Your thoughts about habit-building apps

organicpencil

I've been wanting to make one of those habit-building apps for awhile, sorta like habitica. It'll most likely never happen, but it's still fun to dream...

Anybody have thoughts they wanna share? Here's some of mine:

Time management is super important to me, so I'd love to have something that's scored on time. Plan out your days with estimated times on each task, maybe have an optional time-tracker. Give the stuff you hate doing extra value.
I'd like to feed rewards into a somewhat-charming RPG that's carefully engineered for maximum dopamine flow. You could play 5 minutes every 1-3 hours or perhaps 20 minutes once per day. But designing such a game is, to me, a scary task.
Peer pressure can be incredibly valuable, so definitely want to explore social features.
Had a vague idea about somehow linking your personal health with your avatar. Stuff like sleep, exercise, basic hygiene. It might not even need to have actual consequences, just a subtle indicator to remind you of the problem with positive reinforcement upon solving it. Stink lines or something.

UnknownUser

This kind of sounds a bit evil to me. We shouldn't be messing with peoples lives. Be better than that. Games are for fun, not manipulating people.

cybereality

I've thought about making a game where the player character needs to eat food or sleep or go to the bathroom, so you'd have to login and take care of them. I guess sort of like the Sims, but not a sims game. Like an RPG or similar with with the added food and sleep requirements. And the game would continue even if you don't login, so you could miss things or your player could die.

Megalomaniak

@shayneoneill said: This kind of sounds a bit evil to me. We shouldn't be messing with peoples lives. Be better than that. Games are for fun, not manipulating people.

If I understand the concept correctly, it's more a framework for people to gamify their own lives according to their own wants and needs.

organicpencil

@Megalomaniak said:

@shayneoneill said: This kind of sounds a bit evil to me. We shouldn't be messing with peoples lives. Be better than that. Games are for fun, not manipulating people.

If I understand the concept correctly, it's more a framework for people to gamify their own lives according to their own wants and needs.

Exactly that! It's what got me to finally start brushing my teeth.

@cybereality said: I've thought about making a game where the player character needs to eat food or sleep or go to the bathroom, so you'd have to login and take care of them. I guess sort of like the Sims, but not a sims game. Like an RPG or similar with with the added food and sleep requirements. And the game would continue even if you don't login, so you could miss things or your player could die.

That gets me thinking. Could give players the option of adding penalties for missing certain activities. Eg if I'm trying to gain weight and skip a meal, avatar takes damage. I'm a bit cautious about having any sort of penalties, but it might be useful for mission-critical stuff.