How I Became a Spaceship Commander
summary
Built a small web app called uGame that synchronizes with YouTrack and rewards developers for completing properly granular, up‑to‑date tasks; rolled it into a 20‑person Software Development House (Selleo) and runs daily so teams cooperate to “collect minerals” and finish monthly missions. Early pitfalls include meaningless points and toxic global rankings, so design changes add a narrative, personalized ranking, XP/levels (one user reached 10,000 XP), badges for tests/code reviews, an API for integrations, and measurable gains in task visibility and knowledge sharing.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (17)
- 0:00How I Became a Spaceship Commander
- 0:21Player Profile
- 1:31Motivation issues
- 3:13Communication issues
- 4:58How can I improve?
- 6:00The Plan
- 6:40Level 1: Mission Objectives
- 7:23Level 1 completed!
- 8:31Is that final?
- 9:22What to improve?
- 11:11How to improve?
- 11:48Level 2: Mission Objectives
- 13:09Level 2: Completed!
- 16:08Is it final?
- 19:03Features in Future?
- 19:37YouGame is open source!
- 20:45How I became Spaceship Commander?
related talks
16mQuirk up your workplace
17mCreating Happy Engineers - Anecdotes from the Trenches
50mSuccess On Your Own Terms
38mOne developers journey to fight the Imposter Syndrome
28mRefactoring Your Team For Fun and Profit
01h 01mDeveloper Happiness and Why it Matters
21mFireside Chat: Great User Experiences vs. Successful Monetization: Perspectives From Industry Vets.
52mDeveloper Joy – How great teams get s%*t done