Include a "recursive achievements" feature

[petrachi]

I want to go out at least once every week
I want to release a new blog article every month

-> I have this achievement done for the current month, I can relax
-> Or, I need to move and do things right now.

Your concept is to get motivation to people, and get them to do something they want, for them to not feel like they're wasting their time.
It's very cool, but for now, I feel like the achievements are either not real life achievements ("taking a plane"), or not willing dependent achievements ("get married").
You need to create short terms achievements, to increase people motivation by quick reward.
You need to have dead-lines for this short terms achievements, and when the dead line comes, ask people if they have -or not- complete what they said they will.
So, to get to a big achievement ("become a youtube star" / "getting married"), you need steps achievements, likes level ups ("post your first video" / "go out and meet a girl you like" -then -> "have 30 subscriber" / "talk to the girl you met and like").

So, basically, help me find a girl and become a youtube star by adding small and recurring achievements in Life-the-game. Thx.

[shroux]

For the dead lines, it's cool in challenge that friends could give you. But i'm not sure it would be relevant in normal achievement. (or maybe if you "challenge" yourself")

For the achievement being part of bigger achievement, yes, it's a nice idea to dig ! 👍

[swannv]

Hi petrachi, thanks for the suggestions!
We will be adding a feature where you can set the date you would like your achievement to be completed by (that certainly will help in terms of getting people motivated to unlock the achievement before time runs out!). For the second part, we've actually discussed this possibility in the past but we wanted to keep things simple to begin with - we'll definitely consider this again later, when other important features have been implemented :)

[matthieu-vergne]

For the composition, a simple "Add a sub-achievment" could be enough. Then one should be able to take an existing one (we can also think about recommendations for later improvements) or to create a new one.

[petrachi]

Hi,

The way I see it, I want to use "life the game" to stop procrastinating and do what you want to do in your life. This can be difficult as you don't get an immediate result/feedback for your actions.
"life the game" can help that way, in providing something that reward you in an immediate way.

So, if my goal is to launch a company, I will need severals steps before to reach my goal. These steps will be my "sub-achievements". They are meaningful of my progression toward my final goal.

Also, there are some steps I need to take care of regularly. Like "working on my awesome project 4h/week". Theses are not real achievements, but are importants parts of the process to reach my final goal. These recurrent achievements could be represented as a strike serie. Something like "I have done this task for 5 weeks in a row". This will push me up as I don't want my score getting down to zero if I fail at this over one week.

With these features, available at launch or after, you can push bigger projects in front of people.

I know that "life the game" is a service where you push achievements to users, instead of letting them create their own. But your goal is -probably- to boost people up. And you can't do that with your currents trivial achievements like "taking a plane", or with your achievements like "getting married" that do not depend on only will.
You need to have achievements that one can take care by himself, and that are bug enough to really matter in a person life. Thx.

[matthieu-vergne]

I don't want to use this website as a project management tool. So I do not need all this stuff. The point then is for the team to know what they want: for something so much advanced, it means to have advanced features like deadline management, but if they just want to have a community-driven social-network, it is not the point. This is like the problem of translation, whether you spend time on it but then you need to take care about some problematics which need some expertise, whether you want something simple that anyone can use quickly and that you can manage for large scale, with possibly a way to bridge Life. to some specific tools which provide these advanced features.

I understand your point, but for such detailed management you can use a project management tool. If you want to have a funny social-network you are far from these problematics. Just a personal opinion, but I think it is far to be a priority. Far less than achievment recommendations, achievment edition and other simple stuff.

[korfuri]

As an alternative way of controlling things, maybe easier for users than
"sub achievements", it would also be possible to maintain several bucket
lists per user. So you could keep a bucket list of things you want to do to
start a company, or carry out another project, separate from your main
bucket list which would be uncategorized stuff you want to do (mostly fun
things, I suppose).

I think it could play well with the idea of recurring objectives: make a
bucket list of things you want to do weekly, set the frequency for that
list to be reset weekly, and have every objective reset to "to do" each
week. While it still kind of violates the "one user, one achievement, one
status" cognitive invariant of Life, it's probably easier UX-wise as it
becomes separate.

This still doesn't make it close to a real project management app (and I
don't think that's the way Life is going anyway, and personally I like that
:) ), but it would support the use case of "I want to exercise twice a
week, and read a book every month" which arguably has its place in the
social-sharing context of Life (especially since social support helps a lot
with such objectives).

[petrachi]

You're right. The way I described it look more like a management app.
I'm not sure about the social aspect, it's not something I'm really into. The way this app was described to me (I met someone of the team), it was something to get you out of your couch, and start doing things. The achievements was described like friendly challenges.
But when I looked at the actual website, the achievements seemed bigger, and more like "This is the story of my life".
I don't want the story of my life to be "I took a plane".

So either, it's a fun website to look over when you have some nice partie with friends. Either it's a gallery of all the things you have done in your life and it's a contest for the larger e-penis.
Or it's a personal management website to get things done.

@korfuri : you're right. I totally agree with your description.

[matthieu-vergne]

For the way it is presented, I would say that it is pure marketing: don't say what you expect people to do, say what you imagine they can do, even more if you do not expect it but if one does it would be awesome. But I guess you cannot find a one-size-fit-all condom even for an e-penis {^_^}.

I agree that grouping and repetition policies would be a great improvement. I would probably not use them, but I can see their need even for fun (imagine sub-communities wich share bucket lists), without having big forms with half of unused fields.

For achievment-specific deadlines and other advanced features, it seems to me as a lot of work for only a few people and which could be managed in a different way. So a matter for debate.