There has been a little talk here and there about the potential gamification of steemit.
In many ways, steemit is kind of like a game. In fact, it is sort of like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” game. You even get to choose what character you want to be!
CHARACTERS
Certain characters have to be “unlocked”, so they are not an option right away. The best way to become a whale is to purchase a lot of Steem Power. Not only will you be investing in the community, you will be near the top of the food chain right away.
If you don’t have that much to invest, you could just buy enough Steem Power to become a dolphin. However, if you play your cards right in this game, you could even work your way up to a dolphin status through hard work and excellent posting.
Most newcomers will not have the opportunity or excess capital to buy their way up to a whale or dolphin level. Also, without enough time to work your way up, “beginning” characters are pretty limited.
Here are two of the most popular.
BEGINNING CHARACTERS
Minnow:
The minnow is perhaps the best choice for a starting character in this “Choose Your Own Adventure” game called steemit. Not only does it have a lot of potential, it can also transform into other characters over time, based upon how well you play the game.
Since the minnow character starts out with a positive reputation of 25, it has a lot of potential. Using such tools as creativity, positivity, and originality, this character has special powers to both grow and earn.
Minnows are small, so sometimes it is hard for this character to get noticed. Over time though, this character should be able to grow and become a bigger minnow, if the activities that it participates in are appropriate and positive. You’ll need upvotes to grow, so posting and commenting worthwhile material will be keep.
Though there is never any promise or guarantee in a “Choose Your Own Adventure” game, the long-term potential for those who choose this starting character is SUCCESS!
As you continue to play steemit as a minnow, you should see things like your Steem Power level and reputation rising, which are excellent indicators that you are heading in the right direction.
Troll:
This is the other “beginning” character that some people choose to become. Technically, it is not a starting character, because everyone is a minnow to begin with. For those who choose not to grow upwards and move towards becoming a dolphin, they must head the other direction.
To transform your minnow character into the troll character you have to move your reputation into the negative. You’ll need to use tools like extreme negativity and random flagging to encourage others to flag you. Without downvotes, you will never be able to transform your minnow character into a troll. You must be able to receive downvotes AKA flags in order to properly play the game as the troll character.
If random flagging and negativity are not working for you, you can also try abusive and offensive language, or spamming. These tools can also help you get downvotes.
Unlike minnows, dolphins, and whales, the troll character has the special power of invisibility. Eventually you should be able to drop your reputation low enough that your posts and comments do not show without being unlocked by other players. At this point, you have achieved the ultimate in troll power, invisibility.
The long-term potential of the troll character is failure, because it does not pay to be a troll. Once you learn this lesson, it is best to either quit the game completely, or change your mind and come back as a new character. Next time, if you stick with the minnow character, you can grow your reputation instead of ruining it, and perhaps make a positive contribution to the platform.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
In closing, even if the gamification of steemit as a platform never happens, you can still attempt to make a game out of it. However, for the success of the platform and the benefit of the rest of the community, I’d recommend that you choose your player, and your own adventure wisely.
Steemit Like You Mean It!
FOLLOW
Just learning to swim here... and remembering not to feed the trolls.
Stop by my newest post for a chance to win 73 STEEM. That could help you swim!
lol. trolls get flagged into flagblivion.
A place you definitely don't want to be.
Lol, indeed!
No flagblivion for Papa!
It took me a few sentences but then I saw what you did here LOL.
Well played.
Tied into your post the other day about things but today was sly.
LOL
It is your dry wit.
#Spicy
Well done @papa-pepper!
You can tell that you really are a Papa because you're a great story-teller.
You are right. Your character is your choice. In my 6 months experience, (lol it is laughable but on Steemit 6 months is a long time), I have never seen a Troll rise up and become a Minnow. Funny, lots go the other way.
One of these days someone is going to make a play-mined crypto.
It will probably be me.
@shayne
Very True!
and Congrats on hitting a rep of 73!
LOL! Nice.
I suppose there are different types of minnows to play - the artistic elven minnows, industrious dwarven minnows, pipe-weed smoking multi-feast cooking halfling minnows, scientific tinker-minded minnows, etc.
As there are different types of trolls to play!
Don't play the troll characters... They don't play well with others!
I am very small whale ))))
Good comparison.
It might be not relevant to the topic in this post, but I think we need to further develop 'Choose your own adventure' style games here. The STEEM-POCALYPSE is a good example. What I was thinking is a whole new adventure that's developed on a separate account and each new post could be equivalent to a new episode.
You obviously have no trouble getting accounts.... I'd just start over with a new username and try again.