Towards a Trading zone. A semiotic method for cross- disciplinary case study analysis of gamified systems Vincenzo Idone Cassone 1 [0000-0001-5058-302X] 1 Università di Torino, Turin, ITALY idonecassone@gmail.com Abstract. Despite being a well-established concept in HCI, gamification still faces a series of significant research challenges, stemming from the consistent gap between its theoretical understanding and its practical design implementa- tion. The aim of this paper is to propose an analytical framework which can act as a trading zone (Galison 1997), a space for the communication between dif- ferent disciplines and practices involving gamification, starting from case study analysis. The contribution will first introduce the semiotic perspective on arte- facts (objects, processes and technologies), then describe the main analytical tools which are used to define the social values implicit in design choices and the effects and outcomes of human-computer interactions; lastly, it will apply them to the preliminar analysis of the digital distribution platform Steam (by Valve). Keywords: Gamification, Semiotics, Artefacts, Interfaces, Steam, Digital dis- tribution platforms, collect-athon. 1 Introduction In their introduction to the volume “Strengthening Gamification”, Rapp, Hamari and colleagues [1] highlight that gamification, despite being nowadays a well-established concept in HCI, still faces a series of significant research challenges. According to the editors, in order to improve its understanding and its implementation, future research- es need to address the predominant focus on immediate interactions and feedback (to the detriment of long-term effects), the gap between game design concepts and prac- tices and gamification design patterns, and the lack of conceptual tools to explore the unexpected/unwanted results of gamification design. These three challenges could be connected to Seaborn and Fels’ [2] remarks, re- sulting from their systematic survey of gamification theories and applications: even today, the practice of gamification design shows a consistent gap between the theories of gamification and its effects, and the frameworks for the implementation and as- sessment of gamification design. For these reasons, one’s can speculate whether these gaps and challenges could be ideally eased by developing an analytical frameworks which, in Peter Galison's terms [3], could act as a trading zone: an abstract space which make possible the practical communication between a series of interconnected but heterogeneous theories, pat- GamiFIN Conference 2019, Levi, Finland, April 8-10, 2019 70