A Blogplug for a Pal · 4:44pm Aug 13th, 2014
Hi guys. Just checking in real quick to mention that some folks whom I happen to know are engaged in a decently cool project. I know I don't do this sort of blog a lot, so feel free to ignore this message, if it so please you. It's just something I think might feasibly be worth a couple minutes of your attention.
Disclaimer here. While I'm a site mod and the stuff presented below looks pretty nice, none of the below is officially endorsed or supported by Fimfiction.net. It's a personal project by some buddies, not plans for site mechanics/features. So, uh... just keep that in mind while reading. Don't want anybody to get the wrong impression here.
Anyhow, so the project at large is a deal called The Fimfiction Achievement Brigade. Which essentially takes the concept of Xbox Live/Steam Achievements and provides a Fimfiction analogue for people who like that sort of thing. Achievements for stuff like writing a Rarity story, having a story with more favorites than likes, and getting your first 502 error. There's a list of all the achievements they've got currently on this page here, with more being added periodically. They come complete with (beautifully) artistic buttons to add to your userpage when you feel you've earned them.
While I'm not personally a big fan of achievements, I know there's a crowd out there that is. Mostly I think the coolest thing here is the artwork for the achievements. It's very good. Seriously, even if you're not interested in the business of achievements, check out the achievement list. This art's bananas.
The style'll probably look familiar to you if you've ever played The World Ends With You. Which is an amazing game that you should check out also, for anyone who hasn't. For anyone who has played TWEWY, I'm decently sure you'll agree with me in being entirely okay with this artistic direction.
So, yeah. Check them out. 'Scool.
Have a nice day, guys.
This is propably the only thing that would get me writing....
That art really is quite great.
I'm confused, isn't that normal?
I read the title as "A buttplug for a pal".
... Good to know that you'll get your friends in the end, when it calls for it.
2367134 Actually, the theory is as such: You can "Like" a story, without it being a favorite of yours.
That said, let me make this point: For chapter-stories some have yet to pass their verdict upon, they favorite the story, and select the option to send notification-based updates when a new chapter comes out. Because of this, there end up being more favorites than likes.
It's VERY uncommon for a story to have more favorites than likes, and have it be a one-shot, though.
oh god no now I'm going back to listen to all of the soundtrack
again
As much as I'm an old fuddy-duddy, could the badges be a little more intuitive as to what they're achievements for? Such as three diamonds inside a heart for "Write a Rarity Shipfic", or a circle with a slash that has diamonds on one side of the slash and balloons on the other for "Write a RarPie ship" or a faceshot of a character with X's in the eyes for "Killed off a main character in a story" or five tombstones for "Wrote a Twilight outlives all her friends story"
(Yes, Obs, I know you're not the artist. I'm just making an observation)
I think I may stick some of these to my profile because of how great the art looks.
And then they eventually add achievements like "Write 1,000,000 words across all stories on your account" or "Write 500 blogposts" or "Comment on 2,000 stories not written by yourself" or "Write 5 stories that have appeared in the Featured Box". And just watch the shitposting go through the roof. Yeah, we don't really need to incentivize that sort of behavior anymore than it already is, thx.
2367205
Yeah, I can see that as an issue, where achievements can accidentally incentivize bad behaviors. Though to be honest, I think unless there's a radical adoption/officiation of Achievements, the primary purpose they're likely to serve is giving people a pat on the back for stuff they've already done/been doing. They're not really self-valuable or prestigious enough to be sought out for their own sake.
this is so not a good idea
More people need to play TWEWY, it's such a damn amazing game.
2367144
That is not what favorites here are. They are bookmarks, full stop. I don't see why this is still an issue for some poeple… it's sad the old favorites system was removed, but that's what happened—it was removed.
2367205
I dunno, isn't that basically what NANOWRIMO and the like encourage? You as a reader may find it distastefull, but I will always ALWAYS encourage poeple to write all the garbage they want, because it's better for them than doing nothing.
There's a story common in the artistic fields about two classes taking pottery lessons. One was told that they would be graded by the number of pots they produced, the other by the quality of their finest pot. Simple enough, but in the end, the group graded by quantity learned more and had better pots than those who spent all their time trying to make just one.
It may be true, it may just be a story—it may not entirely apply, here. Art has a much bigger problem with novices overworking pieces until they're actually making them worse, so who can say? Still, even in writing, the most important thing isn't to plan or brainstorm or ensure that you are good enough before you type that first word on a blank page, the most important thing is to write.
