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Adrian Hon

Nov 2 • 9 tweets • 2 min read

Me hearing Twitter Blue compared to pay-to-win games:

“That’s like a baby’s toy!”

Here’s what REAL gamification would look like, including a Twitter Battle Pass, Achievements, Happy Hour, Streaks, and more! 🧵

1. TWITTER BATTLE PASS

💰 1000 T-Bucks (~$10) per season (2x during US elections).

Includes exclusive emojis, profile labels, and hashtags, unlocked by levelling your XP across various themed challenges (e.g. 10 tweets on #SpaceX today).

Expires after 3 months.

2. TWITTER ACHIEVEMENTS

Timed challenges (post a gif that gets 10 likes in the next week) that award achievements; achievements can be levelled, traded, and sold for XP and T-Bucks.

Achievements and challenges can be sponsored (e.g. retweet 20 Dem politicians today)

3. TWITTER STREAKS

Gain bonus XP and profile labels by posting daily or hourly in a row for 10, 50, 100, 200, and 500 days! Broke your streak? That's fine – just pay 250 T-Bucks to restore it!

4. TWITTER HAPPY HOUR

Randomly, once per day, everyone gets a notification to tweet what they're doing right at that moment – with double XP on offer for 30 minutes, and triple if you share a video!

5. TWITTER REWARDS

Buy something after clicking a link on Twitter? Both you and the referrer get 20 T-Bucks! Retailers can sponsor Reward Sets, where you get double the T-Bucks if you buy a complete collection of products.

6. NEW TWITTER PLUS

Normal Twitter no longer a challenge? Reset your account and begin anew – but you can pick a limited number of emojis and profile labels to speed your ascent once more and get that exclusive Twitter Prestige (Lv. 1) label!

DISCLAIMER: Elon is legally required to give me $4.4 billion if he uses any one (1) of these ideas in Twitter – sorry, that's just the rules.

I don't have a Soundcloud but I do have a book critiquing gamification in consumer apps, social media, finance, politics, and video games!

It's called YOU'VE BEEN PLAYED and the NYT called it "illuminating and persuasive"! basicbooks.com/titles/adrian-…

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More from @adrianhon

Adrian Hon

@adrianhon

Nov 1

Disappointed by Norris’ dismissal of social media as a major factor in recent social and political change, despite Ezra pushing her on it; Father Coughlin on the radio really isn’t the same thing nytimes.com/2022/11/01/opi…

Talking about “visual browsers” from the 90s doesn’t fill me with confidence that you understand how Twitter and TikTok is different from Usenet

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Oct 20

@maxwellstrachan

Important piece by @maxwellstrachan. The conversation around exploitative hyper-monetised games needs to go beyond "they're all whales" (they aren't) and "it's the player's fault" (victim blaming). vice.com/en/article/g5v…

These techniques might not work on everyone, but they work frighteningly well on some – to the tune of thousands of dollars.

Can anyone claim this in anyone's best interests other than the developer and their investors? It's certainly not about having *fun*.

Outside of monetisation, we have to ask whether games should be are designed to reward players sending 12+ hours a day. This, of course, isn't just about mobile freemium games – it's about a lot more.

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Oct 19

@betterthemask

LOVE this deep dive interview of @betterthemask on battling colonialism and capitalism through the lens of narrative game design. Incredibly thoughtful (and with gorgeous photos)! nme.com/features/gamin…

This is a great way to think about the *point* of advancing in your career in games – it's not just to make more money or make bigger games, it's so you can use your position to start challenging conversations and improve conditions for everyone.

@mrsambarlow

When indies like @mrsambarlow keep iterating upon a game idea, that's when you can have sustainable innovation.

Also fascinated by how the games industry is "particularly intense" amongst all creative industries. It's not one thing, it's many things – all worthy of books!

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Adrian Hon

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Feb 20

Since The Trojan Horse Affair podcast was released, it's been #1 on Apple Podcasts for two straight weeks in both the UK and US.

Despite its enormous popularity and its serious, political subject matter, there's been silence, dismissal, and denial in the British press 🧵

FT: "It’s the kind of wild conspiracy theory that should be ideal podcast fodder, but Reed and Syed find themselves faced with an insurmountable problem: trying to make the minutiae of local politics exciting."

Nothing on the substance. ft.com/content/74de7d…

The Guardian: A couple of perfunctory pieces amounting to "it happened a long time ago, let's not re-open old wounds" and an awful piece today that says, essentially, journalism is pointless because the courts are always right theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

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Adrian Hon

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Feb 20

Sodha criticises the Serial podcast by saying it contradicts the findings of public bodies… that the podcast thinks are flawed? This isn’t the slam-dunk she thinks it is theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

e.g. she says “…a claim dismissed as false by an employment tribunal judge” when the hosts go into a tremendous amount of detail explaining why the employment tribunal was flawed

“Reed secured an interview with two whistleblowers independently assessed as “credible” and “fair””.

Believe it or not, that doesn’t *actually* mean they’re credible and fair, especially if you listen to the substance of what they say.

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Adrian Hon

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Feb 18

@ZombiesRunGame

🧵 First impressions of Peloton Lanebreak, its new gamified workout, from the lead designer and co-creator of @ZombiesRunGame!

Spoiler: It's polished, music-centric, and kind of fun - but it's limited by the hardware and it's surprisingly uninteractive

1. You can read how it works below, but basically you get points by cycling over beats or within lanes, and you switch lanes by increasing the resistance: left is easy, right is hard.

There are no other controls other than cadence (how quickly you pedal) blog.onepeloton.com/lanebreak/

2. The most important thing is that the track moves independently of your cadence. You could be cycling really slowly or really fast, and it'll be exactly the same speed.

Think Guitar Hero or Beat Saber, not Mario Kart.