Scrolling through Nostr and engaging with people like usual, when I read something about adding gamification to Nostr, which got me intrigued as I'm always engaging in game development for years, from participating in game jams, helping gamedev friends, making my own games on the side, etc. So, I thought I'd go ahead and write this article to potentially influence Nostr builders to gamify their Nostr clients (apps or sites).

To have people increase their engagement towards the client, increase their time spent on it, increase their interactions with it in a general sense as well as with other individuals using it, learn/discover more about the client's features and services, and increase their enjoyment of it.

The basics! This is where you'd start, by adding an achievement list that users can check out and see how they can acquire them. Each achievement would have its title, details on how to achieve it, a progress bar, an icon, and other elements/info.

Here are some examples of an achievement list:

The badge system is already out in the wild, so this should be a smooth implementation. Showing a badge earned, especially if it's a fun one or one that holds some community prestige, is someone that a lot of people wouldn't mind or even like to do.

A badge can have its own set of criteria for a user to acquire it, or it can be connected to achievements (Ex: Unlock the following achievements to unlock this badge").

I'd say showing a max of 3 to 5 badges on a profile is a good limit in terms of presentation, and tapping on them would open up the highlighted badge list, as well showcase the rest of the badges that a user has earned and have yet to earn depending on the client they're on.

Each badge should show the details of how to acquire it, and your progress towards getting it, as well as when it was acquired.

Similar to badges, they'd either have their own criteria to unlock or be connected with previous earnable elements like acquiring X badges and/or completing Y achievements. A user would also be able to present one trophy on their profile, and there'd be a trophy list to showcase all the ones you've earned and ones that they've yet to acquire, showing all the details of course.

These trophies should be the most difficult kind of reward a user would strive to earn. The way you'd earn one can be by getting various different badges and/or achievements or having its own unique set of criteria.

I'd also like to mention that the presentation for trophies should be more premium than the rest. Think of it like someone who has a trophy shelf or even room if they're that into it.

"Giga Ostrich", "The Ascender", and "Grass Toucher". These are a few examples of what a user can have as a title on their profile. It's fun and gives off the old social norm from the medieval ages of "Oh! He's a Lord!" kind of vibe.

These would act as rewards for completing specific achievements, or for earning badges or trophies. They can also have their own set of criteria to earn them. Again, these would have their own page and show them as a list with their details.

Depending on what a user has managed to earn, be it achievements, badges, trophies, or titles, they'd be rewarded with extra features or services from the client, making their experience on the client more fun for themselves and potentially for others as well.

As an example, let's say a user managed to get a certain trophy that unlocked a feature within a mobile app client, and it's an RGB profile-picture border. Another unlockable might be having the ability to have multiple banner images that switch out every 3 seconds like a slideshow. A third unlockable example, that affects other users, is if said user with this unlockable reacts to a note/post, the end user sees a reaction animation play out on their end (look at Discord's Nitro emoji-reaction animation for reference).

Make sure to also have a page to showcase these unlockables and have a preview of them as well. This will trigger the user to go "Oh! I want this! and this! and.." which will drive them to take the actions needed to unlock them.

Having a general account level is commonplace. The more exp (Experience points) you get and reach a certain threshold that increases with each new level, you'd level up.

The way a user would gain exp is by generally using a Nostr client, where each action would net them a bit of that exp. Reacting, commenting, posting, replying, zapping, completing their profile, adding relays, completing achievements, getting badges, etc.

This is pretty straightforward. As you've noticed multiple times throughout reading this post, you should add progress bars wherever you can, within reason, so that users know how far or close they are from earning an achievement, badge, trophy, and/or title.

This idea of a Zap bar, where you'd set it up as a daily limit of how much you need to Zap people per day, week, or month, or to stop yourself from over-zapping people on Nostr, was discussed between Karnage and another individual.

This is definitely useful for people on Nostr, and to add to it, it would be nice to see different kinds of zap bars somewhere, showcasing analytics about your zaps from how much you zapped people, how much they zapped you, the number of people you zapped and got zapped from, and so on. This data would also be connected with other gamified systems mentioned in this article.

In terms of wrapping this Zap bar with a gamified context, we could think of it as a mana bar that you can spend on people with, and it auto refills the next day. You can also get "potions" to refill your zap/mana bar (more on that below).

