5 ms·

Netflix Achievements (A Design Suggestion)

29 points by philipkd 16y ago

stratospark 16y ago
I wonder if it's a beneficial thing to add extrinsic motivation to view a work of art. Shouldn't most of the value come from the work itself? I imagine some people thinking: "This show sucks, but if I watch 3 more seasons I can get the badge like all my friends." Then the notion of Netflix could shift from highly individualized recommendations to novel social game to lowest common denominator social chore.
- kes 16y ago
  I like the idea, but not everything needs to be social. I've been slowly working through certain collections of movies, and if I could add them automatically to my queue, that would be great. I have no need to 'show off' to my friends, because my Netflix queue is highly personalized to me. But, it would certainly make it easier to feel like you had a grasp on any certain body of work (such as my current obsession: everything directed or produced by Scorsese).
- limedaring 16y ago
  On a personal perspective, the achievements feel more like a fun "to-do" list. I often don't know what movie to watch, and having a list to go through and check stuff off of (aka, "Oscar Winners in 2010") would give more direction on what to watch next.
  - bbatsell 16y ago
    No affiliation, but http://www.icheckmovies.com/ http://www.icheckmovies.com/ is based around a similar concept.
    - philipkd 16y ago
      This is great. I created the achievements mock-up article primarily because I was excited about tracking my National Film Registry movies. And this site has that! Thanks!
  - hugh3 16y ago
    Part of Netflix's business model is about trying to avoid encouraging everybody to watch the same things, meaning that they don't need to stock many copies of each movie. Heck, part of Netflix's business model is encouraging you to forget to watch DVDs for weeks at a time. They've got no interest in making you power through arbitrary lists of films.
  - pronoiac 16y ago
    Having a todo list with predicted ratings is really great.
- pronoiac 16y ago
  If I built this, I'd be sure to allow ratings without a corresponding rentals, for DVDs, DVRs, etc. Even without achievements, I've played with Greasemonkey scripts to sort by predicted rating & made an effort to turn around the DVDs quickly. It did start feeling like work instead of play, so I cut back a bit.
  - stratospark 16y ago
    Great username. Did you get that from a book?
    - pronoiac 16y ago
      I think Charles Stross' "Lobsters," the first part of Accelerando, was one of a couple of stories I stumbled on in quick succession that used the term "pronoiac," & I liked the idea. Edit: If anyone else's wondering, a pronoiac's the opposite of a paranoiac - someone who thinks people are working behind his back to help him. It's a mindset I try to cultivate.
mortenjorck 16y ago
Netflix's discontinuation of the friends feature, following the discontinuation of multiple queues, has pretty much proven them more feature-averse than Apple. Could this be done by a third party through the API, though?
- Timothee 16y ago
  As far as I know, after the backlash following the announcement of the planned discontinuation of multiple queues, they backed out and left them in place. At least, my wife and I still have our separate queues.
cmelbye 16y ago
This is a cool idea for Rails Rumble this fall. Hmm...
hugh3 16y ago
Have there been any successful applications of the "achievements" model outside actual video games? People talk about it a lot, I don't think I've ever seen it done. I also don't think my life needs any more pointless random goals set by somebody else. I have enough pointless and random goals of my own.
- swilliams 16y ago
  Works pretty well on StackOverflow. And credit card rewards/miles/etc are _kind of_ like achievements.
  - potatolicious 16y ago
    Not really - credit card rewards/miles offer a real reward for doing something, achievements in the way Xbox does it (and everyone copies thoughtlessly) does not. I can exchange my points for something of tangible value to me - I doubt people would care about credit card points if they were purely for shits and giggles. Achievements are fascinating, and MS certainly has pulled it off admirably. But whenever I hear of a web startup doing achievements and other game mechanics, I can't help but feel that it often is simply trying to mask the fact that their service offers insufficient value to their user, and they have to inject "socialness" to make it more attractive.
- vyrotek 16y ago
  Sometimes Achievements can be for things you were going to do anyway but now you have a way to prove/show off that you did it. http://stackoverflow.com/users http://stackoverflow.com/users - Jon Skeet probably doesn't go out of his way to earn points and achievements. Its just a biproduct of his actions and a good/measurable reputation followed.
zackattack 16y ago
I recently wrote about the psychological elements behind fun game/webapp design, elaborating on a very cool UX presentation: http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/06/why-games-are-fun-the-psychology-explanation/ http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/06/why-games-are-fun-the-psy...

