Gamified Life: Habits Meets SNES | Hacker News Reader

Gamified Life: Habits Meets SNES

kck.st

14 pointslefnire10 comments

Maybe I missed the point, but isn't it too easy to cheat here? I could add 40 fake ToDos each day and mark them as done. No need for them to be fake actually... I could just add eat, breathe, walk, think, work, exist, etc.

I know the point of motivation boosters is that you won't cheat because you want to improve yourself, but there are users who will cheat and that'll make the level system bogus. The most motivated users who do their homework and never cheat will lose in front of the least motivated users who never do their homework and cheat.

Am I wrong?

Two things. (1) I plan to mitigate cheating where possible, for example hindering rapid-click. (2) Some players will play solo (in which you'd just be cheating yourself), and others will play in parties. I'm going to make party-building "manual", almost like a LAN party - you actually enter their user ids, and you can only have 5. No "auto-select from facebook". This way, you'll only choose close friends. The goal is for the party system to be an accountability partnership, and biggest-loser challenges amongst friends don't cheat on their weight checkins. So yes you can cheat, but due to the nature of the application I'm not worried about people actually cheating. (There won't be any global high score)

Thanks for the explanation, those look like good solutions.

Is there an underlying story / quest that your little guy progresses through as he gets stronger? I always thought that the story component is what helped make those old rpg's great. Obviously it would defeat the purpose if you spent too much time in the game vs. actually getting real life stuff done. But I think there can be a good balance where the "grinding" aspects of the rpg are replaced with productive life activities.

I think I would rather fund that development activity than an android front end.

possibility, I'll bounce that around & keep it on my mind grapes

Hasn't this already been done with Epic Win[1]?

Is anyone able to explain the differences between the two beyond cosmetics?

[1] - http://www.rexbox.co.uk/epicwin/

EW is badge-based, and iPhone only. This will be traditional SNES-style, highly social, and web first - then cross-device mobile.

In all honesty, I didn't know about EW when I built this. When I saw EW after finishing the website, I thought "God damn it! Effing spot on, too" and walked home dejected. But their Android app has been long in the works, there won't be web, and in all honesty - I want something REALLY rpg. My goal with Habit is to push as many possible traditional RPG features into the app, starting with a 5-person party system, healing and all (see http://goo.gl/TvPTg)

+1 for web based interface. I grabbed Epic Win when it was first released, but was put off by the fact that every task had to be typed in with the iPhone keyboard. This is a huge pain if you have a lot to do in one day :D

Plus, it doesn't look like EW gets many significant updates any longer. Glad to see someone else taking a crack at this.

-1 for web-based interface. What I want is to use it off-line (why, oh why, do I need to have Internet everywhere for everything?) and have off-line access to data (e.g. to plot myself something for fun or insight).

well web app is already built, and the Kickstarter's for native mobile app. no need to use the web app if you don't want to.

But the reason I chose web first is (1) easy access to all platforms, (2) plug into web services and hooks. Eg, there's the Chrome extension (http://goo.gl/gze94) where you lose HP for surfing reddit, facebook, etc. Pomodoro plugin, and future integration with Pivotal, Asana, etc. Integration is easier on the web.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com