Getting Started

From Gameful

Welcome! This page is intended to help you get acquainted with the gameful site.

Basic Navigation

This section discusses navigation on the main Gameful site, which is different than navigation on the wiki.

Activity - shows what's happening on the site. Can be filtered by activity type.
Blog - view posts from the Gameful Mayor and esteemed guests
Classified - find or post jobs, find collaborators, promote events, announce RFPs, and more.
Forums - the sortable forum directory.
Groups - groups are created for different areas of interest. This page lets you find and join groups. If you visit a group page, you can also see the group's forums and members.
People - the member directory
Wiki - well, you obviously found the wiki!
Mayor - get tasks to help you learn the site and gain treats.

Status Bar

If you are logged in and on any of the pages above other than Wiki, you should see a dark gray status bar at the top of the window, and it will look something like this:

(insert image here)

From this bar, you can access:

My Account - provides access to a number of things relating to your user account, which will be described below.
Notifications - indicates when you have friend or group requests, and notifies you of many other system events
Treats - indicates how many points you have earned
Chat - interact with other members in real-time through a classic text interface!
Visit - let serendipity be your guide, and visit a random member or group.

YOU!

In many games you start by creating your character, so let's start with YOU! You can access your Gameful information from the main site, by clicking on "My Account" at the upper left of your screen. Note that the My Account button is not visible from within the wiki.

Toward the top of this page you will see your name, user name, treats/points, avatar, and status. Treats are described below. You can change your Avatar from your Profile Page (see below). Under your avatar icon are a row of tabs:

Activity

The first tab on your page is Activity. This is where you can see your recent status updates, friend additions, forum posts, etc.

Your Profile and Avatar

Your Profile contains information about you that other members can see. Filling out information about yourself helps other members compare their interests with yours, and helps like-minded individuals meet up. It will also help people looking for someone with your particular Skills and Superpowers find you. If you get a friend request, you may want to look at that person's profile to learn more about them, so make sure your profile is filled out, too!

Click on the "Edit Profile" sub-tab to make changes to the text fields, or "Change Avatar" to upload a picture for your avatar.

Messages

You guessed it, this is where you can see and send messages using the "Inbox" and "Compose" sub-tabs. The number of unread messages will be indicated in parentheses (need to verify!).

Friends & Groups

These tabs allows you to see your current friends and friend requests or groups and group requests, respectively. If you decide you want to leave a group or unfriend someone, you can do it from here.

Settings

The "General" sub-tab is where you can change the email address associated with your account, or your password. The "Notifications" sub-tab allows you to specify which events will cause to receive an email (e.g., when you get a new friend request, or when someone replies to a post, etc.)

Points / Treats

There is one page that is not currently a tab, but it can be accessed by the "My Account" drop-down menu at the upper left of the screen, and that is Points. Points are the same as Treats, and the terms are used interchangeably. Points are gained by doing certain actions such as logging in on a new day, posting, adding friends, and more. You can also donate points to other people. The "My Points" sub-tab will show you your total, as well as how you got it. "Sitewide Treats" shows you all the current point activity across the site. "Treat Legend" will show you the different ways you can gain treats. To donate treats to someone, click the "Donate Points" button next to your avatar picture at the top of the page.

The Gameful Index

The Gameful Index is a number between 0 and 1, which is calculated based on your engagement with the site. Essentially, the fewer treats you have in your treasury, the higher your Gameful Index. The Gameful_Index page explores a discrepancy between the formula as listed by Gameful.org, which appears when you hover over the index, and the actual formula for determining each member's index.

Level 1 Walk-through

At this point, you should have filled out some basic information on your profile. Now it's time to venture out into the world.

The Mayor

The Mayor is a good place to start, because she (he? it?) will help you get acquainted with Gameful by giving you specific tasks to complete. These tasks will help you get acquainted with the different areas of the site, as well as social and community features such as making friends, posting comments, joining groups, and so on. Once you complete the current set of challenges, return to the Mayor to submit the tasks and gain points and get a new set of challenges.

Your first set of challenges might include posting an update and joining a group. You can post an update by going to your activity page:

go back to the main Gameful page (remember the "My Account" button is not visible from the wiki),
click on "My Account" in the upper left of the page,
click on the Activity tab.

Under your Avatar icon you should see a text box and a "Post Update" button.

Note that sometimes it may take the Mayor some time to recognize that you have completed a task. Being Mayor is a busy job, so please be patient! If the Mayor doesn't recognize your achievement after a day, let an admin know (Add link here to how to file a bug report).

Groups

It's time to check out some groups! From the main site (not the wiki), click on the Groups button toward the top of the page.

This is where the action is! There are groups representing all kinds of things, from specific game types (e.g. Educational Games), to locations (e.g Bay Area Gamers), to groups dedicated to improving Gameful or planning Gameful Awards. There are bound to be groups that will interest you, so the first thing to do is browse through the list.

On the Groups page, there are two sub-tabs, "All Groups" and "My Groups". To the right of these tabs is a drop-down that lets you sort the list order. You can also search for specific terms using the search box. If you type in a search term and then want to see all the groups, you may need to delete the text from the search box, first.

If you see a group that sounds interesting, click on its name. You do not have to join in order to visit the group! Some groups will be having discussions on the group's Home page. In larger groups, however, you will want to click on the Forum tab. This tab provides a cleaner way to see discussion threads. Click on a thread's name to read the associated posts.

Once you decide you want to join a group, just click the "Join Group" button under the group's description. This should be visible on all of the group's pages. If you post a comment, you will automatically join, if you are not already a member. After you've joined a group, the join button will turn into a leave button, in case you change your mind.

Once you are a member of a number of groups, you can use the "My Groups" tab to find your groups faster.

Friends

After reading a few posts in your new group, you are bound to find someone with similar interests as you, or someone who has been thinking about the same exciting game concept as you. Why not send them a friend request?!

First, click on their name. You will be taken to their profile page where you can read about them. Toward the top of the page, just to the right of their avatar icon, you should see a button that says "Add Friend". The next time they visit the site, they'll have a notification waiting about your friend request. Speaking of Notifications...

Notifications

At the top of the page in your status bar, there's a drop down for notifications. This is where the site will tell you if you have received friend or group invites, if someone accepted your invites, and more.

Level Up!

(someone please verify this is what you need for the first set of mayor tasks) If you have not done so already, head back to the Groups page, find the "Make Gameful Better" group, and join it. Also, if you have not yet posted an update from your profile page, now is the time! Once both tasks have been completed, head back to the Mayor. The two initial tasks should be marked as completed. Submit the tasks, and... Fiero! You are now familiar with the basic site mechanics and navigation. To celebrate, the Mayor will grant you some Treats!