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[justifun]

Been trying to come up with good ideas for a game mechanic to encourage people to log hours to different projects at our studio each day.

Few ideas i've had so far are.

-A Tamagotchi like game, where each "project" is a cute little character that requires you feed him "time" to keep him alive.

-Some sort of mechanic where the more time you log the more points you get which can be redeem for coffee's etc in real life.

-a mechanic where the more points you log would send monsters or something towards the people who haven't logged their hours

Its kind of a tough thing to make fun.  Anyone have any good ideas?

[The Translocator]

Maybe separate from the schedule theme and instead make it an arcade game that you can win prizes in and specific amounts of project time get you the "tokens"...?

[valrus]

Some kind of privilege that only one person can hold, and is awarded randomly each day, but your chances of winning are correlated to the number of consecutive work days in which you've logged enough hours.  (In other words, log every workday so you don't lose your 'streak'.)

Like "You don't have to pay coffee dues to drink coffee today" or "You can change the channel on the radio" or whatever is genuinely valued in your work place.  Give 'em titles and everything (Radio Czar, Coffee Bandit, whatever).  Let everyone make a silly avatar, and every morning you check your avatar to see what costume it's wearing.

Note that the win-chance curve should start to flatten out after some period (like 5 days) or else it can become too hard to win after losing your streak.  You want it to be easy to get back into the fight, not so discouraging that they give up caring.

[justifun]

I like the idea of championing someone with the title and honor of something.  I'll have to come up with more ideas of what those could be.

Also i was thinking of rewarding players with hats ala TF2.  Our company has a mascot and i'm thinking of animating him on the front screen where you would login.  And various achievements would unlock hats.  Along with premium ones you can only purchase with points you accumulate by logging your hours each day.

I'm still not sure about the actual page where you log the hours though.  There needs to be a quick and easy way to log the points, but also the option to perhaps get more points if you play a mini game to enter your time or something.

Perhaps the mini games could be built around different company events we have, or favorite restaurants in the area etc.

[SimplyRivet]

I think that you might be approaching this from the wrong angle. I feel that if you want to encourage people to log hours everyday, you're looking for less "Fun" and more "Habitual".

I would take a page from the book of more causal games, which thrive on getting players to log in everyday, and then leave after 5 to 10 mins.

One way of doing is every time someone logs their hours, they open a mystery box. They have a chance of getting something nice instantly, like coffee, or a currency that could build up to nice things. This is a fairly simple variable ratio schedule, which is a sinner box technique. If it strikes your fancy, you can read up on reward schedules here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement#Schedules

Or you can take the RPG approach, and turn it into a leveling system. The more consistently you log hours, the more XP you get, and every level is a nice thing. For bonus points, you can reward the highest level people in the company with something extra, as a way of setting an example.

There are a lot of ways you can go about doing this, but I would recommend steering away from something that's complex. All you really need is a couple graphics, and a nice "Ding!" noise to encourage most people.