Must We Gamify Everything Now?

Stop badgering me with your badges

The Dice Players by Simó Gómez

It is with great pride that I announce I’ve been selected to join Team Cuppy.

I learned this news just recently, when I was ordering coffee on the Dunkin’ app and fat-fingered the “View Badges” button.

Apparently, I earned this badge back on January 18, 2025, for racking up five hot-drink orders since the beginning of the year. In truth, I order at least five hot drinks every week, so it isn’t hubris to think I may be Team Cuppy’s MVP.

My glory doesn’t end there. I’ve also reached the following Dunkin’ Milestones:

• Bronze Runner

• Silver Visitor 10

• Silver Visitor 25

• Silver Visitor 50

• Silver Visitor 75

• Golden Member 100

Mind you, these are just the ones I’ve accomplished so far in 2026. I’d list my 2025 Milestones, but I’m afraid you’ll start treating me like some kind of god.

You should know that none of this is part of the chain’s rewards program—that’s a different, points-per-purchase system. But Dunkin’ feels obligated to gamify something. That’s because that’s the way everything’s going, and we all have to play whether we want to or not.

Obviously, Dunkin’ believes badges will incentivize me to accelerate my coffee intake. Setting aside the fact that I didn’t know about them until last week, they won’t; like most coffee drinkers, the only pressure my consumption bows to is the throbbing in my skull. So they’re wasted on me.

Now, if these little icons gave me access to a secret Boston club where I could hobnob with the Brothers Affleck and Wahlberg, well, I still wouldn’t care. But at least that would be something.

As it is, the only thing I can do with them—the entirety of their value—is to share them on social media. The marketing team that reasoned this out made two unfortunate errors:

1. These badges are for children.

2. Most children have neither a taste for coffee nor a thriving social media presence.

So what game are we even playing here?

For argument’s sake, let’s say you take a Lyft to Dunkin’. You’ll probably get a badge for that too. The company awards them to honor such grand achievements as taking a ride between 9 am and 4 pm (Busy Bee) or simply being driven somewhere on a Friday (TGIF).

I walk to Dunkin’, so I don’t need a Lyft, but not to worry: I know where I can still get pointless points for no extra effort.

Several months ago, my parent company signed up for a service that lets employees recognize their colleagues by giving them points for things that used to be called “doing your job.” People can then award their points to someone else or redeem them for garbage.

Theoretically, points could circulate around the team forever, like a Halley’s Comet of Sadness. I assumed this practice would suffer a quick death, that no one would participate. After all, as far as transparent, low-cost morale-boosters go, this setup falls somewhere between a box of donuts and not getting laid off.

I was wrong. The most active users were called out and celebrated during a town hall meeting, causing a large eruption of floating heart emojis. I can’t tell you how disappointing it was.

I have to admit, though, that I’m not entirely immune to the appeal of gamification. One app where I fell into this trap is Duolingo. For over a year, I fought my way up leaderboards. Learning Spanish became merely a means to an end—victory over a bunch of usernames that may or may not have had real people behind them.

There were days when I’d want to limit myself to just one or two lessons to keep my streak going, but Duo, that stupid owl, would pester me to continue so I wouldn’t be demoted from my league. I eventually had to stop because I’m busy and the pressure was driving me loco.

All of these gamification tactics are designed to keep you using the apps, whether it’s to get you to buy more stuff, see more ads, or give you another way to feel bad about yourself. For some of these, like Duolingo, it seems like a natural fit. Others feel downright counterproductive.

The biggest offender in that camp that I’ve come across is Habitica. It’s supposedly a to-do app. Rather than describe it to you, I’ll let the company do the honors:

Habitica appears to be geared toward a little-known demographic: those who won’t even bother to hydrate without some kind of reward. Forget adulting—these people aren’t even peopling.

Similarly, this to-do app isn’t even a to-do app. It’s a don’t-do app. You enter “get groceies” or “pay the Visa bill” and then dress your avatar in armor and fight monsters.

If one of your to-dos is to get some shopping done, you might be tempted to open the Temu app.

Temu is famous for having incredibly low prices and a user experience that will fry your nervous system. It looks like an anything-goes mashup of Amazon, a military surplus store, and an online casino, with a dash of severe-weather alert. The first time I went on there, I lasted five minutes and had to spend the rest of the day in a sensory deprivation tank.

There are daily login rewards. Lightning Deal timers urge you to take advantage of sales before it’s too late. A spin-to-win game awards different coupon values. There are chances to “cut down” the minimum price you have to spend to use those coupons. There’s a progress bar showing how many social shares you need to complete to redeem a gift.

I don’t speak Chinese, but clearly, Temu translates to “dopamine orgy.”

Gamification is the norm in fitness apps, which makes sense. There are financial apps that use the strategy too.

Even Salesforce has bought in. It has its Recognition Badges, as well as a feature that assigns you a value based on criteria like how much you post, comment, “like,” share, answer questions, and more. They call this your Reputation, and all a user has to do is hover over your name to see whether you’re “influential” or a fucking piece of shit.

Aren’t we all under enough stress as it is? Do we need to infuse every experience with competition?

Here’s how you know this phenomenon has gone too far: The New York Times has gamified its games.

I’ve earned multiple badges for playing Wordle, Connections, Spelling Bee, and Strands. Why they leave the Crossword untarnished, I don’t know, but I’m grateful. The badges don’t get you discounts or gift subscriptions. They just sit there, worthless, like the Times’s music critics.

It’s all too much. We don’t need everything to be gamified. We don’t need websites to be carnival barkers. We don’t need apps to be slot machines. And badges? We don’t need no stinking badges.

If you’d like to buy me a coffee so I can reach Golden Member 150 status, you can do that here.