We’re going to add track-trophies. They’re like badges but scoped to tracks, so you can earn them multiple times over different tracks. Our aim is to encourage/gamify behaviour that we think will help a student learn and/or get the most out of Exercism.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on what things we should gamify.
Some samples:
Completed a mentoring session
Completed a core global set of exercises (same across all tracks)
Completed a set of track-specific exercises (e.g. 5 logic exercises in Prolog, or FP exercises in Gleam) (shows someone using the track for what that language is good at)
Completed all the learning exercises
Completed 10/20/50/etc exercises
Completed all exercises on a track
Posted multiple iterations on 5 exercises (shows someone learning/improving)
I’m thinking we have somewhere in the 6-12 region of trophies, and that they’ll be a relatively fixed set (rather than badges where new ones get added all the time).
Ok. I know this is about existing exercises, but I’ve been trying to add more date and time focused exercises, so…
[Time Lord/Timey-Wimey/Time-Turner/Quantum Leaper/Russian Doll /Back to the Future/I'll be back/Groundhog Day ] (all depending on your favorite pop culture ref) – for completing all the calendar/date/time focused exercises on a track or cross-tracks. (so maybe Timey-Wimey for one track and Time Lord for multiple).
And a couple others:
[Mathamagician ] - for completing x # of “math focused” exercises on a track.
[article of interest/article pract/whatchamacallit/widget wrangler/doodad dabbler/Member of the Gang of 4/Turtle Tamer ](have to think about this one more) – for doing OOP focused exercises on a track.
I’m not a big fan of gamification, I think it makes people do things for the wrong reasons (to get points or badges).
But here are some ideas for badges:
“strong foundation” or “theoretician”: for a set of exercises that deal with classic data structures and algorithms (linked list, set, binary search, binary-tree, custom-set, knapsack, satellite, …)
“good with words”: for a set of string-related exercises (bob, raindrops, isogram, wordy, say, …)
“math-ster”: for a set of math-sy exercises (complex, hexadecimal, triangle, square-root, diffie-hellman, …)
“gamer”: for a set of exercises with a gaming background (yacht, poker, darts, dnd-character, tournament)
Badges are cool, thophies sounds like a good idea; talking about gamifying what about some ‘ranks’ like in a private E-2 is bellow in rank and responsibilities as a corporal E-4, so depending on your trophies/badges and or something else, you could get a higher rank in a language or in Excercism in general and the higher your rank the more complex problems you tackle and also mentorings are more complex so that could help gamifying it a bit more and also for future things.
Pyret is going to lend itself to some very cheesy badges, and I’m 100% there for it.
X Marks the Spot for completing a mentoring session.
Raising the Jolly Roger for completing the track-specific exercises
Ahoy, Algorithms for completing 10 exercises
The Jolly Juggernaut for completing 20 exercises
Code Corsair for completing 30 exercises
High-Seas Hero for completing the track
It WAS I just cannot believe I missed it!! I bow down to your superior time-foo!
I am also of the personal opinion that Pyret needs to lean into the whole theme. I’d like to add:
Talk like a Pyret – for completing the first three concept exercises. Sea Shanty Singer – for completing the learning exercises (or could be for song-themed ones) Scrimshaw Specialist – for completing string-related exercises.
`The Hurdy-Gurdy – for completing “scale generator” (and other song-themed exercises). For reference: Theme from Black Sails – features a Hurdy-Gurdy.
Resistance is Futile – for completing all the “Resistor Color” exercises (Resistor Color, Resistor Color Duo, Resistor Color Trio, Resistor Color Expert)
Cryptologist or Encipherer – for completing all the “Cipher” exercises (Atbash, Affine, Rail Fence, Rotational, Simple, and Crypto Square)
Arborist – for completing all the “tree” exercises (Binary Search Tree, Tree Building, Satellite, POV)
Logologist – for completing pangram, isogram, anagram, and acronym
Geometer – for completing triangle, pascals triangle, diamond, and rectangles
Just to be clear, these aren’t more badges and I’m not sure to what extent they have names and playful icons in the same way that normal badges too. At the risk of being a spoil-sport, my question is really “what do we want to gamify to improve a student’s experience?” rather than looking too in depth at the particular sets of exercises or groupings etc. But I do appreciate the creativity
Personally I really like that badge when you solve “Bob” in 5 different languages, I would love to see that expand to some other exercises. Preferable those that are not too simple/similar but actually have different ways to implemented depend on the language to highlight the differences between them.
I also think it would be really nice to have exercises that “linked” together to slowly introduce new concepts and culminate into a small project / game, and if you did them all you get a badge. I think there are already some templates for those like the RPG character class exercise, the robot factory exercise, card game like poker hand
As for gamify user experience, generally I think people like to see their progress going up (which we got with the reputation) but also has something to mark their achievement. I think you can set up some sort of “level up” system depend on how much reputation a person has, and depend on the level they could get a different border around their profile pic (this one is often used in gaming for seasonal ranking)
I just cannot believe I missed it!! I bow down to your superior time-foo! 
