I think there will be many mistakes and much over-simplification carried out in the name fo bringing game theory and / or gamification principles to the workplace and to social learning.

Not to simplify too much on my part here (most of the serious conversation is in the post and the comments above), but I am willing to bet that gamification in the workplace in many instances becomes some sort of combination of a small and almost derisory "variable compensation / performance-based pay at risk" scheme such as were installed through-out the 90's and 00's to motivate performance ... crossed with collections of badges being not too dissimilar to putting a notch on your bedpost as to how many times you made it up onto the Employee-of-the_Week Wall of Fame we can see in any of our local grocery stores.

I never tire of Charles Handy's admonition that we usually are not aware of how much "what's in fashion" engenders change, though almost always not in the direction or type(s) of outcomes intended.

I think we've seen an awful lot f "what's fashionable" pass through the portals of the new interconnected workplace .. almost all of it seeking to benefit from what is clearly a massive change, but almost all of what has been dreamed up by those who have designed the "fashionable" for the interconnected workplace are working out of the previous era's minset and mental model(s).