R4nkt gamification resources: ready to help you add value to your app
Tags: saas, gamedev, programming
Published: 2020-12-11 13:47:06

This article hopes to give readers a better understanding of r4nkt, and therefore a clearer picture of how you can easily add value to your game or application.

## How can r4nkt benefit you?

If you don't yet know why or how gamification can bring value to your app, check out [our short blog post](https://r4nkt.com/blog/why-gamify-my-app).

## R4nkt's gamification resources

If you're wondering what gamification resources r4nkt gives you out of the box, read on...or visit our [gamification resources feature page](https://r4nkt.com/features/resources).

Here are some of r4nkt's various gamification resources:

### Achievements

Achievements are one of the central concepts in r4nkt. You create achievements that your players can earn. You assign points, attach rewards, and define the criteria that must be met in order to earn them. Once earned, your player is awarded a badge, points are automatically distributed, and you receive notification of the event.

### Leaderboards

Leaderboards provide ways to keep track of player rankings in different ways. There are currently two types of leaderboards:
- Standard leaderboards automatically keep track of players' rankings according to the achievement points they have earned.
- Custom leaderboards allow you to track your players' scores in whatever way you wish.

For a single game, there's really no need for more than one standard leaderboard, since it's tied directly to your players' achievement points. But, custom leaderboards give you an opportunity to measure whatever you want, however you want. You submit scores to custom leaderboards for your players and r4nkt takes care of the rest.

For all leaderboards, rankings are managed for the following time spans:
- all-time
- daily
- weekly
- monthly
- yearly

### Actions

Actions represent things that your players can do within your application or game. They are in many ways one of the more fundamental building blocks of your r4nkt game.  An action is something that your player can do that you find interesting. It is something you want to encourage, measure, reward, and/or otherwise use as some sort of criteria for earning achievements.

Some examples of actions:
- close a sale
- solve a problem
- submit an article
- slay a red dragon

Actions are then used together with criteria to define what must be done in order to earn an achievement. Player actions then are submitted to r4nkt whenever they are performed in your application.  Again, r4nkt takes over and processes this new activity to see if any achievements have been earned, notifying you of any subsequent badges having been awarded to your player.

### Players

Simply put, players are your users. You report the actions they perform and r4nkt notifies you whenever those actions result in earning an achievement.

### Badges

Badges are awarded to your players whenever an achievement is earned. If configured properly, you will be notified of this event so that you can inform your player and distribute any attached rewards. Points associated with the badge's related achievement will be automatically added to the player's total points and your game's standard leaderboard rankings will be updated.

Another way to think of badges is that they are records of your players' achievements. Each badge is a record of the achievement it represents, the player that has earned the achievement, and the number of points that were awarded.

### Criteria

These simple-yet-important resources allow you to define different ways to measure your players' activities. They can be reused in different ways in multiple criteria groups and across achievements.

Essentially, a criterion is a resource that has the following properties:
- action
- threshold
- operator

You define a criterion by providing values for these three properties, allowing r4nkt to know when a criterion has been met. For example, if you have the following properties set:
- action: make a sale
- threshold: 10
- operator: greater-than-or-equal-to

Then r4nkt knows that the criterion has been met when your player has made at least 10 sales.

### Rewards

Rewards are attached to achievements and give you another way to reward your players. They can be anything you like:
- award points to a custom leaderboard
- fire off an order to Amazon for a gift card
- send an email to someone in HR to hand-deliver a weekend getaway package

The possibilities are endless.

### Scores

You submit player scores for custom leaderboards. Better scores are kept and rankings are automatically updated and maintained for various time spans:
- all-time
- daily
- weekly
- monthly
- yearly

Scores, of course, are used to determine a players' rankings within a given leaderboard.

### Criteria Groups

A criteria group is a reusable collection of criteria that must be met in order for an achievement to be earned. They may contain individual criteria or even other nested criteria groups.

An achievement must have a criteria group with at least one criterion in order to be earned. By creating various combinations of criteria and criteria groups, including nesting criteria groups, complex achievements can be defined.

## Summary

Together, you can use all of these resources to add an exciting dimension to your new or existing application. You can promote behavior, measure activity, reward exceptional accomplishments, provide an element of fun for your users, and more.

For a bit more detail, visit our [documentation](https://docs.r4nkt.com/concepts/overview).

## Interested...?

R4nkt.com, is ready for some interested developers/companies to take the service for a spin...for free...!

We believe the service is ready, but want one last round of real-world testing to make sure...ironing out any wrinkles and addressing any unexpected pain points.

Follow r4nkt on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/r4nkt), sign up for beta access on our [website](https://r4nkt.com), or read a bit more [on our blog](https://r4nkt.com/blog/are-you-ready-to-try-r4nkt).