29 points by philipkd 16y ago

I wonder if it's a beneficial thing to add extrinsic motivation to view a work of art. Shouldn't most of the value come from the work itself? I imagine some people thinking: "This show sucks, but if I watch 3 more seasons I can get the badge like all my friends." Then the notion of Netflix could shift from highly individualized recommendations to novel social game to lowest common denominator social chore.

kes 16y ago
I like the idea, but not everything needs to be social. I've been slowly working through certain collections of movies, and if I could add them automatically to my queue, that would be great. I have no need to 'show off' to my friends, because my Netflix queue is highly personalized to me. But, it would certainly make it easier to feel like you had a grasp on any certain body of work (such as my current obsession: everything directed or produced by Scorsese).
limedaring 16y ago
On a personal perspective, the achievements feel more like a fun "to-do" list. I often don't know what movie to watch, and having a list to go through and check stuff off of (aka, "Oscar Winners in 2010") would give more direction on what to watch next.
- bbatsell 16y ago
  No affiliation, but http://www.icheckmovies.com/ http://www.icheckmovies.com/ is based around a similar concept.
  - philipkd 16y ago
    This is great. I created the achievements mock-up article primarily because I was excited about tracking my National Film Registry movies. And this site has that! Thanks!
- hugh3 16y ago
  Part of Netflix's business model is about trying to avoid encouraging everybody to watch the same things, meaning that they don't need to stock many copies of each movie. Heck, part of Netflix's business model is encouraging you to forget to watch DVDs for weeks at a time. They've got no interest in making you power through arbitrary lists of films.
- pronoiac 16y ago
  Having a todo list with predicted ratings is really great.
pronoiac 16y ago
If I built this, I'd be sure to allow ratings without a corresponding rentals, for DVDs, DVRs, etc. Even without achievements, I've played with Greasemonkey scripts to sort by predicted rating & made an effort to turn around the DVDs quickly. It did start feeling like work instead of play, so I cut back a bit.
- stratospark 16y ago
  Great username. Did you get that from a book?
  - pronoiac 16y ago
    I think Charles Stross' "Lobsters," the first part of Accelerando, was one of a couple of stories I stumbled on in quick succession that used the term "pronoiac," & I liked the idea. Edit: If anyone else's wondering, a pronoiac's the opposite of a paranoiac - someone who thinks people are working behind his back to help him. It's a mindset I try to cultivate.

mortenjorck 16y ago

Netflix's discontinuation of the friends feature, following the discontinuation of multiple queues, has pretty much proven them more feature-averse than Apple. Could this be done by a third party through the API, though?

Timothee 16y ago
As far as I know, after the backlash following the announcement of the planned discontinuation of multiple queues, they backed out and left them in place. At least, my wife and I still have our separate queues.

cmelbye 16y ago

This is a cool idea for Rails Rumble this fall. Hmm...

hugh3 16y ago

Have there been any successful applications of the "achievements" model outside actual video games? People talk about it a lot, I don't think I've ever seen it done. I also don't think my life needs any more pointless random goals set by somebody else. I have enough pointless and random goals of my own.

swilliams 16y ago
Works pretty well on StackOverflow. And credit card rewards/miles/etc are _kind of_ like achievements.
- potatolicious 16y ago
  Not really - credit card rewards/miles offer a real reward for doing something, achievements in the way Xbox does it (and everyone copies thoughtlessly) does not. I can exchange my points for something of tangible value to me - I doubt people would care about credit card points if they were purely for shits and giggles. Achievements are fascinating, and MS certainly has pulled it off admirably. But whenever I hear of a web startup doing achievements and other game mechanics, I can't help but feel that it often is simply trying to mask the fact that their service offers insufficient value to their user, and they have to inject "socialness" to make it more attractive.
vyrotek 16y ago
Sometimes Achievements can be for things you were going to do anyway but now you have a way to prove/show off that you did it. http://stackoverflow.com/users http://stackoverflow.com/users - Jon Skeet probably doesn't go out of his way to earn points and achievements. Its just a biproduct of his actions and a good/measurable reputation followed.

zackattack 16y ago

I recently wrote about the psychological elements behind fun game/webapp design, elaborating on a very cool UX presentation: http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/06/why-games-are-fun-the-psychology-explanation/ http://www.zacharyburt.com/2010/06/why-games-are-fun-the-psy...