Can you imagine, a code update to Pinside without a proper announcement? That's kind of illustrative of how busy things are, here at Pinside HQ. Everything is going great with the baby (my daughter Lieke, who was born 5 weeks ago) and things are settling down. Time to work full force on Pinside again!
Martijn and I decided that we really wanted to make work of that replacement for Pinside Karma Points (that old points system where you were awarded points for each rating, post, story etc.). We know we've been promising for ages.
PINSIDE ACHIEVEMENTS
Well, this new system is finally ready to go live and we call it "Pinside Achievements". So how does it work? Well, quite simply Pinside Achievements are awards for completing various challenges or actions on Pinside. Each achievement earns you a nice medal and the respect and envy of your Pinside friends. Achievements are also worth points. All of them accumulate into your "Achievement Points Score", which is displayed proudly next to your Avatar and username.
TASKS
There are currently 65 tasks to complete, including awards for adding a game rating, writing a story, collecting games, adding/updating map locations, adding high scores, getting thumbs up or making a specific number of forum posts. And much more. And more will be added when we get new inspiration - this is just a start (got a great idea for an achievement? PM me!)
PURPOSE?
What is the purpose of this? Well, for starters we wanted to add a fun element to the site and reward participation on the site, turn it into a game of sorts. But we also think it's handy to help you get an idea of what a Pinsider's been up to. And lastly we hope to emphasise that there's more to Pinside than just the forums! The achievements will give you an idea of all the other stuff you can do here.
CHECK IT OUT!
Here are my achievements. You can find your own achievements via your My-Pinside section, or on your (or anyone elses) public profile page (click the achievements tab). A shortcut to get to anyones Achievements page is clicking the points score that is now displayed besides everyones avatar image, click it to go to that persons Achievements page.
This is the first version. There may be bugs. We want to add notifications when you score an achievements. We want to add much more awards. All in good time, gotta start somewhere