Gamification for Volunteer Cloud Computing

Volunteer cloud computing is a paradigm where idle computing resources owned by a certain user are offered in the cloud to be utilised by others in order to reduce operational costs. Engaging people in volunteer cloud computing is an obstacle which requires novel motivational methods, ideally online. Gamification is a method for increasing people motivation and changing their behaviour towards certain tasks in a non-game context. This position paper advocates that gamification is potentially a means to increase people engagement and retention in volunteer cloud computing projects. As an initial step to reach a systematic application of gamification in such projects, we study the relationship between game mechanics and different categories of volunteers and propose a preliminary mapping that relates these two aspects.