Social Rank Gauge with Upkeep Mechanic
You have probably seen something like this on several sites. Active users gain experience points, which fills up the level gauge. At certain stages of the gauge the user gains a new rank.
What’s different? If you take a close look, you will see a dotted line with a star above it. That’s the star rank, reserved for those user who contribute on a regular basis. So the mechanic of a classic level system is turned around once users are very active. They have to be active (giving high quality feedback eg.) to sustain their rank. This is called upkeep, and if the player is inactive for too long, he simply falls back to the last level (I used Mitglied L3 here, which is kind of uninspiring to be fair).
But why would you do that? Why would you take away points? That’s just crazy right?
Well, it is a sort of new challenge. Gamification measures should not distract from the desired activity (which is participation in our case), but after a certain point you have to provide more challenge. Of course every player will see each other’s rank. There is a constant match at high levels, but low-level users can work themselves up towards the higher ranks. If you use an open-ended level system (like Level 310) this is a rather daunting challenge for a newbie.
Especially in an environment where you would consider yourself a professional in the real world, and now the gamified social web application tells you you’re a newbie. That just seems bothersome, but it is even more of a problem if you cannot ever reach those who have been active years ago – those users, who are not even actively contributing anymore.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Though I have to admit we don’t celebrate it in Austria ;)
Take care folks
-Georg