I'd go for buttons about my dechievments. Like:
- Wrote a 2nd-person HiE story
- Wrote a story where an OC has sex with one of the Mane 6
- Wrote a black & red alicorn story
- Wrote an all-OC story
- Wrote a Molestia story
- Tormented Fluttershy
- Got 3 strikes from EQD on a story
- Pulled Obselescence's beard
etc.
You can tell us how you use favorites, but you can't tell us how we use favorites.
2367429
True, and I can point out when people make achievement for something that is commonplace thanks to the discrepancy
See, now, the problem I have with those (and yes, I realize that some are real) is that they're a bit too specific, which is ironic because video game achievements usually have the opposite problem… video games are a different animal, though. In spite of what I said below, I don't think it would be a good thing to see the same three stories on dozens of accounts.
This seems like a cute little thing people can do to pace themselves and generally have fun with, but I really don't think this sort of thing would work if implemented site-wide. It'd be too easy to abuse with the achievements it seems to be going for. What's stopping me from favoriting 100 random stories for the sake of a silly badge? What's stopping me from toggling the M-stories lock on and off? Just opening a story to make it look like I read it without actually doing so? How are the less statistically definable ones capable of being properly and reliably detected?
Now take for example "write a story with Rainbow Dash in it."
-Do you mean use the character tag? I'll just take make a story with that tag and delete it.
-Do you mean the story has to use her name? But what if her name only appears once in passing? She isn't really in the story then, is she?
-Does it require both? But what if my story uses the Mane Six tag instead? Or if she only serves a minor role compared to the protagonist, not enough to get her own tag, but is still an important character worth mentioning? What if her character is a secret so I decide to use the "Other" tag instead?
The coding required to implement such a reliable system would undoubtedly cause human suffering on the poor soul writing it, not to mention I believe this gives out the wrong incentives to write in the first place, threatening to turn everything into a trivial competition. Again, it's a nice thing for one to reward themselves with (people kinda do that already anyways), but I really can't see this working on a larger scale, nor do I personally want it to. With a such an intrusive system, you'd need just about everyone's opinions on the matter, anyways. I'd rather take articulate responses instead of plain votes.
I do like the art though, even if there's too many panties for my taste.
See, the problem with me is that the only one of those I'm really missing is Join the Herd, and that will be rectified once the story I'm working on is done.
I do like the achievement icons, though.
2367251
Categorically disagree. Sure, there will be some people who don't care at all, and some people will be too unmotivated to pursue them. But filling up bars speaks to very low-level human impulses. Your typical MMORPG and/or freemium game have been exploiting this weakness in the human condition for decades. The "killing boars" joke from the South Park WoW episode is based on a nugget of truth; if it makes the bar go up, people will adopt a "by any means necessary" attitude. So if there's achievements for # of watchers or for getting into the Featured Box, you can bet your ass people will "grind" feature-box-bait as the easiest ways to fill those bars. Heck, even without an achievement, plenty of people are obsessed enough with their # of watchers. Slapping an achievement on top of it makes a bad problem worse.
Or consider 2367429 's list. I know that he was just making a funny, but if "joke achievements" actually get made, they absolutely incentivize. Two years from now, you'll see another Luna-damn story about Molestia and think to yourself "another newbie grinding for his Molestia cheevo." Because that author didn't do it to entertain readers, nor to practice their craft, nor to create art. They just wanted to fill that damn bar.
Now of course, you can flip the issue on its head, and incentivize good behavior. "Credited as an editor/prereader in the description of twenty stories." Or how about "wrote 10 blogposts reviewing/promoting stories by other authors"? Hell, what about "after seeking author approval, posted constructive criticism on 10 stories"?
I suppose my point is less "achievements are categorically evil" and more "achievements are surprisingly potent motivators and therefore we should carefully consider the impact of each individual one."
2367529 exactly this. You might have saved me a blog post.
2367529
No, I'm trying to get my "one evil deed every day for a year" button. Last year I missed Christmas. Too hung over.
2367549
I am now envisioning the Advent Calendar of Evil Deeds. "Ooo! A pinky-sized mouse trap!"
2367529
None of the achievements will have anything to do with getting likes, followers, or getting into the featured box. Partly for the reasons you said, but for plenty of other reasons as well. In fact I removed one achievement from the list of already completed ones because it had to do with likes and favourites. Not sure how that one slipped by me, but mistakes happen and its been corrected.
The whole idea of the achievement system is to reward and encourage. Right now the list is small and limited but we're working on coming up with more that will hopefully help us achieve that ideal.
You definitely have some good ideas yourself and while I wouldn't know how to create an automated system for them I would love to add your suggestions to our list. And I would also greatly appreciate you continuing to come up with ideas, as you seem to have a clear understanding of the importance of having well thought out achievements.
