It’s Friday, which means most of us are thinking about the weekend (or if you are a workaholic like we are, the plan for your next week). If you weren’t able to keep track of all the gamification news this week, here are our top stories.

The ‘Gamification’ of Personal Finance U.S. News 7/16/2012 Only a week after we posted about the need for gamification in personal finance, this week has had a rush of stories about just that. Interested to know what companies are trying to make finance more fun and engaging? This article talks about quite a few including payoff.com, Credit Cardio and our Seattle neighbors Bobber Interactive. Gamification seems like a great way to incentivize and educate people on long term financial goals.

Gamification Comes of Age Forbes 7/16/2012 It’s hard to argue that gamification isn’t here to stay when Forbes provides such a long list of companies successfully using game mechanics to increase loyalty and engagement. For the unconvinced reader, this is a comprehensive look at gamification, why it works and why it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Gamification The Next Generation: Introduce, Engage, Retain Business2Community 7/15/2012 We have to give Andrzej Marczewski some serious credit, he really gets gamification. Here, he focuses on the three stages of gamification, introduction, engagement and retention. While a lot of gamification solutions are solving the first two, due to the newness of many solutions, the focus hasn’t shifted to retention. Citing both BigDoor and Pug Pharm as companies who get this stage of gamification, he discusses the need for strong a strong community to retain users.

How far will you go for Fantastic Delites? – Delite-o-matic Fantastic Delites 7/5/2012 We couldn’t resist posting this awesome video done by Fantastic Delites. By turning their vending machine into a game, the company brought a ton of fun and an interesting look at what people will do for a snack!