Gametize Academy

Project-Topic-Challenge/Flashcard 201

In the previous article, we covered the essentials of the project, topic, challenge and flashcard (e.g. what it is, what it can do, etc). Great stuff, right? Well, there’s more! In this article, we’ll go through the various additional features attached to projects, topics, challenges and flashcards.

Privacy and Publish Status

A project and topic can be private or public. Additionally, it can be published and unpublished at any time where the admin hopes to do so. Learn about the difference in the privacy and publish status, as well as how it can help you plan out your gamified campaigns! Click here to find out more.

Locking

“Locking” in our case, refers to defining the flow whereby players experience the game. Sometimes we might want players to learn more about a certain topic through some challenges, then understand if they had felt the challenges were helpful in their learning. Implementing locking in this scenario would ensure that the players complete the challenges in such a sequence that aligns with the intended behaviour.

Simply scroll down to the bottom of the page when editing topics/challenges and you will see the option similar to what is shown below. Check the checkbox and select the topic/challenge you wish to lock to. Take note that you are unable to lock to flashcard as they are non-actionables but you can lock flashcards to challenges.

topic_locking

Locking is used often to fix the sequence of topics/challenges/flashcards that the player access. This may be effective in achieving what you want but it may discourage players as they would not have a choice over what they want to do in your game. Giving sufficient autonomy to your players is essential for explorer-typed players (Click here to read more about player types) as it gives them the control over their experience in the game.

Scheduling

Scheduling features available for topics, challenges and flashcards. You are able to schedule the start and end dates for the respective features. Start date is the date whereby the game feature is published. End date signifies the date where new players can no longer join the topic and existing players who attempt challenges will no longer receive points for doing so. (End dates are not available for flashcards since they are non-actionables.) You can find the option to edit the scheduling and end date options on edit pages of the individual game features.

schedule_challenge

In what scenarios will scheduling come in useful? Imagine that you are in charge of an event and you have to be on the ground to make sure things are running. Scheduling your topic and challenges at your desired timings will help to take that additional task off your burden during that stressful day. It will also be useful when you want to release your game features to start at timings that overlap with your sleeping hours. Having a preset end date will help eliminate that extra task at the end of your campaign to prevent access to the topic or challenges.

Frequency of Challenge Completion

There are a few Challenge Types that allows for multiple completion. They are Standard Challenge, Photo Challenge, Quiz Challenge (Repeatable), Multi-field Challenge and QR Challenge. This allow players to submit multiple completions. You can limit the completion frequency by adjusting the field as shown below.

challenge_completion_frequency

By default, the completion frequency of these challenges is “Anytime”, meaning that they can be completed right after an attempt.

You can use the completion frequency to keep players coming back, giving them the opportunity to gain more points. You could have a standard challenge asking players to record something interesting that happened the past day or an experience during their day at work.

Locationscreenshot_2016-12-16-16-07-15

Add a location to your flashcard or challenges! This will help your players in finding the location to your campaign or events, or even location based challenges that require them to scan a QR code or to answer some questions regarding the locations! The players simply need to click on the map and they will be directed to the map application on their phones!

Do note that players need not necessary be present at the location (we do not do GPS tracking). Hence, use this feature as a means to inform your players and not to enforce their behaviour.

Private Completions

When creating challenges that are open-ended, you are able to determine whether the submission are kept private or public. Both privacy statuses of completions have their own use-case.

Private submissions ensure that confidential details are not open to public and people are also unable to copy the same submission if the challenge has competitive elements to it (best submission will gain points).

However, some admins may wish to keep the submissions public to encourage players to view and vote on each other’s submission. This will help in the social elements of the game and also allowing popular submissions to be identified later on. Competitive elements can also be incorporated into challenges with public submissions where the most popular (most number of votes) submissions can be identified and rewarded for their popularity.

Sending notifications 

One nifty feature on the Admin Console is the ability to send notifications to players when you are creating a new challenge. This will keep your players engage and informed about any new challenges you are adding to your games.

Make sure not to over-use this feature by sending notifications to every of the 10 challenges you are going to create in a day. I’m sure you would not want your players to end up disabling notifications and not receive any future notifications from your game.

Have other advanced features you would love to use together with topics and challenges? Let us know in the comments below!