it loses its ludic aspect.

On the other hand, there are competitions for assembling Rubik’s Cube, making it an object for a game (it loses its ludic aspect and acquires a game characteristic) due to the existence of rules and competition. From this example, we observe that Rubik’s Cube can be a ludic artifact or a game, depending on the use it is given.

As previously described, game is a formalized activity which has particular rules and whose main aim is competition. However, when the word “game” is used, the term has a certain ambiguity. It can mean both an object (a deck of cards, dominoes, etc.) or an activity (football, basketball, for example).

This perspective is a product of the game’s intimate relationship with society, where it is possible to observe at least traces of the practice (of the game) in all known societies as they are derived from ludic (Caillois, 2017; Huizinga, 2019; Kishimoto, 2011). A game may also be understood to be an integral part of the culture of different peoples, as a formal practice of humanity.

According to Huizinga (2019), a game “is a voluntary activity or occupation, carried out within certain and determined limits of time and space, according to freely agreed but obligatory rules, endowed with a purpose, accompanied by a feeling of tension and joy and an awareness of being different from ‘everyday life’” (Huizinga, 2019, p. 35-36). In other words, a game is a voluntary individual or collective activity composed of rules understood and freely accepted by a subject (or several of them, called players) and developed in a defined space and time to achieve a specific objective. Koster (2013) states that a game is a system in which players engage in an abstract challenge by rules, interactivity, and feedback, resulting in quantifiable products and arousing emotional reactions.

Starting from the definition and structure of game, we may recognize two large groups: the analog game (AG) and the digital game (DG). The first type (AG) are “common” games which make use of material resources (non-digital) or just strategies in a set of rules that promote competition - remembering that their origin comes from the ludic (Brougère, 2010; Kishimoto, 2011). The second (DG) are games that make use of some interface, platform, or digital resource (DR), but which started as “AG”. DG initially appears as a reinterpretation or transposition of AG, as an electronic (digital) construction or representation with surrealist and fictional scenarios and narratives from games that use imagery resources and/or objects. The idea of creating DG emerged in the 20th century, but it gained more prominence and relevance in the 21st century. With the advances in digital technologies (DT) and multiple platforms, they gained greater prominence and relevance.

However, the division into two large groups (AG and DG) is recent, and there are other lists and classifications of games, such as the classification described by Caillois (2017) related to action or practice strategy, Agôn (conflict/combat), Alea (risk/ “bad luck”), Mimicry (mimicry/ illusion) and Ilinx (vertigo/ disorientation). Caillois (2017) highlights that this classification can establish close or distant relationships with entertainment. However, it is challenging, given that the entertainment promoted by the game comes from a ludic origin and, as Lukesi (2022) describes, what is ludic for one individual may not be fun for another, and hence it is difficult to classify the game as an activity which promotes, or does not promote, entertainment . Nevertheless, it is clear that the game has rules and its aim is to compete.

Other classifications of games are observed in the literature, occasionally mixed, using different terms such as educative games, educational games, didactic games, pedagogical games, serious games, and simulation games. These classifications represent complex concepts on which the scientific community has not yet reached concensus.

It is necessary first to reinforce the concept of the game as a formalized activity, which has particular rules and whose central objective is competition. This clarifies the difference between the educative game and the educational game. “Educative” is related to actions in education, in the sense of learning, while “educational” is an adjective related to something more systematic, i.e. something related to a process. Therefore, an educative game is a game with some aspect of customs, such as morals or ethics, which can support behavior through the game. An educational game is one with aspects appropriate for a teaching and learning construct, a resource with clear and intentional pedagogical aspects (Kishimoto, 2011). In this view, the educative game is a subset of the educational game.

The pedagogical game, which in practice is an educational game, is regarded as an activity that can be applied for pedagogical purposes, supporting the teaching and learning process as a resource to explore specific skills and competencies (Kishimoto, 2011). On the other hand, it is understood that the didactic game discussed in the literature (Cleophas et al., 2018; Lima & Messeder Neto, 2021) is not a game specifically, as it does not aim at competition.

In practice, the didactic game uses game elements to engage, thus becoming a gamification with the aim of teaching and learning. It is noticeable that the term “didactic game” has crystallized as a type of game, although there is no epistemological support for this according to the concept of the game, as we will explore in the next section.

