Some developers played World of Warcraft, while others slaved at EverQuest. The ability to earn virtual badges, like in EverQuest, kept them playing for hours on end. Microsoft’s recent introduction of its Achievements extension for Visual Studio combines that love of virtual badges with a developer kit, and many developers are ready to achieve.
One Visual Studio developer, Matthijs Krempel, is eager to apply the concept to programming, stating that “With games, its fun to figure out how to get from 99 to 100 percent completion. But I’ve never seen that applied to a professional tool. We started thinking about Visual Studio, and what we could unlock. Using achievements could make some fun out of products that weren’t that fun to use.”