I'd seen it already from my Google vanity search,
but it doesn't always pick up articles so it was worth telling me about it.
but it doesn't always pick up articles so it was worth telling me about it.
What happens with my player types is that designers do apply them,
but in the wrong way. They say "we need to encourage socialisers!" and then
give them extra points for socialising - an achievement reward of not
interest to socialisers... It's like they understand the words but not
what the words combine to say!
How true. At Club Pony Pals we've found that giving achievement awards for socializing does not work.
Kids enter text about "I'm not allowed to have online friends" all the time. Yet unless we get our members to reach out to others on the site, they don't stick around.
Quests provided one answer to this problem. We start with simple quests. "Pick two apples and drop them off in the barn." But the complexity quickly grows, with entire stories being played as members do errands, shop and drop off items.
About a dozen quests in, a member has to deliver something they can only get as a gift. There is a cheat to avoid having to ASK for the item, but the member must have create a friend relationship in the game to use it.
A dozen quests later, in the member has to upgrade to an account that pays board to to to a part of the game and complete a quest.
Finally, at about the 100th quest, the member is forced to contact a game character to continue.
Forced socializing on a small scale. That seems to be working, members who make that request discover the whole moderated social network we have set up and many start posting messages.
Richard wrote back
ReplyDeleteHey, thanks!
Glad to see you have a system in place to encourage people to socialise by giving them the kind of rewards socialisers like - contact with other people. If only a few more other designers thought it through, too...
Richard