Finally, serious games and simulation games are practices, actions, and environments (spaces) representing real or fictional situations, enabling a learning space with specific skills and competencies for an action or activity. According to Wilkinson (2016), there are several perspectives for defining serious games that move between academia and industry in addition to their interdisciplinary character of promoting inconsistent definitions and/or multiple conceptualizations (Laamarti et al., 2014; Wilkinson, 2016).

One definition for serious games is that they are “games that do not have entertainment, pleasure or fun as their main objective” (Laamarti et al., 2014, p. 3). Serious games usually refer to games used for training, advertising, simulation or education, designed to run on personal computers or video game consoles (Baptista & Oliveira, 2018; Susi et al., 2007). However, Ahmed and Sutton (2017) point out that simulators do not possess the aspects observed in serious games. Simulations narrow the focus of serious games. Simulation is the imitation of reality, recreating an alternative reality within a controlled environment, used for training, entertainment, and explanation (Ahmed & Sutton, 2017).

On this basis, we can see that games are applied in education as in ludic activities. On the other hand, we often see practices in which the game loses its formal aspect and its competition aspects are minimized. Its conceptual characteristics (formality of rules for a competition) are lost, and it assumes the aspects of its origin (ludic), or new processes. Here we can see that some terms may have been coined for practices that necessarily have a “relationship” with games. However, some of these practices are designed to promote engagement by making use of game resources (elements) in activities that are not games, as they are not geared to competition, and are therefore called gamification.

The term gamification has been attributed to an expression coined in the early 21st century by Nick Pelling to describe interfaces and game engines as resources to make electronic transactions enjoyable (Kapp, 2012). However, although the term emerged at the beginning of the 21st century, the practice was observed much earlier for using game elements to motivate individuals.

The literature often defines gamification as game elements in activities that are not games (Deterding et al., 2011; Hamari & Koivisto, 2015; Leite, 2017). However, definitions and concepts evolve according to the construction and development of knowledge, and hence the idea of gamification may have been expanded since it was first developed in the early 21st century. According to Koivisto and Hamari (2014), gamification has been defined according to behavioral issues, trends, and the learning situation.

It is always hard to define a concept, and gamification is no exception. For Deterding et al. (2011), gamification consists of game elements and game design techniques in non-game contexts. This definition is also found in Leite (2017, p. 2), in which gamification “[...] consists of the use of game elements (thoughts, mechanics and strategies) outside the context of games”. For Mishra (2013), it is a technique to influence the motivation or engagement of people to solve complex problems, carry out specific actions, or just have fun. Another factor that has been discussed in the works that define the concept of gamification, according to Hamari and Koivisto (2015), is whether gamification provides ludic and free-form experiences (paidia) or more structured and rule-oriented experiences (ludus).

On the basis of these definitions, we can conceptualize gamification pragmatically as a process in which game elements are used in practices that are not games, in order to promote engagement and thereby recognize three categories of substantial game elements for structuring gamification: components, mechanics, and dynamics (Figure 2).

Figure 2
Game category and elements
Note: Adapted from Pereira and Leite (2023

The components constitute the most practical and specific level elements in a game related to generating mechanics (Paixão & Cordeiro, 2021). For Werbach and Hunter (2012), components are a particular instantiation of game mechanics and dynamics. Instantiation is a process through which an existing object (class) is copied.

The mechanics are seen as basic processes that generate the following actions and generate engagement in the player (Werbach & Hunter, 2012). A mechanic is related to one or more dynamics (Paixão & Cordeiro, 2021). Dynamics are the high-level aspect of the gamified system that must be considered and managed (Werbach & Hunter, 2012). This is the most abstract level, relating to implicit elements (emotion, relationship, narrative, etc.), and the dynamics do not participate directly in the game but must be managed and represent the general panorama of the experience (Paixão & Cordeiro, 2021).

We can find different game elements in the three categories (component, mechanics, and dynamics) (Leite, 2017; Werbach & Hunter, 2012). However, the elements highlighted in Figure 2 are commonly observed in works involving gamification (Baptista & Oliveira, 2018; Pereira & Leite, 2023). Gamification consists of combining dynamics, mechanics and components to achieve a specific proposed objective.

