Gamification: Engaging Students With Narrative begins:
When looking at how engaged students are in playing games, it makes sense to capture some of the ideas that game designers use to engage the player. This idea of applying gaming mechanics to non-game situations is known as gamification.
What defines a game is having a goal or objective. However almost all games also have some sort of theme or story.
Interesting. Relates to book read three years ago and book on game design read two years ago.