#oneaday, Day 172: Epic Win

This is the best. Idea. EVAR.

Video game nerds like to think about things in terms of video games. It’s part of what we do. RPG nerds are the same. And when you get a video game nerd who also likes RPGs? Well, that’s it, really. Everything degenerates into jokes about gaining XP for changing lightbulbs and the like.

Epic Win looks set to allow people to do just that. At last! This is the To Do list I’ve been waiting for.

I have no shame in admitting that I’ve named projects in OmniFocus for the iPhone so that they look more like quests, or chapters from a story. And I’d love a Deus Ex-style nanomachine HUD that allowed me to track my objectives from inside my own head. So long as you could turn the damn thing off. Trying to sleep with a waypoint tracker would probably be difficult.

And gaining experience points is cool, as everyone knows. Experience points are even cool for non-nerds now, as anyone who wastes hours of their life playing Farmville will attest. Experience points give us something to focus on. They give us a sort-of-tangible reward for achieving something, even if that thing is mundane. They offer a recognisable, attainable goal in the form of the next level. And they encourage competition with friends.

So why not apply them to your personal life? That seems to be the exact approach that Epic Win is taking, and I love love love it. The app may not be out yet, but for the simple reason that it aims to get nerds organised, it’s a day-one purchase for me.

And you just know there’ll be Achievements in there too. And probably some means of comparing said Achievements with friends. Who knows? Maybe it’ll turn a generation of slovenly geeks into houseproud types.

Perhaps not. But it’s a noble goal, at least, and a nice way to make the mundane and boring into a game, something which products like EA Sports Active have done with some success with other activities in the past.

Check out the app’s official site here.