Game g = new Game();

This is the perfect game for you: Achievement unlocked

As auntie pixelante puts it:

achievement unlocked is a game the goal of which is just the simple accumulation of these arbitrary goals. there are a hundred. you’ll have unlocked at least two before you even start the game, at which point you’ll unlock four more: one for having started the game, one for having reached the game’s first (and only) screen, one for not having moved yet, and one for having unlocked at least one achievement.

…

all the things that satisfy the compulsive behavior publishers assume we have.

Now, as I’m in the process of implementing a MMO-light’ish platform, the topic of having achievements has been raised a couple of times in various discussions between the designer and me already… and I’m kind of undecided whether they should and would play an important role in the platform, or not.

Thinking about it, I observe how strangely fulfilling it seems to be to  just count and compare the numbers of “friends” or “buddies” in Facebook, Xing or other similar platforms, at least for some people…

Is this the true meaning of virtual life – to be friends with as many people as possible (especially if it’s as easy as inviting somebody as friend with a click of the mouse, and no obligation to do anything else afterwards – EVER)?

OK, so after more and more of my Google searches turned up possible answers from Experts Exchange, I signed up for the free 7 day-trial, and extended it afterwards with the 1 month subscription plan.

This is a paid service, where premium members can post their questions (grouped into dozens of dozens of categories or “zones”), and experts on the related topic try to answer them. A new question opens a thread were question author and experts can post comments, possible solutions, clarifations etc., until the question author is happy and awards points for the answers.

Questions and answers relevant to others can be moved into the “knowledgebase”.

So far, my results are mixed – I received  helpful response on one question about how to implement a profanity filter very quickly, but none on another question dealing with survey tools like LimeSurvey.

Profanity filters suck.

They are more likely to annoy the normal users with false posivites hits (or should we say false positive****s) than to effectively keep the others from spreading their pubertal treasury of words.

Still, sometimes you need to be able to provide an environment that is as safe as possible.

Which is why I started working on a profanity filter lately.

Read more…

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