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Comment by avolcano | Hacker News Reader

The most incredible thing about this is that these applications can have achievements, DLC, and even Steam Workshop support.

Check out Game Maker: http://store.steampowered.com/app/214850/

- Different components sold as DLC (http://store.steampowered.com/dlc/214850/)

- Achievements (http://steamcommunity.com/stats/214850/achievements) for things like "run a game on iOS" and "1000 debugs"

- Created games can be put on the Steam Workshop (http://steamcommunity.com/workshop/browse?appid=214850), which is INCREDIBLE when you think about it!

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What is incredible about achievements for anything? It's an interesting way to keep users engaged and committed. How is it "the most incredible thing" regarding Software on Steam?

"The most incredible thing" about something that isn't actually especially incredible is by definition not going to be that exciting.

What were you expecting? Each program is actually a VNC client that connects to a server that has super secret Valve room temperature quantum computing hardware and a NIC based on laser cutting OCRable messages onto live crabs?

Not to be too off-topic, but this sort of instant nasty cynicism is all that's wrong with HN of late. One of the rules of this place is 'be polite', would you respond like that to a stranger in person?

This kind of reaction makes me not want to read/comment/submit at all.

I'll take the inevitable hit in karma to say my piece. You probably didn't mean to be rude, but it comes off to me at least as very much so, intended or not.

His questions don't appear the least bit rude to me. They are certainly direct, which some people confuse for rudeness, but it looks like an entirely honest line of questioning. Honestly, I'd like to know the answer too. What makes achievements incredible?

It’s rude because avolcano is clearly excited about this premise and rodly is just ridiculing his/her excitement. There’s no objective basis to what is incredible.

Or maybe he's asking why avolcano finds achievements to be the most exciting thing. It didn't seem that rude to me, but then again, I'm a bit oblivious to such things -- I tend to favour the nicest possible interpretation.

"Incredible: so extraordinary it seems impossible".

I do wonder what is so extraordinary about having achievements in apps and how this would be a very difficult thing to technically achieve.

I’ve got: "Incredible: difficult to believe; extraordinary"

He's also misinterpreted. The incredulity was about 3 things: "achievements, DLC, and even Steam Workshop support." When the focus is on an opinion, rather than facts, the result is often rudeness and inaccuracy. Those two often appear together. When you focus on facts, rather than opinions, it's hard to be rude. An example from http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

'That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3.'

Dont you know that it is cool to pass summary judgements and being cynical? Combative or putdown type responses seem to be the order of the day. FWIW I agree with you.

I don't personally find achievements motivating, but a lot of people do. That same mechanism can be a powerful force for motivating people to learn and gain mastery over software that they might never otherwise have gained.

I'm occasionally frustrated that I don't know how to do lots of things in Photoshop and Illustrator, for example, but don't have enough incentive to learn how to do them. While I don't think achievements would work for me, there are undoubtedly many people in a similar situation for many kinds of software that it would work for.

Seems like a janky way to do things, to be honest.

Achievements for productivity software? Seriously.

Achievements for productivity software? Seriously.

Achievements can be used as motivation, increasing productivity. Makes sense to me.

I can see it now -- BWOOOOSH -- ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED -- TYPED 1000 WORDS IN AN HOUR

Honestly -- this could definitely work for someone like me. I'm addicted to micro-achievement alerts

If you use Visual Studio, you can get this ;) http://channel9.msdn.com/achievements/visualstudio

I used that, then I ran into the bug that was causing building to fail, with an error that gave no indication it was the plugin that was the cause. I haven't touched it since, but it was fun for a while. I definitely wouldn't use it for anything that you do for work.

Achievements might work as motivation for some but it can also easily divert attention from work to simply 'hunting' achievements especially if you are competing with colleagues.

With the example of the visual studios achievements (http://channel9.msdn.com/achievements/visualstudio) that a few has already posted here, there are even achievements 'just for fun' that doesn't exactly encourage productive work. For example the 'Go To Hell' achievement for using a goto statement.

It's also useful for teaching new features. If you are mindful of the existence of achievements, you might check the list once in a while and see something like "Fast Copy - Use Ctrl-C to copy something instead of clicking on the button!"

The best thing about achievements are that they teach you new ways to play a game (IMO). When I play a game with well-designed achievements, I'm constantly learning: "Oh, I can approach enemies this way." Or they make me try a new weapon type: "Oh, this weapon is effective in this situation, now I will update my default play-style." I would love to have such achievements for Emacs, because I feel like I don't use it to its potential, but I also don't have a good sense of directions to explore.

If you're already comfortable, the next best thing to do is start reading the Emacs manual from start to finish.

You'll soon run across things you don't take advantage of (it was registers and org-mode for me).

Just play a round of `M-x keywiz` each morning.

I would recommend: When you want to customise the behaviour of some command, don't google for the answer. Instead do `C-h f` or `C-h k` to read the built-in documentation for that function or key. From the help screen, click the link to view the function's source code -- if you don't see that link install the "emacs-el" package (using your system's package manager). See what variables that function uses. Do `C-h v` to read the documentation for each variable.

If you like this approach, I've written a guide (http://david.rothlis.net/emacs/customize_c.html) which, at 3,000 words, is half the length of the Emacs manual table of contents.

Achievements in business apps are getting tons of traction now. My startup has an achievement engine which we've plugged into things such as Salesforce.com

http://iactionable.com

Just look at stack exchange. It's gamification is part of what makes it so rewarding to use.

While it is odd, it is steam's built in feed back mechanism. Dev's get notified of them and can track user progress. They use them in games for post release analysis of what users found hard and such. Bringing that concept to app software will hopefully help show which are the 20% of features used by 80% of their customers, or rough spots that could be smoothed.

I'm not an MS developer, but Visual Studio has had achievements for a while now, including anti-achievements for things like using a goto.

http://channel9.msdn.com/achievements/visualstudio

Makes sense, Microsoft invented the things after all.

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