There is no guarantee such a system will be put in place, but everyone involved has worked hard enough that it warrants us at least trying our best and seeing it through to the end. What ever that end might be.
The designs are great, and they look like they'll make great bragging rights for anyone who cares, but I'm glad they're not going to be an official aspect of the site. That sort of thing just doesn't feel right on a visceral level. I can't explain why, but it doesn't sit right with me.
That being said, if I die and end up playing the Reapers' Game, will these give me magic horse Psyches?
2367368
This has been bugging me all afternoon, but I finally figured out what I feel the difference is: accomplishment vs. reward. For NaNoWriMo, you're doing it for your own sense of personal accomplishment. Maybe someone will come up to you and be all "Hey! Great job on the NaNoWriMo entry!" but for the most part, it's just between you and those 50,000 words. Even for a visible reward token—such as the fact that 2367559 is encouraging users to manually place the badges on your userpage, or that Twilight's Library has a badge that you can add to your approved story—it's still a reflexive action. I already did a thing and I'm just bragging about it. That's cool. I'm down with that.
When you automate that shit is when you start venturing into Skinner Box territory. It's no longer about me doing X, and then later I decorate my userpage based on the honor system. Suddenly, I'm pushing the buttons in a very specific way, primarily for the psychological satisfaction of the Fimfiction servers presenting me with my newest cheevo. I know that that might sound like I'm splitting hairs, but I feel like there's a pretty key psychological factor in play there. If we nix the idea of involving Knighty to automate the system (which itself is a moonshot, but that's beyond the scope of this
threadblogpost) and instead if these are just very pretty userpage decorations bound by the honor system, already the idea sounds more palatable to me. If there's an automated achievement that pops once you post 20,000 comments, you can rest assured that some people will shitpost in order to cheat the system. If that very same achievement exists but is completely manual and bound by the honor system, suddenly that feels like a lot of effort just to "earn the right" to post a jpeg. Does it cheapen the perceived value of the achievements? Yes, somewhat, but in some sense that's a good thing. If it's not about getting the achievement, people can focus on the original intent: making accomplishments.2367697
So you think we should just forget about going to Knighty all together and focus on keeping things based on an honour system? I'm honestly not against the idea.
2367697
I don't disagree, though at the same time, I would argue that gamification can be a useful thing, as has been experimented with in diet and exersise. Heck, while they don't quite get into filling bars territory (except when they do), sites like Write or Die and Final Deadline can bring some pretty mighty sticks to the table for the author's (self imposed) greater good.
That IS a requirement, though. The self-imposition and the greater good, both. I wouldn't support it as a site feature, which shouldn't even require saying as Obs was plenty clear that this is just a third-party project.
2367713
Pros:
The manual system is already in place, as you've demonstrated. The only limits are the group's creativity and artistic output. No extra automation work required.
The system is opt-in. Cheating/scumming/grinding in an opt-in system is unlikely. It's like cheating in solitaire, then bragging to your friends that you won.
The system is opt-in. For those people who hate the idea, they can completely ignore it. They won't have some official achievement module forcibly on their userpage, whose emptiness taunts them into participating.
The system is manual. You're no longer constrained to ideas that need to be verifiable automatically. Honor system, and all that.
The system is manual. Knighty has had to disable features like notifications in the past, when those were causing way too much server strain. I can't state definitively that an achievement system would crash the servers, but depending on how many total achievements exist, and how the calculations are performed, it's something that would need to be carefully planned around.
With respect and much love, Knighty is... Knighty. There have been some cases where he's embraced community ideas, like blogposting for Seattle's Angels or The Royal Guard. But he's very gunshy about this stuff, and reluctant to stir up community drama. Obviously I don't speak for Knighty—maybe he'd fall in love with your idea—but history suggests it's an uphill battle. And if your idea requires code changes on top of that, the Fimfic source is Knighty's baby and he won't opensource it, so you're completely at the mercy of his schedule. Got three new badges you want to add to the system? Sure, whenever Knighty has time to implement it.
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I mean, it sounds like you're already buds with Obs. You could certainly chat up the ideas with the mods, workshop it a bit, see if it makes sense or not to pitch to Knighty. The honor system route just seems a lot simpler IMHO.
2367815
Stop posting insightful counterpoints that make me pause and reconsider my own beliefs.
As an optional site feature or just something to put on the userpage, I'd never use the achievements myself, but I do think they're a cute idea. Implementation and how they'd work might need some thought, but I'll leave that discussion to the smart people for now. I'm almost halfway through my House marathon.