Achievements / Badging
A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of colored ribbon.
Napoleon Bonaparte
Achievements and badges harness this powerful motivator. Even small symbolic rewards can represent status, recognition, and progress—encouraging players to strive, complete challenges, and display their accomplishments.
The Call of Duty franchise not only tracks all awards a player gets in individual matches but also rewards reaching high milestones with in-game rewards like skins, and other costumisation.
Achievements and badges provide frequent rewards that recognize the completion of specific goals or milestones. By mapping these badges directly to learning objectives or desired behaviors – such as completing five tasks or participating in a forum – educators can build a visible and motivating map of the developmental journey. This provides frequent “dopamine hits” that maintain engagement and provide a sense of joy.
The naming of achievements can be humorous or serious, helping to set the tone of the training and providing the learner with a bit of “distance” from the pressure of the tasks. Ultimately, achievements create a status-driven sense of pride, encouraging learners to finish all tasks to complete their “set” of badges.
It is a good practice to have some achievements be given for simply doing the assigned task or simply making progress for regular hits of dopamine but also include hard to get achievements for the more dedicated participants to be able to show off.