I really like Write or Die, where you set the number of words you want to write and the time frame and if you stop typing for too long, the screen turns red and it starts making horrible sounds (if you have the sound on). It gets you to just vomit out everything you need to write. It's also kind of anxiety provoking.
I recently started to play Fighter's Block instead. Here you set your word goal and then you have a little avatar who's fighting a monster. As you type, the monster's health decreases. If you stop typing, your health decreases until you start typing again. So here there's both positive reinforcement and negative reinforcement, and you can imagine you're fighting a monster. The problem is that there's only one monster to fight even though it says, "More coming soon." I thought maybe when I hit a certain level another kind of monster would appear, but I'm at level 35 and I'm starting to doubt that.
I used to do this thing called Habatica (but it was called Habit RPG when I did it). It's a website where you get points for good habits and you can level up and collect armor and weapons and pets, and you take damage when you don't do your daily tasks. It's gamifying good habits. Habits can be stuff like exercising or washing your hair or writing or editing. And it's nice because you get to set your own goals. But the problem with this is that if you miss a day, you know your character is going to take damage the next time you log in, so...you could just not log in? It's what's called "broken window syndrome" because in abandoned buildings you're not likely to throw a rock at a window if all the windows are in tact, but once someone has thrown a rock and broken one window, you might as well throw another. That example is not from personal experience. My personal experience with this is that laundry goes in the hamper unless someone leaves socks on the floor and then you might as well drop your socks on the floor too and then your living room is full of socks. In the case of Habatica, when once you miss one day, you might as well miss two days, and then you might as well stop playing. My other problem was that if I had a great, super productive day, I didn't get bonus points, so when I set my sights on a sword to win, it would take me weeks. I need some immediate gratification here.
So this week, I found a new program, 4thewords, which is like if Habatica and Fighter's Block had a baby with better graphics than either of them. In this one, there are a bunch of different monsters to fight, each with a different little picture, a time limit, and a word count goal. So you can pick what you're in the mood for. You can fight as many monsters as you want, and every time you defeat one, they drop items that you can use to buy things at the store like a sword or sweet boots. There are a bunch of quests you can do, which are things like "fight 5 monsters with sorcerer hats." Then when you finish the quest you get a cool hat or something for your avitar to wear. So there's a lot of room to pick your own journey and your own rewards, and there's a lot of room to over-achieve and write 3,000 words at a time because you really want that hat. It's a big incentive to write 300 more words. And I'm really proud of my sweet star crown. I've heard it doesn't help when you're editing, but I have yet to encounter that problem. It also cost $4 a month, which is the same as a fancy coffee.
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| I beat 5 of these hat monsters today. |
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| And won this sweet star crown thing! |
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