Provide users with daily/weekly/monthly quests/missions and reward them appropriately upon completing them. These quests can be anything you want the user to do related to the client. For example, a quest can be about reacting to 5 notes from someone you follow, replying to someone 5 times, or quote-post a note.

Depending on the quest and what is required of the user to do, an appropriate reward should be given, from experience points to fake currency (we'll talk about that below) and other items like a new profile theme or profile element like a profile picture border.

This would of course have its own page, and each question would have its own details. Make sure to add some fun stories to each one, depending on the theme. If it's your average fantasy, you can write someone a long the lines of "The commander of Plebstr has sent out a bounty to all those who stamp their marks on the people's notes, spreading magical glyphs to its owners".

Create your own client currency to be used as a reward for various other gamification elements, and to be spent on acquiring items from the store (we'll talk about that below) or to subscribe to an item or service.

Just a quick note, this isn't a cryptocurrency. This is just a normal fake currency that games have for their own ecosystem.

What's the use of a currency without being able to spend it somewhere? That's why you'd want to implement a store where players can spend their earned tokens to acquire various items ranging from different profile elements, profile or app themes, animations, different stickers or emojis, etc.

In games, the power of visuals from the art style and animations, and the sound effects and music, play a huge role to enhance a user's gameplay experience. It adds that "meaty"/"umph" feeling.

Satisfying UI animations that play out when a user interacts with your app will go along way, along with adding sound effects on minuscule and major actions, from opening/closing a window/pop-up, to finishing a quest or completing an achievement, etc.

Hold an event every now and then, random ones and seasonal ones, and have that up on a calendar that you'd implement somewhere in your client so that users would know if there's anything coming up.

These events can be about anything from the four seasons, anniversaries, random silly ones, competitions, giveaways, etc. Each of these events would have details on what they're about, what activities will happen, and what new quests, achievements, badges, and/or trophies are connected to it.

A user might want someone from another, and have something they don't need, so a trade might occur if that option is available and everyone is happy to get what they want from the people they meet on the client.

A user might also not want anything and would like to gift their items to another. The system should be there so that they can do just that, and the receiver would get a notification that they received a gift, see the animation and SFX play out and be happy about it.

This system is bordering on the line of actually being a full-on game and not just "gamifying". Heck, it is a game. So a client might not want to add this, as it's definitely a very big extra, but can be a lot of fun if done right.

Do you remember that old game/toy "Tamagotchi" if you're old enough? Because this is basically it. Let's say you get a randomly generate pet based on your npub key, and it'll have its own wants and needs from food, water, taking a bath/shower, taking a dump or piss, its need to kill its boredom by playing with a bar or something, and its desire to socials with other pets, etc.

Since Nostr is all about communication and social interaction, you would be able to somehow present it on your profile, make stickers out of it to send to others, and perhaps have a pet play date with others.

You can also implement clothing customization or environment decoration, which can be acquired through quests, achievements, etc, or through purchasing them from the store, or someone gifting it to you and getting it through a trade.

All of these gamification systems and features are fun and entertaining, however, keep in mind that you might push people to a kind of addiction towards your client, so it is wise to think of ways to counter that.

For example, you could add an optional feature where once set up and enabled by the user, it would remind them to take a break every hour or two. Another example, although potentially a toxic one, is to apply a "curse" effect on the user's account if they've been on the app for a long while, and that can take away exp.

Considering that people want to get what they want, from the various rewards given by these gamification systems, they would potentially just spam their way through them. For example, if there's a quest that requires them to post 3 times per week, they might just post gibberish on all three notes. It might be the same for replying to people, commenting on streams, initiating DMs, sending items, etc.

A potential anti-measure for this is to implement a reputation system, that's clear in its communication, where others would give a thumbs up or down on a certain action, and if their reputation falls below a certain threshold, all users on the client have a toggleable option to not see any interaction from those with a bad reputation.

Keep in mind and be mindful of how you implement these gamification features and designs, as it might negatively impact other aspects of your users' experience and potentially the whole ecosystem. That's why the above anti-measures are mentioned, and there might be other issues that I might have missed to mention.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading! There are a lot more gamification systems out there that you can add to your client, but these are just what came to mind as I was writing this article. If you know of a game feature or system you'd like clients to have, then go ahead and mention it in the comments/replies so that client developers can see it.