Must Play

Problem With Leaderboards SOLVED
Yesterday in one of the best #gamification posts I've read by @gamificationco they pointed out the problem with leaderboard is done WRONG they kill incentive.

I know all about having incentive killed. Scoop.it started with a single leaderboard. Each day I would STRUGGLE to get 10 or 20 views as the pro curators at the top of the stack like Robin Good or Anna-Cristina Pratas racked up hundreds in the same time. OUCH.

One-Day Scoop.it flipped a switch and their leaderboard changed. Instead of seeing the top of the stack and feeling the opposite of incentive. Their new board floated my account in the middle of curators in the same horse race I was in.

Like many people I'm one of those horses that runs faster to catch horses with a lead. The key is making daily progress. I worked on "Winning The Day" or achieving the most views of any curator I could see.

Winning the day taught me what worked, provided a sense of accomplishment and helped me learn in a sequence that wasn't overwhelming. Reminds me of riding a bicycle across America.

In the summer of 2010 I rode a bicycle across America. If I thought of riding 3,300 miles in rain, heat and pain never would have left home. When I broke the BIG mission into smaller 50 and 60 mile rides over 60 days the same goal FELT achievable.

Remember to FLOAT your leaderboard the way Scoop. It’s brilliant creators learned to do and you will keep engagement HIGH and help your players achieve the most important goal for any game designer - to keep playing. The ultimate goal of any GREAT game is...more game pay :).

There's a lot of misinformation on how gamification is supposed to work and I'm going to dispel some of those ideas.