I rebranded the community name from "Games of Life Engine" to "Systems of Life Engine". I always felt that the previous name was too limiting - it put too much attention to the "game" part: gamification, game techniques etc. Although gamification is an important part of the equation, it shouldn't be placed in the foreground. It's rather a background detail. Here is a meaning of each words in the name: System - a group of interrelated, interdependent elements or components that work together as a unified whole, often with a common purpose or function. Life - the focus is put mostly on self-development, that is "single-player" systems that you use for your own benefits. Higher-level "multi-player" systems can also be part of this community but not right now. Engine - there are several system patterns that works. You can apply these patterns to create a system with a specific goal e.g. losing weight or master certain skill. Finding and describing such system patterns is an important goal of this community.

There are so many apps designed to gamify life. I started to lose track of how many of them exist. I would like to have everything listed in one place. Every comment in this post should be about a different app (or some plugin like template for Notion). It should have a name + link where to get it. Additional info can be provided in the inner comments. Edit: there is a lot of them missing - I will be trying keep it updated.

The initial draft of the first course I want to add to this community. These are the basics of gamifying life. It's for people who want to design games for themselves. I can create later courses that are "deep dive" - for example deep dive in gamifying tasks or metrics. This course will recapitulate my actual knowledge about the topic. Initial Course Title: 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝘆𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗜: 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 𝘃𝘀 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗶𝘀𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 - Goals - Characteristics of Life - Why is it difficult to achieve things we want? - How can the game fix these deficiencies? 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗜𝗜: 𝗥𝗲𝘃𝗶𝗲𝘄 𝗼𝗳 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺𝘀 - Tasks - Metrics/Habits - Calendars - Timers 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗜𝗜𝗜: 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗼𝗳 𝗟𝗶𝗳𝗲 - Types of gamification: mindset vs gamist - Total vs Shallow gamification 𝗣𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝗜𝗩: 𝗕𝗮𝘀𝗶𝗰𝘀 𝗼𝗳 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝘀𝗶𝗴𝗻 - Difficulties of designing a game - Motivational layer - what game needs to have to motivate people to do stuff? - Functional layer - how to make a game help to to achieve the goal

Welcome in the Gamifying Life Community! My mission behind the community and courses (to be created) is to clarify patterns, ways, games that make people more motivated and more focused in everyday life. In recent years I discovered a lot and partially documented it publicly but this knowledge is not very well clarified - all information is scattered in different places. If you will take a look at all productivity/project tools you will see a lot of similarities: tasks, habits, metrics, calendars. These functionalities can be gamified - or using different words - they can be wrapped into a system/game that makes doing tasks/habits easier and even fun. Designing great gamified systems is a difficult job but once they work well they quickly give big benefits.

One type of rewards that are frequently present in games we focus on in this community are things/actions we allow ourselves to do as a result of doing desired actions (e.g. working on a project or going to the gym). It can be for example eating something sweet or watching some movie. Let me review some important things about this subject. Today's 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘂𝗹𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 property. Best if rewards can be easily granularized - chunked into smaller portions. If reward has no such property then it's more difficult to use it in a gamified scenario. Very good granular reward is time spent on the internet - you can just set how many minutes you can use it and stop when the timer says the time passed. Generally time-based rewards are great - there are so many options to split time. Now consider watching some movie series on Netflix. It's a slightly worse reward as it's not that rewarding (motivating) to watch 20% of the movie. Or drink half of the coffee. There are even rewards that aren't granular at all - for example buying yourself some expensive gift. There are a few ways to make nongranular rewards more granular. You can use in-game 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲 to buy a real-life reward. For example you need to have 1000 coins to watch an episode in Netflix so you need to "earn" in-game money to spend it on this reward. Another way is to use 𝗰𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘀𝗲𝘁 game technique. For example, to watch an episode on Netflix you need to gather some game cards A, B, C, D and E and you can win them by doing desired actions. You have to have them all to be able to watch an episode. 𝑇ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑝𝑜𝑠𝑡 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑏𝑒 𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑒𝑑 𝑎𝑡 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑝𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑡 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑟𝑠𝑒. 𝐼𝑓 𝑦𝑜𝑢 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒 𝑎𝑑𝑑𝑖𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑡ℎ𝑜𝑢𝑔ℎ𝑡𝑠 𝑜𝑛 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑡𝑜𝑝𝑖𝑐 𝑜𝑟 𝑦𝑜𝑢 𝑑𝑜𝑛'𝑡 𝑎𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑡ℎ 𝑠𝑜𝑚𝑒𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 - 𝑝𝑙𝑒𝑎𝑠𝑒 𝑤𝑟𝑖𝑡𝑒 𝑎 𝑐𝑜𝑚𝑚𝑒𝑛𝑡 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑙𝑒𝑡'𝑠 ℎ𝑎𝑣𝑒 𝑎 𝑑𝑖𝑠𝑐𝑢𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑎𝑏𝑜𝑢𝑡 𝑖𝑡.