Positioning itself as a competitor to online player communities such as Raptr, a new gamer social net called Honored is trying to get itself off the ground through a crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo. The site’s hook is creating a new system for tracking game achievements. It wants to create a central hub where players can showcase what they’ve accomplished in other games, turn those various achievements into a user rank based on Honored’s own system, and then have the option of ordering physical representations of their rank as embroidered badges.
“Honored aims to be the bridge between the intangible achievements and the physical awards that you can collect and proudly show off,” says Honored co-founder J. Eckert in their Indiegogo video.
What Eckert and his team are trying to do is reminiscent of the patches that Activision used to dole out for their Atari 2600 games. Coincidentally, Game Informer recently penned an article billing those patches as “the original gaming achievement.” If you remember holding up a camera to a TV as the first instant you captured a screen shot – Activision’s requirement to prove that a player had completed a goal to earn a patch – you’re a bona fide old school gamer in my book.
Honored’s approach is to issue icons that resemble military ranks based on a user’s level of achievement in other games, which players can then order as physical badges. The founders say the site will incorporate achievements from Xbox Live, PlayStation Network and Steam. To get things started, backers who pledge $10 or more to their Indiegogo campaign get their first Honored “Backer Badge.”
Honored is trying to raise $25,000 and says the money is both to build site infrastructure and source physical goods providers to fulfill those badges.
The whole thing makes me want to go dig up my River Raid patch. Thanks to Atari Age, you can reminisce with me here.