GCMP: a dissertation systematizes how to build gamified chatbots
Arthur Rocha Temporim de Lacerda defended at UnB’s Applied Computing graduate program a dissertation proposing GCMP — the Gamified Chatbot Management Process — a method to orchestrate the end-to-end development of gamified chatbots.
Brasília, May 28, 2024
Building a chatbot that engages is one thing; building a gamified chatbot that sustains that engagement over time is another problem — and the literature, until then, was scattered across game design, software engineering, and conversational AI. The dissertation defended in May 2024 by Arthur Rocha Temporim de Lacerda at UnB’s PPCA tries to unite those fronts in a replicable method, under the advising of Prof. Dr. Sergio Antônio Andrade de Freitas .
The work introduces the GCMP — Gamified Chatbot Management Process, orchestrating design decisions across the chatbot’s lifecycle: from goal definition (using Goal-Question-Metric) to gamification-element selection, conversational architecture, and continuous engagement measurement. The idea addresses a recurring problem: most gamified projects live off isolated intuitions, without a methodological track that supports team decisions.
By articulating Gamification with AI and NLP , the author delivers not only a method but a reference teams can consult. The work anticipates the debate that gained volume in 2025 on integrating LLMs into conversational processes — GCMP does not depend on any specific language technology, but provides the backbone in which such technologies fit.
The master’s work also led to the paper Gamified Chatbot Management Process: A way to build gamified chatbots, presented at the 10th Intelligent Systems Conference in Amsterdam. That paper follows an earlier publication by Arthur during his undergraduate trajectory, Gamification in education: A methodology to identify student’s profile, published at the IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference.
The defense took place on May 28, 2024 in Brasília. The examining committee was chaired by the advisor, Prof. Dr. Sergio Antônio Andrade de Freitas (UnB), and composed of Prof. Dr. Giovanni Almeida Santos (UnB) and Prof. Dr. Charles Andryê Galvão Madeira (IMD/UFRN). Prof. Dr. Gladston Luiz da Silva, then PPCA program coordinator, also attended the session.
The full text is available at the UnB Institutional Repository.
About CEDIS: The Center for Studies, Development, and Innovation in Software (CEDIS), linked to the University of Brasília, researches and develops innovative software solutions with strong presence in Gamification and AI and NLP .