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 interesting gamifications of life around BuJo. BuJo mean 𝗕𝘂𝗹𝗹𝗲𝘁 𝗝𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗻𝗮𝗹 - a method of personal organization written in a physical journal. One is a BuJoRPG developed by Emerald Specter. You can see a description of this game in this PDF. 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘁𝘆𝗹𝗲 Scattered Gamification - the game mechanics don't directly balance each life area. You select what you want to improve but the game doesn't specify what exactly it needs to be. In reality you could also use the game for only one part of your life (e.g. fitness) which would fall into the category of limited gamification. 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗗𝗲𝗽𝘁𝗵 More shallow gamification. Mechanics of the game are simple and there are not much dependencies of each element. 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗘𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 - Musts (habits with a penalty) - Dailes (habits with rewards) - Achievements (metrics rewarded with boosters) - Quests (levelled tasks) 𝗠𝗮𝗶𝗻 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗲 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗽 Filling a journal page with numbers and creating a new page. 𝗠𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 - Only In-Game Rewards - the game incentivises to work purely based on in-game rewards: reaching milestones and new levels. - The only urgency motivation in the game comes from so called **Musts** category - if an item from this category is not done HP decreases. Decreasing HP below zero results in losing in the game. 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝗱𝘂𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗦𝘆𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗺 - Musts reminds constantly about doing annoying activities - Dailes installs new habits - Quests and Achievements encourage you to make progress in given domains 𝗣𝗿𝗼𝘀 - Good way to install new habits - Very pleasurable game for people who finds levelling and hitting new milestones motivating - Easy to understand; doesn't require difficult computations 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘀 - Not for people who don't find leveling game technique motivating - Low complexity can lead to different abuse of the system (e.g. doing only one particular type of activity at the cost of others)

I reactivated the community. The community contains the following courses in Classrom section (far from being finished - I will be improving them steadily when I will have some inspiration). - Gamifying Life Theory - very abstract articles how gamification of life can be divided: task games, metric games and what gamification method should contain to be motivating & effective - System Designs - overview of some life gamification systems, pages & apps - Rewards - how to gamify granting yourself rewards for doing things in real life

I didn't particularly like the game I created for myself in January (see this post). I decided this time to try game desinged by somebody else: that is BuJoRPG (see this post). The biggest difference is that I don't want to have physical journal (I have dysgraphia so it would be ugly) but use Obsidian instead as you can see in attached photos. The goal of the game is to regularly work on most important pieces that make the community grow: content, social media posts/videos, talking with people and working on different game designs. I will see in next days how the game works for me. I consider also adding big rewards for levelling up - something that is missing in the initial BuJoRPG game design).

Saying that 𝗴𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲 is about using techniques known from computer and board games in "real life" isn't very explanatory because it doesn't convey many important details. In this post let me tackle first distinction: how do you want to play the game. 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝗳𝗶𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵es There are two approaches how to "gamify life": 𝗦𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 and 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵. 𝗦𝗶𝗺𝘂𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 - it's the mindset of playing a game with your life. You just mentally imagine you are playing a game with your life and "act like a hero of the game". In order to play this game you need to have some vision of yourself (hero) and you can execute (simulate) actions of this imagined hero in "Real Life". This is to some extend similar to visualization exercises (like the famous people council from Napoleon Hill's "Think and Grow" book) or make-believe games that children are playing. 𝗚𝗮𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘁 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 - you have a accountability tool that you use to gamify your life. This can be a custom-written software, spreadsheet, Power Point, Notion, Habitica or similar and last but not least: classic pen & paper. With gamist approach the system (or "tool", or "game") have some underlying goal (and it's not equivalent to the "real life" goal). So for example you can have a goal to lose weight and you use a game tool where there are "weight points" and the goal is to collect 1000 points in 90 days - by meeting the game goal, you will also meet the "real life" goal (if the game rules are designed well, obviously). I am personally much more interested in Gamist Approach. 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.