A SWOT Analysis of the Gamification Practices: Challenges, Open Issues and Future Perspectives

In this paper, we present a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats) analysis for the gamification field. The analysis will begin with a review of the topics frequently discussed in relation to gamification strengths and weaknesses, by reporting existing works in the field. The work will continue by outlining an analysis of opportunities and threats, that require an examination of marketing and design trends, with the aim to provide a strategy for guessing what lies ahead in the future. We are not aiming at a complete review of all the relevant works in this field; we want to identify a useful tool to spot both positive and negative aspects of gamification, as well as its perspectives of development and its risks of decline, describing some elements through which imagine its future, showing limits, challenges, ethical issues, expectations and possible evolutions of this phenomenon