This morning Stern Pinball announced that it has added another feature to its new Insider Connected system and I personally think that, while small, this latest one is a brilliant move. The new feature is called Milestone Badges. Essentially they award players special badges for number of days played, number of games played and their "streak" i.e. number of days in a row played.
I think that this was a really smart move by Stern because it ties right into the way that young people utilize their phones and social media. I remember hearing my oldest son talk about "Streaks" on Snap Chat back when he was in high school. At the time, I asked him, "What is that?" It was essentially the number of days in a row that you sent a person a Snap. Apparently kids took pride in seeing how many days in a row they could Snap someone and they made an effort to keep their streaks alive.
I'm sure that a lot of old school people will poo poo the notion of these new achievements, but I'm on board. Why not? I'm all for anything that encourages people to play pinball, particularly younger people who can keep the hobby alive. I personally am all in on Insider Connected achievements. While eating my bowl of cereal this morning at breakfast I actually looked up which achievements I was missing on Jurassic Park so I could specifically go for them tonight. The system has significantly expanded the number of things that I can go for in my game beyond just the basic high scores.
