http://www.stasiareport.com/the-big-story/asia-report/china/story/the-new-candy-crush-chinese-language-apps-make-learning-game-2

I think it's a shame that there hasn't been more 'gamification' of education in general. Language study, particularly languages with complicated writing systems, are so ripe for being gamified that I'm honestly surprised a better job hasn't been done of it. Skritter is one of the best, if not the best way to learn/practice writing, but even then it is undoubtedly more of a learning tool rather than a game. It requires a motivated user to get the most out of it. That's fine for someone like me, I'm plenty motivated without any gamified system to incentivize further learning, but I still think there's so much untapped potential in this area -- and that disappoints me.

... but we haven't even gamified it!

When you get to the point where educational apps which are neither games nor intentionally gamified (like Skritter) are being confused with apps where gamification was one of the core design principles (like Memrise), it kind of shows how weak gamification usually is. Putting badges on things is a poor substitute to just making games.

It would be possible to make an actual game that would have most of Skritter's learning power, but would be much more fun and addictive. Mortals would tremble at the sight; phones would be pried by weeping fathers and mothers from the dead fingers of their poorly-impulse-controlled children, only to inflict the same fate in turn on the gladly-succumbing parents. But such a game would look very different from the Skritter-as-a-straight-educational-app that we know.

ummmm . . . so Nick, do you think you can have that ready by summer? hahah

I thought the Skritter creation story was that it was inspired by games, but from what you say that's clearly different from 'gamification.' Is the distinction really that clear cut? Skritter is highly customizeable, many people describe it as addictive, and the interface is very interactive and graphic. Does a true "game" have to have a more competitive element or externally imposed "challenges"?

Games take a lot longer to make. ;)

A true educational game, as opposed to just gamification of an educational app, would look more like http://codecombat.com/

Nick, but where's the option in Code Combat for a programming language where the coding statements are in Chinese? 呵呵

Hmm... there's a Chinese version of Python right? Maybe it's not so far fetched