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Comment by jstx1 | Hacker News Reader

Attempting to hijack your brain's reward centers as a way to succeed with a meditation app is kind of tone-deaf. At the same time I don't think it would be successful either - does anyone really care about building a fictional garden? The whole things strikes me as doing the wrong thing and probably failing at it too.

They should have leaned more into the journaling / gratitude /overall mental health aspect - at least that's kind of a differentiating feature.

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> does anyone really care about building a fictional garden?

I think the market already answered your question, given that some of the most popular video games from the past few years have been based around gardening and farming.

Yes, but those games are made to distract you, the opposite of mindfulness, ie being present in the now.

That wasn't the question being asked and has nothing to do with my response, so please don't derail a thread for pedantic reasons.

To be fair, at least it’s an attempt to do it for something good. Humans are driven by feedback loops, and some habits, such as meditation, are good for you, so if they can find a way to make the brain stick to it, I’m totally onboard!

Not sure if your familiar with gamification, but pretty much takes boring tasks and makes them fun. It’s on pace to be a $30 billion industry by 2025, simply trying to adapt to the psychology of the population. Not making a data mining social media app, simply an app that encourages people to stick with meditation. I’m not brain washing users either literally giving them the equivalent of a digital sticker which acts as a virtual pat on the back and keep it up.

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