Gamification is the concept of applying game mechanics and game design techniques to engage and motivate people to achieve their goals.

It taps into the basic desires and needs of the users impulses which revolve around the idea of Status and Achievement.

To put it in other words, it is turning day-to-day tasks, the kind you might do at home or work, into a game which you can earn points, badges and compete with other people that are doing the same things.

oVirt & Gamification

You probably didn’t know, but this isn’t the first time oVirt gamification is being used. A few years ago there was an initiative to use oVirt UI plugins system to add Gamification to the project, there was even a “space invaders” game written and available to play inside oVirt!

So What is New?

The oVirt infra team recently reached out to ‘GetBadges’, a company which provides ‘Gamification as a Service’. Luckily for us, open source projects get to have a free game! So oVirt was rewarded with its own oVirt Open Source Game.

The game works automagically every time you contribute to the project. Current integrations are only active on specific projects like ‘ovirt-engine’ and ‘vdsm’. If you wish to add your project to the game, please reach out to oVirt infra team and ask to add it. Current activation channels are:

  • GitHub – any commit merged rewards points
  • Jenkins – any successful build rewards points and failed builds deduct points
  • Jira – any new ticket opened or closed in jira.ovirt.org rewards points

Other than points, you are rewarded with cool badges every time you accomplish an achievement, like triggering a first successful build. There are more cool features like slaying monsters :), you can read more detailed info on the GetBadges links below.

oVirt 2016 Game Stats

So you might ask yourself how are you doing so far in the game. Checkout the 2016 statistics shown in the infographic below.

oVirt Game 2016 Statistics

More Info on GetBadges and the Game Elements

You can find more info and details on the GetBadges game on the their blog site.

Game on!