trendpreneur

A quick quote from Twitter’s Biz that I just saw (paraphrased): “Roller-coaster is a good description of a start-up. Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes you want to throw up.” (Tweeted by Mark, and definitely resonated!)

Now that obligatory startup bit is over, I’d like to talk about running.

This picture (by mrhayata) is sadly not me, but it captures how running makes me feel. I started with a beginners’ group about three months ago (I always seem to get on better with hard stuff if I join groups) and after wheezing my way to a 30 second trot in week one, I am now entering my first 5K run in, ooh, about two weeks’ time.

I’m pretty scared, but also excited. Running is great, for me – at this stage, there’s measurable progress each and every time I run. I manage things now I don’t think I could ever have done. I get off the treadmill or return home and suddenly think wow, I ran for twenty-five minutes straight or wow, that was Arthur’s Seat or other such things. Sure, by my marathon-running flatmate’s standards, I’m barely even walking, but it’s still — shiny numbers going up, progress, and achievement. Microrewards are definitely how I motivate, and why I run.

Designers in the games industry have long since known the value of microrewards — the entire massively multiplayer genre is built around the concept. The lowdown: keep your users striving towards the next goal, something that’s achievable and desirable but not too easy. If you follow the MMO approach, make sure there’s always a carrot around the next bend; always something to strive towards, and the illusion of freedom as to which goals you pursue.

Xbox Live gamerscores are a great example of how an achievement system can be built in as a fundamental part of a community, as well as adding longevity to products; gamers get points for various accomplishments within a game, which can be as simple as completing a level or as hard as getting a perfect score without dying. Encouraging gamers to have more points than their friends leads people to seek out easy achievements to pad their scores as well as hard achievements to show off. A title that might have been played through once suddenly gets played through three times just to get more points.

On the other hand, after a certain point, a user’s gamerscore becomes fairly meaningless. There’s nothing you can do with the points, and once your score is large enough to show you’re a hardcore gamer, there’s little motivation to squeezing every last point out of your games (unless you’re the completist type). So, a great start but lacking some longevity.
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