I like to make new HN accounts every few months to avoid falling into this trap (i.e. feeling an obligation to sink more time into HN or reddit because I'm proud of the amount of points I have).
Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
21–30 of 61 posts
Re: Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
#22I know it's only semantics, but it kind of bugs me how the saying "level up your [regular life skills]" has become so prevalent the past few years. Mainly because it give this illusion that once you've "leveled up" in something, you'll stay at that level forever - like in video games. But the truth is that all skills need to be honed and maintained, or else they will falter. Anyone that's been active in sports, music…
Fun fact, not many games model the loss of skills and XP over time, but RimWorld does. Colonists need to actively use the skill in order to not lose XP and the level they already have.
Re: Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
#23I know it's only semantics, but it kind of bugs me how the saying "level up your [regular life skills]" has become so prevalent the past few years. Mainly because it give this illusion that once you've "leveled up" in something, you'll stay at that level forever - like in video games. But the truth is that all skills need to be honed and maintained, or else they will falter. Anyone that's been active in sports, music…
Depends on the type of problem being solved. You need different kinds of ppl at different phases. Similar to the Explore-Exploit Tradeoff.
Once you find a gold mine in the jungle, you dont need undisciplined creative explorers, you only need people who dig. And dig well. Night and Day. Obediently. With nothing else going on in their head. The non diggers become excess baggage.
Then the system flips once the gold mine runs dry (Exploit phase completed). Its the turn of the army of mindless diggers to turn useless. And now you bring back the explorers to go search the deep dark jungles to find the next gold mine.
Re: Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
#24I think this article is written a bit like that cash register anecdote. There is no conclusion other than examples why you are this way. Why do you think you are like this? Not everyone is - I’m not. But I’m currently working on a rewards gamification system in a surgical-medical training device and we’re discovering in user-testing that while yes, medical students do fixate on optimizing their scores, the system doe…
I spent almost a decade in public sector digitalisation in Denmark as a software developer, enterprise architect and later manager, and you wouldn’t believe the amount of gamification attempts that I have seen fail. I’m not sure where they come from. Ok, maybe I should clarify that. I understand how gamification is a very effective psychological tool to get people to spend a lot of time on things they wouldn’t otherw…
There is a good bit of research in the medical field. Eg here's a meta study
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33128662/
I found this bit of the abstract interesting:
> However, most studies lacked well-defined control groups and did not apply and/or report theory to understand underlying processes.
This paper seems to be a good overview of the theories underlying gamification
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074756322...
> Gamification can illustrate goals and their relevance, nudge users through guided paths, give users immediate feedback, reinforce good performance and simplify content to manageable tasks. Gamification mechanics can allow users to pursue individual goals and choose between different progress paths, while the system can adapt complexity to the user's abilities.
The above section is extremely interesting and matches my experience. Where gamification has really excelled in incentivising me to continue is when I had a path to follow, I can see progress and improvement.
A good example is the Odin project study paths, or Khan Academy courses. At their core they represent a skill tree that you progress through and use.
Giving me badges (github/SO), accomplishments (Steam)for the sake of magic points, are all in my opinion useless non engaging and shallow. In my opinion SO is the biggest culprit in shallow badges.
Re: Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
#25I know it's only semantics, but it kind of bugs me how the saying "level up your [regular life skills]" has become so prevalent the past few years. Mainly because it give this illusion that once you've "leveled up" in something, you'll stay at that level forever - like in video games. But the truth is that all skills need to be honed and maintained, or else they will falter. Anyone that's been active in sports, music…
> Anyone that's been active in sports, music, art, etc. know that maintenance is the key
I agree with you, but would add some nuance. There are things that you'll keep a long time. For instance, sports, if you're a good skier for instance (or any technical sport), you'll always be a good skier (at least compared to a beginner which is years behind you). Same thing for music.
That being said, I feel the people who need gamification are also those who will not really learn any real, long-lasting, skills. Going back to the example of music or sport : you need years of dedicated practice to be more than a beginner. If you don't enjoy the process enough to be motivated for years, I doubt you'll achieve your goal.
Re: Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
#26I like to make new HN accounts every few months to avoid falling into this trap (i.e. feeling an obligation to sink more time into HN or reddit because I'm proud of the amount of points I have).
I don't feel attached to that total score, but it is still gouge how good or badly received a response is and how much engagement it got.
I dislike systems like GitHub where some people obviously just farm stars. Really complex problems and good code has 10-15 stars and very little engagement compared to some js helper function that cuts yours string in half.
Re: Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
#27I know it's only semantics, but it kind of bugs me how the saying "level up your [regular life skills]" has become so prevalent the past few years. Mainly because it give this illusion that once you've "leveled up" in something, you'll stay at that level forever - like in video games. But the truth is that all skills need to be honed and maintained, or else they will falter. Anyone that's been active in sports, music…
I never really noticed it as a key component to their success, but some of my favorite games model the degradation of skill over time. Both CDDA and Rimworld do this, and as a result, you end up with characters that are more nuanced and specialized, but also moldable into the “next right thing,” whatever you think that might be. Maybe it is the thing that makes these games fundamentally compelling over a longer time span
Re: Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
#28I like to make new HN accounts every few months to avoid falling into this trap (i.e. feeling an obligation to sink more time into HN or reddit because I'm proud of the amount of points I have).
I have had a single job interview where I needed to give my HN account status to proceed.
I didn't, you know, do it, but it was asked
Re: Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
#29> Books don't even have a progress bar on them (at least physical ones don't yet) I find the idea that books don't have progress bars to be very amusing. Have the author never looked at a book with a bookmark in it from the side? :)
Clearly someone who hasn’t read a book lately! They are the physical embodiment of progress bars and badges of achievement once you finish them and put them on your shelf.
Re: Gamification, life, and the pursuit of a gold badge (2021)
#30I wouldn't be even slightly surprised if Jokic would have enjoyed reaching global elite in CS:GO or Plat 1 (i guess it's called?) in LoL more than he did winning the NBA finals.
But this might just be a meme take based on how unfazed he was about being the MVP