Startup #6 – XBox Life Achievements

One reason the XBox platform is so popular is because of an incentive program called “Achievements”. Each game has 20-30 different challenges of varying difficulty – once you complete the challenge you unlock an achievement and earn some points. The achievements become a permanent part of your profile and the points you earn across games get added up into a single score that represents how good of a gamer you are.

My idea is a real-life version of achievements. There would be a set of several hundred achievements to unlock. Users would log into the site, choose the achievements they have already completed, and get a list of new achievements to work towards. Widgets could be added to user’s Facebook (or MySpace) pages displaying their lastest achievements and total score.

Examples:

Attended the Super Bowl (or Stanley Cup finals) – 20 points

Went on separate dates with two guys/girls on the same night – 10 points

Won three consecutive games of beer pong – 15 points

I was thinking back to when I was in college in the dorm and we’d be sitting around playing video games and bored out of our skulls.  This would be a great way to get the kids out into the world with a list of new and interesting things go do.

This idea was inspired by a post on Jeff Sandquist’s blog, one of my co-workers and the brains behind the fantastic work being done over on Channel 9 and 10.  Also, this is similar to the project Daniel and team are doing over at 43 Things.  That site rocks, definitely check it out.

Thoughts on this one?  Am I the only one who thinks that widgets are the new black?  Or is that Twitter?