Recently I was reading how Russian player Хируко had become the first player to achieve all the available achievements in World Of Warcraft, this is no mean feat as there are around 22,000 of them. Second Life doesn’t have achievements and has met resistance at the idea, indeed when they were introduced to the Second Life Forums there were achievements of a sort in terms of rankings and this met with resistance. Many people felt We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!
However those rankings have remained, I wanted an opt out, but they have remained and they do no real harm. The problem for an achievement system for Second Life as a whole is that Second Life is not a game, there are games within Second Life but it’s an open ended virtual world and many people really do not want badges.
However there are places where they would be useful and I’d like to see tools available for sim owners to build achievement systems for their own sims, this would be especially useful for roleplay sims.
There is also room for an overall achievement system for Second Life, which could be built in conjunction with Second Life business owners and Linden Lab. This could start at a very basic level, which would be appealing to new residents. For example earning an achievement for your first teleport, but it could be built upon.
Visit all the sims at Fantasy Faire and earn an achievement, visit the skin, hair and shoe fairs, earn an achievement. Visit x amount of locations on the destination guide, earn an achievement, visit the Linden Village, The Governor’s mansion and take a balloon ride, earn an achievement, yadda yadda yadda.
This isn’t an easy system to implement because of the dynamic nature of Second Life but it could be done.
This came more to my attention when I watched SkyspinnerSoulstar’s youTube video on the new user experience.
I’m watching this and wondering what can be done to help these new visitors get started and a touch of gamification would help greatly here. Help new users to get around and give them goals to help them achieve that and for following those goals, they could earn achievements.
Far too many new users are lost before they have found their feet, many need some guidance and goals help there.
Whereas many of us don’t want those stinkin’ badges, there is potential for the concept of stinkin’ badges to help people find Second Life a more compelling experience, the true issue is making it a matter of choice, it’s all about options.
I’m all for this.
Pep (Assuming the first compulsory badge is for an acceptable level of English literacy.)