you gotta have a simulation

This is just a brief blast on this topic of gamification, or as Ian Bogost has referred to it Exploitationware.

Rewarding badges doesn't make a product more like a video game, but more importantly if you don't have a simulation you're not making a game.

The bottom line is that tracking points doesn't mean anything unless those points have meaning, and in any worthwhile simulation, you have good modeling of numerous points in relation to each other in meaningful ways.

Hence, without simulation you're not making anything more game like.

Also, as has been discussed previously in numerous places, a simulation alone does not a game make.