Regarding the approach/distancing of play and games, Deterding et al. (2011) highlight that gamification is distinguished from recreational and “regular” games due to the objective of the action, which in the case of gamification is the promotion of engagement. Consequently, due to the broad possibility of using game elements, the possibilities for executing gamification are quite varied. Therefore, it is possible to describe at least two types of gamification found in the literature, called structural and content gamification (Leite, 2022).

Structural gamification is the process by which game elements are applied extrinsically without modifying the content; in practice, it can only modify the form of presentation and actions on the content. In this regard, game elements are resources to structure the activity, making them attractive to participants and promoting involvement to generate engagement. This means that structural gamification can be applied to already known activities in a versatile and personalized way without modifying the scenario other than involving the subjects.

A practical example of structural gamification is credit card loyalty, which provides points to attract customers to specific rewards. Another example is the Brainly platform (a platform for communication between students and experts in solving multiple knowledge questions), which seeks to engage people through game elements, such as points and medals, in solving a problem. The most common elements in structural gamification are points, trophies, achievements and levels.

Content gamification consists of a more profound and more intrinsic gamification, which means that game elements modify the content, making the content more attractive and dynamic, achieving the engagement of participants through the immersion relation in practice. It is worth noting that this type of gamification has an architecture closer to a game, despite its objective being to promote engagement and not competition, which can merely appear as an element and not as an objective. An example of content gamification would be digital applications for language courses, such as Duolingo or Babbel, or a multitasking platform, such as Gamefic (a platform for gamification), which allows one to modify tasks to involve participants, specifically for gamification.

In content gamification, new scenarios are created. One form of content gamification is to create a story in which the content will be developed as part of the plot. The escape room can be configured as a gamification of content since each puzzle solved in the escape room leads the participant to a concept. It is like a content puzzle, in which the content combines to reveal an explanation, a concept. Another example of content gamification is the QR code, with which the student answers the QR code questions and discovers the content.

With this explanation of the types of gamification (structural and content), we can also say that they can be developed with elements of both AG and DG. However, gamification should not be confused with the creation of games (Koivisto & Hamari, 2014; Pereira & Leite, 2023), of any kind.

Gamification must also be applied with care because if its objective is to promote engagement, it is connected to a development interest, whether this is an action or an activity. It is important to highlight that engagement is complex, and must crucially involve individuals through intrinsic and extrinsic aspects.

In this context, we can see gamification applied in different sectors, such as marketing, administration, business, social and educational:

• Gamification in administration continues to drive engagement in solving tasks in a way that makes individuals active in the process, generally associating their activities with bonus elements that can be financial contributions, career development, and even emotional contributions, such as ringing a bell when completing a task or reaching a goal.

• In business, it is used to increase productivity, motivating employees to perform their work and achieve the challenges proposed by the company (the goals);

• In the social sphere, social impact challenges encourage people to participate in specific purposes, in church campaigns for example, and in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) for collecting donations and/or helping with certain actions for a specific audience (Leite, 2022);

• In education, gamification has a broad spectrum and can be applied to improve learning and increase student engagement and commitment to learning. It can be used within an active methodology perspective, in which the teacher acts as a mediator, giving students autonomy and freedom, and placing them at the center of the learning process, for example. It may therefore be inferred that gamification in education implies didactic and pedagogical alternatives for the teaching and learning process associated with learning theories such as active learning (Leite, 2022; Pereira & Leite, 2023). Indeed, gamification in education promotes engagement, provides opportunities for active learning, and contributes to knowledge construction and the embodiment of learning.

• In marketing, gamification is used as an engagement resource for the presentation and promotion of products, involving individuals and thus catching their attention,, which may include loyalty programs that connect the customer to the company. In this context, gamification is used to build loyalty and engage the target audience in campaigns, such as points and rewards cards, earning air miles to exchange for tickets or products, encouraging loyalty, increasing use and motivation.

It is therefore clear that gamification is a broad process As some authors have proposed (Baptista & Oliveira, 2018; Kapp, 2012; Pereira & Leite, 2023), some aspects of it have yet to be explored in order for its full potential to be achieved, and this would involve improving the theoretical and practical framework, to fill in the gaps in the process. These include the scenario in which gamification is treated as a “neologism” for games aimed at the field of education, which is notably a limited construction of the gamification process, as it is applied in different sectors (marketing, business, social and administrative).

