Interesting. I am not arguing, just sharing: people say that Drupal now is a framework and you an actually write custom stuff, not just stack modules. Can that be, what do you think?
Yes - that is what is being said about Drupal 8 but I see it more of a shoehorning a CMS into a framework. Custom modules can be written - but doing the same in Django is much easier.
One approach that you can also look at is build the platform as an API in Django and build the wrappers / customizations for the sites in Drupal.
Actually it's always been a framework, it's just there's lots of shoehorning of CMS functionality. And it's less of shoehorning, it's just where the $s are flowing, I work with a team who do a lot of native CRM & BPM with Drupal it's just they haven't got $m so you haven't heard of them.
Drupal's fundamentally different than Django as not only are you able to code less due to the sharing of modules but you're also collaborating with thousands of others.
So with Django where you're coding coding coding, i.e. creating technical debt, the idea with Drupal is you only need to code what business logic hasn't already been built over the last 16 years. You're leveraging code and community, so you can focus on what you're good at and collaborate with thousands of others to fill the gaps.
Nice answer. I have things to say:
- there are situations that number of levels matter - dependecies is one reason. There must be others, why is 51 the highest in WOW? I am looking for a source that can point all the reasons.
- how many points do you award each task? Surely this matters, but what do i benchmark those to? Time it takes to complete? Mix of time, complexitity, scarcity, x y z? What are possible x y z, and in what proportions do i mix them?
- books are "Gamification by Design" by Gabe Zichermann (biggest proponent), "Reality is Broken" by Jane McGonigal, Also "Flow", "Drive" and a couple more. All of those seem too theoretical, and when i sit to create something, i cant put numbers to the theories.
The number of levels doesn't matter, because players don't generally play (or decide to not play) games because one has more or fewer levels than another. Levels are shorthand for accomplishment. Level 51 is the highest in WoW because that's how much content and accomplishment they could determine. It's entirely arbitrary based on your application.
All of the reasons are entirely arbitrary based on your application. It doesn't matter because they are manifestations of psychological principles. You could have levels, or you could have ducks. You could have points, or you could have dogs. Every time you hit Submit in your app you get a dog, and every six dogs you get a parrot, and every three parrots you get a duck, and you need to email that duck to support@yourapp to unlock a new feature, or you can paint that duck a particular color and save it in your right sidebar, but you can't do both.
It doesn't matter, because it's not a recipe or a formula. They are representations of attributes to poke a person's psychology to tell them they are making progress (dogs to parrots), to reassure them (ducks being emailed), to give them investment (ducks being painted), etc.
You need to understand the psychological principles involved before any of it will make sense. The questions you're asking have no answers because they're ultimately nonsensical questions.
Gabe Zichermann's book is crap, and maybe that's why this doesn't make sense to you. None of those books you listed are by psychologists, mainstream video game designers, or research academics.
How on earth is that the very first practical question?
You should be asking yourself questions like 'What do I want to influence the user to do more of', and 'What's in it for them', and 'Is it worth the added complexity' and 'What ways are the most fun for them to start thinking of the things we want them to do as accomplishments'.
Talk of levels is like asking how many seats there should be on an airplane in 1900. Yeah, it might be a trivial consideration at some point in the distant future that will color people's impressions, but the practical questions are how the hell you push something through the air in a controlled, sustained fashion. Seats are irrelevant to the big questions, and they don't even have to be relevant in an actual implementation of cargo planes - the 'levels' abstraction isn't always a useful one in making things more fun.
Based on what I've seen, 'gamification' as business topic appears to be rife with cargo-cultism. Even the best implementations don't add a ton to the experience, because there's no big incentives to work towards, no story to unlock or benefit to be had.
On StackExchange I have an indication of how prominent I am that I can show off to other people and potential employers, in addition to the small-scale competition to help people solve their problems. On Steam, badges from most games are little more than a funny phrase shoved in my face for five seconds unexpectedly. As Foursquare Mayor of my local chinese Restaurant, I get nothing.
To discuss this more, we would need more specifics of your startup.
Right. I have one thing I am working on, but I am sharing all my other ideas so that if anyone likes something they can work on it. Sometimes someone has something similar and just by reading those summaries can come up with a mix or with the missing piece in his puzzle. You never know.
Getting a partner only because he is a friend does NOT cover basic requirements for partnership.
Explanation:
Your idea is not going to work if no one knows how to code. Period. Your friend starting now will need a minimum of couple years to get to an OK level to build what you want. Your product will have bugs, inefficient code, hard to maintain. Given that, the only way to make it is if the market and idea are exceptionally strong and really pull you in sales so you hire someone better. Not likely.
What could happen?
Being honest and meaningful now with him is important because it will settle thigs right between you guys. If you keep him only because of friendship (yet worse, afraid to break friendship- if he is a friend he would understand whats meaningful for both) there will always be tension between you, low morale, the business will not move fast and things eventually will fall apart. Keep in mind also that you are getting him into something log term that is not likely to work this specific way, which is a bad favor.
What to do?
In my opinion, to keep the friendship and the business be honest with your friend and find a programmer to partner with. Or at least bring in a third person experienced coder. Otherwise it feels like you will lose both.
If you have already found that your customers are first timers, i can tell you one thing
Guide them step by step
With the problems. For example, for marketing, outline the process for Facebook marketing and ease it in their accounts. If you see they have problems with lets say accounting, integrate Freshbooks.
Your customers will be profitable when they put effort, and for that to happen, they need to know what they are doing and connect actions to results.
