You really do need some stinkin’ badges, right?
I have to confess, I didn’t get the whole “badge” thing at first.
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I’m not a gamer. When I look at my Xbox profile, I see that I’ve played nine games. I think what that actually means is my son has played nine games on my Xbox Live account.
And then we got Rock Band, and everything changed. Suddenly, I started telling my kid to play on his own account, not mine. I didn’t want him (he’s WAY better than me; plays on expert on guitar, drums, and bass) to get achievements on my behalf.
I kind of lost interest after a while – getting put to shame by an eight-year-old regularly will do that – but I understood how some points and a icon displayed on a web site could change my behavior. Why else would I bother to do “Solo Tour,” when my kid had already unlocked all the songs?
In our Spring release, we introduced the idea of badges for artist and album plays. These first badges aren’t really about influencing your song plays, but instead allowing you to showcase your level of fan-dom.
We’ve gotten lots of feedback from you about the badges. Response is typically very positive initially…until you realize badges aren’t persistent. They drop off after 28 days – which means you need to keep your play level of a given artist up over time to maintain that badge. The idea here is to showcase your *current* listening habits; but I also understand your desire to showcase your all-time habits, too.
I’ve also heard people say we’re rewarding users who listen to the same thing, over and over. How about rewarding diversity?
Something I’ve noticed internally is that I haven’t seen a forum posting badge yet. I suspect that I may have set the levels too high.
As I look to expand the system, I’m considering a number of things.
Should there be a maximum number of available badges? Or should we create badges as ideas occur to us, constantly expanding the ecosystem?
Should there be other rewards that go along with badges? Maybe we could get an artist to provide a special download to everyone who has earned a Gold Power Listener badge for that artist. Would that be cool?
Are we going to try to change users’ behavior, or just reflect it? If we try to change it, in what ways are appropriate to maintain a healthy community, and will users try to game the system to get a badge or reward?
Fortunately, I can draw on the experience of other Microsoft teams – specifically Xbox Live and MSN Games – and learn from their experiences. But as always, I love hearing it straight from the customer. So tell me – what do you think of our badge system, and what do you think we should do to improve it?