Let’s go back a few years and dig up those extremely fond memories of your old arcade games and console games from the late 80′s.
Remember the thrill and excitement of beating them? Remember how you’d make sure that all your friends in middle school knew about it the next day?
I do.
But one of the things that I would naturally ask myself right after is “What’s next?” and “What now?”
This issue is still very much an issue in the online space, especially with social networks that leverage “competition” as one of their sources of interest (read more about my thoughts about competition here and here).
For example, IntenseDebate has a numerical system based on participation. I was told a little while back that I’m one of the top users in the world for their system. Right now, I’m hanging out at 110 points and I’ve been there for months.
At my level, what’s the point? What’s the goal? I had fabricated my own little competition to see how fast I could break 100 points but that time has come and gone. I’ve beat that game already and I’m looking for the next challenge.
Plurk is another good example: Once you get 100 Karma, what now…? The only visible “reward” is that your Karma doesn’t go down once you get 100… but that’s it. The point system is now pointless, sotospeak. They need to do something about that.
Community Managers must continually be developing strategies both short-term and long-term for their users in terms of competition, especially if it’s a critical part of the engagement process and interest.
Make sure that your users are constantly reaching to beat the game but when they get there, reward them appropriately. In addition, have another contest or goal for them ready to go, or they’ll find somewhere else to hang out.
So you have been hanging out 110 points, I have been hanging out at 50, atleast that makes two of us. Any one else want to join the stale points club…..?
seriously… i know i've talked with one of their engineers… and they are thinkinga bout it…
This runs parallel to the point I was trying to make with this post I wrote for Church Crunch a while back.
that it does… that it does… brilliant!
I've been at a steady amount of points on here for a while, but it is something that I've thought about before, more than once. I want my posts on intense debate to "count," but really when we think about it they aren't counting for anything. I signed up with last FM (a music site that displays everything you play through itunes or windows media player) and that is basically what the site is for. Why do I find myself checking it so many times during the week? Because I want to see how many songs Ive played or how many times i've listened to a band.
Is this even important? It really isn't, but it's obsessive for me for some reason. I'm not sure why.
Here is another example. Relating to what you were saying with video games. You might remember the game a few years back called Grand Theft Auto – Vice City The thing about that game is that it also has a lot to do with stats, points, etc. There is a whole menu on that game just to record your stats from how many miles you have driven, to how many crimes you have committed, to how many bullets you have fired…you get the pictures.
Well every time my brother played the game he just walked around blowing stuff up and killing people. He never had any desire to beat the game by completing the goals or missions. This made me mad because it seemed like to me he was wasting his time. To him it was still "the game".
Great topic Jon. Thanks for bringing this up!
What do y'all think?
I know my ID number has moved in awhile, but it took a lot of comments to get there. And now I actually comment on a lot of non-id blogs…*gasp*…
i don't use my profile. i was thinking, i'm not getting any backlinks. i don't care about points then. LOL!
Hehehe I think though that the point system is easily expanded or updated once its in place. Oh and BTW… ALex the kid… best game ever on SEGA.
but really? As long as your not 0 who cares right?
if you CAN beat it… shoot. took me forever…
one game we'll never beat… continually updating our goal of how many tweets on twitter!
… oh yeah.