I'll admit up front, I'm chasing the dev.to 16-week streak posting badge and am uncertain whether I'll have an article ready this week. This psychological pull is strong enough, that I feel compelled to follow it. This post potentially fills in a blank spot in my schedule.
It feels like everything is being gamified and nobody is paying attention to whether there is value behind it. Recently I started using an online todo list, and it gives me points for completing todo items. I had to turn off multiple notices to get it to be quiet. Now I have dev.to badges.
The biggest problem with chasing internet points is that it erodes intrinsic motivation. This has come up a lot in video game discussions. I find games to be intrinsically rewarding -- I feel happy when I complete a hard level of the game. I don't feel happy because I've received a trophy. I've turn all trophy notices off when I can.
So, what effect do the badges on dev.to, and other platforms have. I think they're an interesting way to encourage new people to write, but I feel a bit of pressure by them. As a regular author am I expected to have a lot of badges? Does it impact my legitimacy on this platform?
Consider that I actually feel pressure now to hit that 16-week badge. The 8-week badge was kind of like, ah, "cool", that's nice. But 16-weeks is a hefty badge to obtain. I don't think I'll feel rewarded. I think only that I'd feel defeated if I don't achieve it now. But what if there's a 32-week back after it?!
What do you think about gamification? What are your own personal experiences?
Latest comments (50)
I think these internet points will be part of the new internet ecosystem. Instead of points, they could turn into tokens that you can exchange for real money. Steem token is an example of this, but so is BAT token.
Badges?
This has been a long discussed subject, even i for one, turn off all acheivements/badges and other progression rewarders to make us stay in the game. To compound this some folks share their platinum trophies online , some games just give out trophies for Grind.
I mean there are some good trophies for scoping out really good hidden stuff. But most of it is just plain fillers, there are trophies for doing mundane things which you will eventually do , like getting on a horse for example.
This has been the same with gamification of all internet, stackoverflow is a classic example ., many moderators i used to love left because of how caustic it has become.
Some of my colleagues tried introducing Gamification to an Insurance providers customer facing portal . The hilarity that ensued when a user got a badge "RoadRash" when they claimed a vehicle insurance ! Needless to say it was pulled down very quickly after beta.
The day github introduces gamification is when i will quit and go to become a scuba instructor or something !
Good badges: If a badge represents a certain skill and I feel more competent by mastering this skill, thus receiving the badge.
Bad badges: If a badge rarely represents a certain skill but just extraordinary work to put in.
Totally subjective view, of course.
I spent 6 years with 1 point on stackoverflow. For the life of me, I couldn't get beyond it and couldn't get any good value out of stackoverflow because I didn't have the points to do anything.
Personally, I don't have time for playing those kinds of games. I do like participating in communities and believe that I add value but I think gamification can go too far and restrict a lot of value from the community.
No. I don't have enough knowledge to post so much. I just post if I think I have something to offer. Usually after I do something and thing, ok, now THAT is worth someone reading about.
I hate point-oriented systems. Nothing like some point-whore resurrecting a years-dead thread just to post a comment with less substance than "I (dis)agree". It's like, "really? I got an email notification for activity on a two years' dead post and all you had to contribute was that???"
I was once a game designer, so I have thought about gamification some. I feel that regardless of everything said and any good/bad ideas, the focus should be on what @ben and the rest of the community want to emulate. In other words, do you want to force collaboration and discussion, are you ok to sacrifice quantity for it happening naturally?
Games typically use mechanics to create feedback loops, which are typically rewards. Same deal as a mouse solving the maze to get the cheese.
I do think rewards are good. They just need to feel worth it, and the player needs to have there time respected.
I'm definitely struggling with the thought of letting go of daily involvement of sites like Khanacademy, Duolingo, FreeCodeCamp, and TypingClub because of the fear of losing "internet points".
For Khanacademy and FreeCodeCamp, they have a grid with colored squares like GitHub to display how often a user goes on the site, so skipping a few days doesn't seem like a big deal to me. But for something like Duolingo, it only keeps up with a daily streak count which makes it REALLY intimidating to skip 1 day. When I came home from my job on a Friday I was so exhausted I stayed off the computer for the rest of the day, completely forgetting about my daily streak on Duolingo. I was mortified the next day when I realized I completely forgot to log in the day before.
Writing this out, it all seems a bit ridiculous, doesn't it? I'm on these sites to learn new subjects or a new language. No one is going to care how many days in a row I studied x or y.
It's a problem that gamification has become this successful. I wonder what the psychology of it is, does it actually feed on the same neurons involved in addiction?
One possible good use of badges/cheevos/etc is to be a guide. If you're starting as a blank slate and wondering what do I do here?, having a set of neatly defined goals can give that void some structure.
That being said, the achievements on a platform often reflect the goals of the platform. If you get a badge for having a certain number of followers or logging on a certain number of days in a row, that shows what the platform is trying to guide you to do. It's reflective in many ways of the site's culture if, say, you get a gold star for having a certain number of followers vs getting a gold star for posting the best comment of the week.