Next up in my series of newbie musings about Steem: Why does Steem feel like a game?

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Is Steem a Game?

Well, yeah, of course it is. Just like any social network, Steem is loaded with gamified elements: rewards, upvotes, downvotes, you name it. And that's just what's built into the blockchain. We also have user-provided gamification in the form of tribes, contests, bounties, and more. Pretty much everything we do on Steem is incentivized or disincentivized in one way or another.

And of course, gamification is something that's built into pretty much any online social network you can think of. Whether it's likes, reactions, votes, comments, or "thanks" systems, you see elements of games not just in the "big" social sites like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, but even in small sites, like forums, review sites, and so on.

As I've alluded to in a previous post, Steem is a bit different from all the other content discovery sites, and all the other social networks, in that (among other things) there are financial rewards. That ups the stakes a little bit.

There are also some concrete goals built into Steem that make it seem even more game-like than most online social sites.

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The Ladder of Steem

As I perceive it, at least, Steem gives you a (short) series of increasingly elusive goals to reach, with a number of options on how to reach them.

If you think about it:

• You start off as a Plankton, with hardly any influence on the site and very little in the way of curation rewards.
• Around 500SP or so, you become a Minnow! Your votes are worth more (though that really happens gradually, not all at once), you're probably starting to find more friends and build a bit of a social graph, and @steemitboard tells you you've accomplished something (in case you doubted it). Hooray!
• At 5000SP, you've hit Dolphin status, which I've seen referred to as the "middle class" of Steem. Your votes are starting to be worth something solid, even if you're not changing people's lives with them. If you've stuck around this long, you've probably got a good number of followers and authors you follow, and are getting a sense of camaraderie on the platform. Great! And you have a long time to build up more, because that next rung of the ladder looks awfully far away.
• If you're really persistent, you'll probably accumulate about 50,000SP and make Orca status (or so I observe; I'm pretty far away from there myself). This is when you might be fairly well-known as a Steem contributor, might be leading some community efforts, or even developing dApps. Your upvote value is enough to make a Minnow's day. This might be a good place to rest on your laurels, because the next and final rung of the ladder is VERY far off. But if you stick around long enough, who knows?
• And then there are Whales. I think there are under 50 whales on the Steem platform, and I'm not surprised, because 500,000SP seems like an almost impossible number. How do you get to be a whale? I wouldn't presume to ask the actual whales on the platform, but I assume it's a combination of being here early, investing a huge amount of effort into the platform, and investing a good chunk of money into Steem as well. That's why whales are the elite of the elite on Steem.

I used to work in the video game industry. When I look at this ladder of progress, with its exponentially more difficult goals, I can only wish that I had designed a game system so simple, yet so elegant and effective.

But there are a couple of things that strike me as particularly interesting about this.

One is the advancement of social status that naturally follows your SP level, and which I alluded to above. Let's face it: it's pretty hard to accumulate, say, 50,000SP without having interacted with a good number of other Steemians along the way, and without creating a pretty extensive social graph for yourself. That's not built into the blockchain, either; that's just something that happens as you play the "game". But it's another kind of reward for playing, in and of itself. I can't imagine that it's not by design.

The other thing that's pretty fascinating is that there are a bunch of different ways to ascend the ladder.

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So How Do I Win?

Let me start by saying that the idea of "winning" is not something I would normally associate with social networks. But with Steem's ladder of achievements in mind, there is a sense that I could "win" in some way.

Of course, what "winning Steem" means depends on what you want out of Steem. If you just want to share some photos, or do some blogging, and have a bit of an audience while you do it, then you most likely have already won.

If you have a competitive nature, though, it's difficult not to want to become a whale someday (or at least an orca). For many people, the idea of being well-known within your niche, and having the economic influence to give out serious financial rewards to other Steemians is pretty appealing. There's nothing wrong with that; in fact, that goal is kind of programmed into the blockchain.

So let's say you want to hit whale or orca level. How can you do that? There are a bunch of ways, and you can choose one or use a combination:

• You can provide quality content over a somewhat long period of time. This may require the most effort, but is possibly the most rewarding. You'll make a lot of friends along the way, and have the bragging rights to say that you're a self-made whale (or orca). Pretty cool.
• You can buy Steem Power. Can you make yourself a whale overnight? Sure, if you've got the money to spend. And really, there's nothing wrong with that if you do. To buy your way to whaledom means making a large financial investment in the Steem ecosystem--and that's good for Steem. Of course, that investment is going to be large, even in this market, and that's why making those rungs of the ladder exponentially far apart was a great idea. Not many people can afford to buy their way to the top.
• You can do a combination of the two. This is probably what most people do, and it's not a bad way to make your way to being an orca, at least. It's unclear to me whether this is the path that's going to make you a whale; with the small number of whales we have even after 2-3 years, I kind of doubt it.
• You can build your standing in the community and become a Witness. Interesting alternative, right? While I can't speak to the amount of effort and financial investment it takes to do this, there are certainly more witnesses than whales, and that's interesting in itself. But if you end up as a witness, you're helping to secure the blockchain directly, and that's pretty nice.
• You can exploit the system. Not something I'm interested in doing, but I'm sure there are people out there doing it. It sounds like it became much harder in #NewSteem, but it's pretty hard to keep determined people from finding exploits--that's something I know all too well as a software developer.

To me, this is the real genius in the design of Steem. You have some goals built into the system--both within and outside of the blockchain. You have a lot of ways to achieve them--again, both within and outside the blockchain.

I couldn't have designed a better game.

Knowing all this, what does "winning" mean to me? Do I want to "win" at all, or just use Steem for the pure joy of it? Honestly, I'm not sure. I think I need to spend more time on Steem before I can answer that.

How about you? What do you want out of Steem? Do you feel like you need to "win"? Do you feel that Steem is "winnable" at all? Am I totally off base in my thinking? Let's chat about it in the comments.