Wayfarer Discussion Discord Global Review Contest: 52,000 reviews and 32,000 agreements from 74 Part
To celebrate the second birthday of the Wayfarer Discussion Discord, we put on a server-wide review contest. This was our most ambitious contest yet, featuring a wide variety of ways to participate and earn "tickets" for a prize drawing at the end. In total, 195 people participated in one of many different ways. Some simply engaged with the server in some small way, offering excellent advice to a newer Wayfarer or adding a festive Halloween role. Others took part in the territory control game on the server that rewards reviewers for finding specific things while reviewing (this game is a big hit).
The center piece of the contest was focused on reviewing and earning agreements. For this portion, 74 people submitted starting stats and 50 submitted ending stats. In total those 50 completed 52,177 reviews and earned 32,688 agreements! That's an average of 1043 reviews and 654 agreements per person!
While many reviewers initially joined for the promise of prizes/rewards, many participants noted that the fun and competitive nature of some of the games drove them to review much more than they normally would have (some winners didn't even know prizes were being rewarded). Ten prizes were awarded, including both digital and physical prizes (including a highly coveted cheese slicer), and a prominent server member setting their bonus location to the location of the winner's choosing. In addition to prizes, the top participants received special cosmetic rewards within the server including a unique discord role indicating they won the contest. This kind of cosmetic reward would be a great thing to see from Niantic as they explore ways to add incentives within Wayfarer itself. Additionally, Niantic could provide more tangible rewards to folks within Wayfarer for participation in official and unofficial events including bonus upgrades, in game item codes, some kind of review focus on a particular area (sort of a broad scale upgrade) and more.
Comments
If anyone is interested in participating in future events or just joining the best Wyafarer Discord Server in general... heres the link...
What was the territory control game that was "a big hit"?
👸
We made a big list of 60+ different types of things you'll commonly (or uncommonly) see while reviewing. Each of these things is a territory and the game runner bot selects one at random for people to find. Whoever finds and claims it first gains points and then a new territory is selected. The game typically runs anywhere from 3 to 7 days and is always very competitive. Honestly it's the most effective incentive for reviewing that I'm aware of.
I was one of the contest participants with over 3300 reviews. The throne game is indeed a lot of fun and very motivating. It would be great to see Niantic hold more events.
Maybe @NianticDanbocat @NianticTintino could sponsor some of our contests by providing prizes like Thia and Brian have done in the past for our IFS events.
Oh yeah! That game kept me reviewing far longer than I normally do cause I wanted to claim the throne.
It would be cool if Niantic somehow implemented a similar thing. Like if "What it is?" ever got good enough to detect stuff, and you could use it to claim thrones in your local area.
I know a ton of people who would review for some VR gear, or premium items. We've had items rewards from wayfarer evebts before, but never anything that particularly got people off their butts (outside of the wayfarer bubble anyways).
The games can make people happy when they have to review trash when it's something that can help the wayfarer for the games. Otherwise, it might get frustrating reviewing others' trash.
Yeah, usually when I see trash in my area, I get annoyed (I know I know, easy agreement, but it's also the stuff that's keeping mine stuck in the queue longer).
But getting trash when it's part of a game makes it actually exciting. Removes the feeling of "Ugh, not again. Why even bother?" and makes it into a fun thing to show off to frineds also playing.
@NianticVK and the gang: Take a page out of the community's book. They're making WF more interesting and fun with a simple discord game than you have done with all your "changes and fixes".
I participated in the challenge. It was easy for anyone to participate in, regardless of their area, and I appreciated the number of ways you could earn points, regardless of if you were actively reviewing.
I wanted to give a huge thanks to @tehstone-ING and the mods who put in all their work planning and coordinating this. The community excitement & engagement was great to see. Happy 2 years to the server and thanks for all the contributions to reviewing and nominations.
Yeah, huge shout out to everyone that helped organize and that donated the prices, it was a lot of them. Hopefully Niantic picks up on my offer to help with the prices in the future. Thanks everyone who participated.
I'd be excited if niantic was willing to offer passcodes as prizes like Ingress sometimes does for local events. Would love to get some good gear as a prize for a contest.