Who's a good little developer
Nov. 8th, 2011 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
davidnAll right, it's time to stop all of this now.
I set up an account on Project Wonderful (thanks once again to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kjorteo for reminding me of its existence) and am now waiting to see if anyone wants to bid on my high-traffic but low-geographic coverage transit tracker site. So far it's been very pleasant to navigate its friendly, spacious interface with the Silk Icon set that everybody in the entire world now uses.
With the exception of this - every time you do anything at all new on the site, such as submit an advert space for bidding, give yourself a publically visible name or upload an avatar, it sends you one of these patronizing little emails awarding you for your so-called achievement. Thankfully you can turn them off, but they're still around on your profile and even just the idea that they're there at all makes the whole experience feel patently idiotic. Game-like features have been creeping into things that aren't games for some time, and when they're done in the right way they can make them far more compelling - there's a site where you can log your household tasks and level up an imaginary character using the experience gained, for example - but here I have the distinct feeling that if the technology had been available, the team behind this site would have periodically emailed you a pat on the head and a biscuit.
I was absolutely delighted at the end of last week when I got some instant feedback on specimens in racks in my lab management system working - it was strangely addictive being able to type in a barcode, watch it spin for a bit and then pop up an icon showing whether it existed, was missing, due for special handling, or whatever status it had. Particularly if you submitted a whole lot at once and could then watch the updates cascade down the screen. But I didn't set up a system of collectible rewards like "Congratulations, you've stored your first test tube rack!" or "You've processed 1000 specimens in a row with no bad barcodes!", because that would have been stupid. So stop it. (I'll give 100exp to every site that does.)
I set up an account on Project Wonderful (thanks once again to
kjorteo for reminding me of its existence) and am now waiting to see if anyone wants to bid on my high-traffic but low-geographic coverage transit tracker site. So far it's been very pleasant to navigate its friendly, spacious interface with the Silk Icon set that everybody in the entire world now uses.With the exception of this - every time you do anything at all new on the site, such as submit an advert space for bidding, give yourself a publically visible name or upload an avatar, it sends you one of these patronizing little emails awarding you for your so-called achievement. Thankfully you can turn them off, but they're still around on your profile and even just the idea that they're there at all makes the whole experience feel patently idiotic. Game-like features have been creeping into things that aren't games for some time, and when they're done in the right way they can make them far more compelling - there's a site where you can log your household tasks and level up an imaginary character using the experience gained, for example - but here I have the distinct feeling that if the technology had been available, the team behind this site would have periodically emailed you a pat on the head and a biscuit.
I was absolutely delighted at the end of last week when I got some instant feedback on specimens in racks in my lab management system working - it was strangely addictive being able to type in a barcode, watch it spin for a bit and then pop up an icon showing whether it existed, was missing, due for special handling, or whatever status it had. Particularly if you submitted a whole lot at once and could then watch the updates cascade down the screen. But I didn't set up a system of collectible rewards like "Congratulations, you've stored your first test tube rack!" or "You've processed 1000 specimens in a row with no bad barcodes!", because that would have been stupid. So stop it. (I'll give 100exp to every site that does.)
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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Date: 2011-11-09 03:19 am (UTC)[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/My6Gr.png[/IMG]
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Date: 2011-11-09 03:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-09 03:28 am (UTC)(Going down the page - shirt... shirt... shirt... Super Mario in a raccoon-suit! I can't tell you how pleased I am with the prominent ZZT mention on your profile :) )
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Date: 2011-11-09 04:01 am (UTC)The registration system lets you skip the last steps for some reason which set up your profile so it's possible to register and not have a name, although I'm pretty sure trying to do anything on the site will tell you to fill out your name and other things first.
I happen to dress casual and like a month after I started working they decided to take my picture and Satya's for the about us page! At least it was an appropriate shirt for me to be wearing that day.
Even more fun was the whiteboard in the back which is too low-res to read. We got it that same day and made a fake flowchart for me to be presenting featuring such things as "Positronic Brain" "Uranium? Y/N" and "Flux Capacitor".
Also if you get all the milestones on your account, then go to the about us page and mouseover the photos they changed to photoshopped images! That was a fun egg to program.
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Date: 2011-11-09 01:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-09 02:11 pm (UTC)But Be Polite, Be Efficient, Have a Plan, and some others are all TF2 references. http://wiki.teamfortress.com/wiki/Sniper_achievements
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Date: 2011-11-09 08:50 am (UTC)The first award that someone should get is 'You have got an award'. I am sure someone has done that before though.
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Date: 2011-11-09 04:41 pm (UTC)111111 apparently doesn't exist, although that does raise the question of why a date identifier was found for it (the bottom right number). Perhaps I should keep that quiet.
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Date: 2011-11-09 06:41 pm (UTC)Well I was going to mentioned about the next award could be about winning 2 awards, then 3....etc... Computer crash
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Date: 2011-11-11 12:57 pm (UTC)It's different, but just as insufferable. Instead of being smiley-faces and pat-on-the-back patronising it tries to be hip with the gamers with words like "sweet", "fragging" and "pwnage" despite it really doing very little but attempt to elicit thousands of dollars' worth of spending. I mean, that is the intent of loyalty programs, but it still seems ridiculous in this case.
And the use of "carrots" - are they secretly laughing at the customer with that?
And as far as I know, Game Informer is not an Australian magazine.
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Date: 2011-11-11 03:40 pm (UTC)There really is very little more embarrassing than a 40-year-old trying to sound like a 12-year-old, or someone generally trying to sound... more wild and crazy than they actually are. As you can imagine, I had great problems when coming up with anything to actually encourage people to download Crystal Towers 2, beyond "Well, I suppose it's a platform game."