In this regard, Table 1 revisits the concepts of play, games and gamification, and other terms such as educational games (pedagogical games and didactic games) and serious games/simulators, which form different objects.

Table 1
Concepts of entertainment, game, gamification and associated terms

As stated above (and summarized in Table 1), the relationship between the categories (ludic, games, gamification, educational games, serious games and simulators) have a complex “gene” that causes the lines between conceptual limits to be fine. The use of the term player is one of the problems. In an activity that is not a game, such as gamification or a ludic activity, some authors often mistakenly to call the participant a “player”.

We must stress that gamification is not a game, and hence the term “player” in gamification is inappropriate. We recommend that the term be adjusted to the type of activity performed. When gamification is applied in the teaching and learning process for example, we would recommend the term “student”. In business, the terms should be “client” or “target”, and when generalizing, the most suitable terms are “user” or “participant”.

These problems are part of the construction of knowledge, which is fluid, in agreement with Chalmers (1993), who describes the nature of science, and states that there should not be a palpable limit to knowledge. Hence perceptions about knowledge should bear in mind that knowledge of something will not be static, as there must be a continuous reflection to achieve improvement and understanding of what we seek to know. The definition of the term gamification, from its origins to date, has gone through construction processes, so there are points and counterpoints, which must be carefully discussed, aiming for a construct.

Despite the agreement that in order not to limit knowledge, concepts should not stagnate or crystallize, it is sound practice to establish definitions so that knowledge can be structured and organized, making it solid, explicit, and practicable. The conceptual delimitation between ludic, game, and gamification, as well as educative games, educational games, pedagogical games, and serious games, therefore follows the singularity of their origins. However, it is possible to establish more specific characteristics, considering their application in practice, how this is structured, and the objective of the practice.

Hence we can say that gamification is derived from game elements that have their core in play, just as games originate from play. They therefore may seem similar, but the objectives of the practices are quite distinguishable, between playfulness - playing (entertainment), game - competing (competition), and gamification - engaging (engagement). Identifying their objective is fundamental for differentiating them.

To illustrate this argument, we took as an example the use of a deck of playing cards, which can be used in various practices. The deck can be used in a game, such as poker, “buraco”, “truco”, “sueca”, “twenty-one”, which have their own rules, which can vary depending on the region and culture. However, the fundamental objective of all these games is competition. Hence the cards can be used in other activities, such as magic tricks, in an entertainment activity, in a ludic way (Santos & Almeida, 2018), without being characterized as a game.

Playing cards can also be a resource for esoteric practices, those traditionally performed by the Romi people for centuries for example, without being regarded as a game. Clearly, playing cards can be used in different processes and activities, both from a ludic perspective (magic, esotericism, etc.) and in a gaming context (poker, blackjack, etc.), and the difference is indicated in the objective. The deck can be used in a ludic activity, game, gamification, and/or educational game (Table 2), in which the purpose (objective) of those involved will determine the characteristics of the activity.

Table 2
Perspectives on using a deck of playing cards for the purpose of entertainment/playing/gamifying/educational games.

As already described in Table 1 and corroborated in Table 2, the ludic, games, and gamification are differentiated by their objectives and not by the resources used, thus presenting a unique characteristic. On the other hand, it is worth highlighting that in the case of educational games, these are nothing more or less than gamification. This statement is supported by the fact that this practice (called “didactic game”) does not have competitive objectives, so it is not a stricto sensu game (or pedagogical game). This practice seeks engagement in a learning process and is considered gamification. Although there are arguments in defense of the term didactic game (Cleophas et al., 2018; Lima & Messeder Neto, 2021), within the concepts presented and defended in this study, the didactic game is indeed gamification.

The term gamified activity is commonly used in research into gamification, It is understood as a practice aimed at engagement that uses elements of game but which is not considered a game and the participant is not considered to be playing, and hence erodes the concept of gamification.

In short, based on the concepts and examples described, it is understandable that the boundaries between categories (gamification, games and playfulness) and subcategories (didactic games, pedagogical games and serious games) can be confusing. However, we can also say that gamification, like the other categories (games and playfulness), has its own specific situation. Evidently, gamification can be explored in different contexts and environments, such as education, where it becomes relevant because it provides the teaching and learning process with an active methodology.