Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Fog of World

fogofworld.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 160 posts

Re: Fog of World

#51

Post by iamdave »

scott_s wrote: post #48
Androsynth wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It fills up your progress bar as you perform their actions. That is the definition of gamification.

Perhaps it fits yours, but not mine. I consider gamification as adding mechanisms to some other activity (such as participating in a community) to turn it into a game. While the idea was inspired by a game, I don't see any more "gamification" here than I do in keeping track of, say, how many friends one has on Facebook. There's no reward system, no leader boards. It's just a record of travel.

>I consider gamification as adding mechanisms to some other activity (such as participating in a community) to turn it into a game.

Perform action, receive reward, repeat, collect more rewards.

That in a lot of definitions is a game. Fog of World, you perform an action by travelling, unlock badges, repeat, collect more badges. That sounds like the very definition of gamification.

Re: Fog of World

#52

Post by recursive »

Androsynth wrote: post #36
evan_ wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Congratulations, you have turned a peaceful and enjoyable experience into a slot machine. So don't use it?

well obviously. But I want others to see gamification for what it really is. The decision to use gamification in your products is similar to the decision to add fiberglass to cigarettes in the mid 20th century. Executives at tobacco companies didnt think it was bad, they just knew it would increase profits. Obviously this app does not have the same scope as cigarettes. But slowly more and more products/games are movi…

In the case of vanguard, you don't have the option to have the old, ungamified, version. (Can a game not be gamified?) In the case of walking around, you can still do it the same way you always have, if you prefer. What's the problem here?

Re: Fog of World

#53

Post by cdmoyer »

cdash wrote: post #37
Dramatize wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It comes down to risk. I know exactly what I'm getting for $5 worth of McDonalds. $5 for an app feels more risky because I have no idea if there will be any value.

You only know what you are getting from McDonalds because you have bought it before, well what about your first time eating at McDonalds? You certainly did not know what you were getting then.

I suspect that for most people in the US their first meal at McDonalds was purchased by their parents. And they probably know quite a few people in real life that would endorse McDonalds.

Re: Fog of World

#55

Post by [deleted] »

Dramatize wrote: post #29
timsally wrote: post #24

Thank God this costs $5 dollars. I might have even gone as high as $10. To all those that think 5 bucks is too much: for you to actually get any value out of this app you have to use it over a non-significant portion of your life. We're talking on the timescale of years; I find it hilarious that 1 dollar is fine but 5 whole dollars is outrageous.

You and I might be able to justify the price, but 99% of the people I know will not. That means this is not a product I would be able to get most of my social group to use.

[deleted]

Re: Fog of World

#56

Post by vhf »

iamdave wrote: post #50
vhf wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fact, I did came up with this idea one year ago. My idea was to cover the whole world with fog of war, and to make people team up to discover the world. There would be challenges, where you would pay like 0.50$ to participate, and then big reward for the first team achieving the challenge. My idea was a free app with paying challenges. Uncovering 25% of the world ? $1 challenge, 20k$ reward. It's a really easy win…

25% of the world is a lot of travelling and expenses for a $1 payoff.

Reversely, paying 1$ in not much when you'll be travelling 25% of the world.

In my very basic example it was 20 000$ payoff for travelling 25% of the world. Let's make it 1 000 000$. I'm still winning.

Covering 25% of the world's surface is almost impossible. Yet, with my app idea, people would have most probably paid for taking the 1$ challenge (i.e. paying 1$ to participate, winning 1M$ for being the first to achieve the goal).

To expand on my concept, there would have been teams, anyone could create a new team, creating teams would have been free, people could have joined as many team as they wanted.

It's easy to go viral on these stuff. Every participant would probably call their friend oversea to tell them to join their team on this particular challenge, i.e. paying 1$ with the 1M$ reward in sight. The reward would be splitted between participants of the winning team (pro rata the surface covered).

Re: Fog of World

#57

Post by zachalexander »

igorgue wrote: post #34
Dramatize wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You and I might be able to justify the price, but 99% of the people I know will not. That means this is not a product I would be able to get most of my social group to use.

You mean people who travel around the world can't spend 5 bucks on an iPhone app, makes sense :-)

It makes perfect sense.

Probably my most well-traveled friend is far from well-off. She just prioritizes travel over many other things in her life, like $5 mobile apps that don't solve any specific problem.

Re: Fog of World

#58

Post by Androsynth »

recursive wrote: post #52
Androsynth wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well obviously. But I want others to see gamification for what it really is. The decision to use gamification in your products is similar to the decision to add fiberglass to cigarettes in the mid 20th century. Executives at tobacco companies didnt think it was bad, they just knew it would increase profits. Obviously this app does not have the same scope as cigarettes. But slowly more and more products/games are movi…

In the case of vanguard, you don't have the option to have the old, ungamified, version. (Can a game not be gamified?) In the case of walking around, you can still do it the same way you always have, if you prefer. What's the problem here?

A game can be fun; it can be deep and complex...or it can be like farmville. The problem is that companies are moving in droves towards Farmville type products because addiction is more profitable. I would like this community, as the vanguard of tech development, to see that there is a problem with this.

Re: Fog of World

#59

Post by cdash »

cdmoyer wrote: post #53
cdash wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only know what you are getting from McDonalds because you have bought it before, well what about your first time eating at McDonalds? You certainly did not know what you were getting then.

I suspect that for most people in the US their first meal at McDonalds was purchased by their parents. And they probably know quite a few people in real life that would endorse McDonalds.

That is a pretty much irrelevant point though, use any other example of buying a meal from somewhere that is not as common as McDonalds. On the point of endorsing, people can endorse an app as well so I am still not sure how that applies.

Re: Fog of World

#60

Post by olefoo »

andrewflnr wrote: post #41
igorgue wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean people who travel around the world can't spend 5 bucks on an iPhone app, makes sense :-)

What he means is that most people, including those in his social circle, are irrational about paying for apps, and so won't use it.

Are they being irrational?

Most apps are opened once, twice at most. A small percentage of apps downloaded are used at all after the first day on the user's device. A very few make it into daily use; and most of those are on the device the day it's purchased.

This is because most apps are not compelling experiences.

If you factor in the risk that this app, like most of the ones they have seen so far; will not be in their life for more than 10 minutes... I would say they are being rational in their pricing bias.

There are two ways around this. You can communicate your value ahead of time to your potential customers, which Fog Of World does fairly well. Or you can build a business model that has usage based pricing through in-app purchases, so that people who are regular users are paying their way.

Post reply on HN