Gamifying Wayfarer

A while back on the old forums, I had a discussion thread on how to gamify Wayfarer further. I’ll share my thoughts on it again & welcome any other ideas.

I’ll explain some bits firstly though.

What is gamification?

Gamification is adding game mechanics into nongame environments, like a website, online community, learning management system or business’ intranet to increase participation.

If you use Reddit, they’ve recently added badges for doing actions. You also see it on social media pages where you get Top Contributors or may even get it at work where you can reward others points for helping to get tasks done. All arbitrary and essentially pointless but it keeps people engaged.

Swarm & Foursquare
Both apps (at one time, the same app) which have since 2009 allowed users to “check in” to locations ranging from coffee shops, cheese shops and zoos.

When you check in to a location the most within a certain time, you become Mayor of that location. Check in to enough BBQ Joints, and you get a badge.

You also compete against your friends to see who gets the most coins from checking in that week too.

Foursquare X Wayfarer
Foursquare has a bad reputation in the Wayfarer community because of the unchecked imports that have been added to Pokémon GO, leading to poor Wayspots that would usually be ineligible populating the map.

However, within Foursquare each location has a category (or several) and there are Foursquare Super Users (think Wayfarers doing reviews) who moderate new edits to things like titles or opening times, so the ineligible items could have easily been filtered before being imported.

So, the idea?
Wayfarer also contains categories, and typically a Wayspot will end up with at least one when it goes live.*

My idea is to add in Category badges on your Wayfarer Profile, just like the Swarm badges.

When you review something and it ends up going live on the map, you’ll get a tick towards whichever category/categories it ends up with.

So if I review “Old Mout Cafe” and it goes live with the category of “Cafe/Coffee Place” then I get a tick on my :coffee: badge and then it becomes Bronze/Silver/Gold/Platinum/Onyx the more I review get on to the map.

When the Niantic Sign In finally works, I assume it’s not long until your Wayfarer Profile is connected as per this blog post from 2022 mentions - Revamping Niantic Profile: Manage your Niantic ID – Niantic Labs but compared to the others, it’s missing something for Wayfarer.

My idea would be that you could choose an earned badge as your favourite. So say I’d got a Silver badge for Cafe/Coffee Place, I could mark that as my favourite badge and it then shows that (where team name and level show on other sections) I’m a L2 Coffee Connoisseur or maybe a L4 Park Ranger for reviewing lots of national parks.

This could even lead to gear/avatars (with agreement of game team) with even something basic like emoji tees (:deciduous_tree: for park, :coffee: for cafe, :surfing_man: for a surf spot etc.) for Pokémon GO and the same as avatars for Ingress (we already have toast and a van so why not?)

Anyways, just a few thoughts. Happy to hear thoughts or your ideas.

*Yes, this does mean Ingress will need to add in category selection.

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Great ideas!

I’d say: not just for reviewing, but also for nominating! Badges for individual categories like you said. And also for variety - like a badge if you nominate (and it’s accepted) something in 5 common categories (ummm maybe: decorative fountain, sports, sculpture, mural, event space). Or in any 10 categories. So you might be thinking: I need to find a decorative fountain to complete my badge!

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It will be difficult to make it a game at Wayfarer now with a manager who does not understand at least the eligible categories.
And if I had to think of a time when your idea could be adopted, it would at least be after the situation in India is fixed correctly.
Otherwise, there is no need to game Wayfarer separately, they can just import it from Foursquare on their own.

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I think enough nominating happens anyways. There’s a reason the Seer badge has not come back to Ingress.

This would be more about encouraging reviewing.

There’s also an issue of “I need a decorative fountain to get my submitting badge” and you may have none around.

Where for reviewing, if you need to review 5 more Indian Restaurants you could place your bonus location where you would expect some to be nominated

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Bit late but, on the topic of showing wayfarer on niantic profile: Would be nice to be able to include number of agreements and/or number of waypoints added as well. I’ve been hoping they’d add something like that for awhile now.

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I definitely like the idea of gamifying Wayfarer. This is an interesting approach, and I think it would be really fun to see my personal percentages of what I’ve reviewed! That would add even more fun than simply having a badge for the number.

I also like the idea of being able to chose a favorite badge. If people could earn badges that they can use here, in this forum, that might give even further motivation. Like if pics or colors could be unlocked. If there were images people could unlock I can imagine people grinding hard to get them.

In the last episode of Wayspotters @BlameJamal and @Glawhantojar talk about ways to gamify wayfarer. I tend to agree with your concerns about having badges for nominating. While I definitely track my nominations and hunger to make the number higher, I feel like there could be some real resentment from people in areas with little to nominate. Even with eMiLy filtering out coal, I also don’t want to encourage people to start nominating coffee cups and other trash just for a badge.

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I love the idea of unlocking profile pics! (Or even just the ability to pick your own color, please! :rofl:)

I made a thing

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So @tehstone is not only a gentlemen but also a scholar.
I learned from his new plugin, that I am 2 away from having 1000 Wayspots nominated! I’m super excited! Hey @NianticAaron HINT HINT have you seen this? If you wants some more context, you can check the most recent episode of the podcast. We talk about this subject! #cheers

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