I definitely love the idea of this, but as some comments mentioned they are completely turned off the term of game (regardless if the principles still apply of not.) I completely agree that we need a better way to set expectations coming in that even though people can just jump in a post (some easier than others right now) it doesn't immediately translate to rewards and there is no doubt a learning curve, some of which is required and some that is not.

I can't remember if it was with you or someone else, but it was recently discussed of a mutable progress bar of basics (signing up to steemit.chat, setting avatar, making first post, first comment, and maybe even first cash out) which could also be offered as a small game like tutorial instead (without calling it a game, just a tutorial.)

But in the end...we're really at the point of needing to decide a target market. I'd suspect many users already here wouldn't have a huge issue with a few game like elements being subtly added, but are we looking for

• experienced (even if amateur) writers, photographers, artists, etc. to share their craft
• a (typically younger crowd) of more generic social media users who just want to post (with the now trending #til, #funny, or #news tags)
• more content consumers who truly digest material, upvote and comment
• an ideal driven crowd looking to change the world paradigm, help people/charity, or other future looking/impactful activities
• something else I can't think of off the top of my head

[Note: Imo most people in the cryptosphere already know about Steemit and have either been here (some still here and others have left) or made up their mind that they're not joining. I don't see focusing that crowd as terribly beneficial right now.]

Over time we'll have an easier time bringing in more types of people because of having more established sub-communities, much like people that only visit the trending and specific sub-reddits. But right now, having limited resources, we do need to find that more targeted market we want to start with and make our decisions around that.

Personally, I see going after the younger, college age crowd as being our best target. They are more accepting of new technologies (like crypto and the blockchain,) they're already trained in the ways of basic computers/facebook/reddit, they don't have the instilled fear of crypto that many older demographics do, and their typically idealistic and full of passion. The other benefit of this is that we can use content already existing on here to educate the college crowd to crypto (which imo is the biggest longterm hurdle for steemit) and potentially even begin to put together material for open source education on this and other topics akin to [MIT's open courseware.)(https://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm) It's worth noting I do see this same group being comprised of both active content creators and consumers.

[Please don't read this as an insult against any other groups, it's just my view of our lowest hanging and most likely group to convert over to steemit.]

If this is our target group, I'm all for the reframing of Steemit.com itself as a Social Game that can Pay you for Playing....if we are going to target a different group than this, I this it may run into problems (again like we saw in some other comments.)

Anyhoo, as always, just my 'wall of text' thoughts on the matter. Lol