Hacker News Reader

> It doesn’t feel like you’re playing when you use it

That's a feature, not a bug. Gamifying nature is a bad idea. It's tourism, but with the worst kind of tourists.

Respectfully disagree here, the more people you could get outside appreciating and learning about nature, the better it can be preserved for future generations. Whether it’s gamified or not.

> the more people you could get outside appreciating and learning about nature, the better it can be preserved for future generations.

I don't know about that. We are with so many people now and there is so little nature left. The Pokemon 'Go' craze showed what happens when you set gamification and outdoors on the same track. It just doesn't scale in the same way that virtual things do.

At the same time, learning doesn't have to be boring. Most people don't care about the family/class/genus lineage. They just want to know a) what it is, b) some other interesting facts. Sure, have a link to the drudgery, but having something fun/interesting that gets/keeps people excited about going outside and enjoying nature is not a bad idea. Just because gamifying has been used for bad by others doesn't mean it's bad for everything. Nose, despite face; baby/bathwater types of things come to mind here.

Fully agree here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com