A Step Ahead Challenge

Rebooting about every other time I try to report steps in the app. The app hangs and you have few options. HORRIBLE USER EXPERIENCE. Incompetent developers. Best if HR gives up on this app. Cute idea but is terribly FRUSTRATING to try to use.

The competitive nature of this app has been great for workplace contests. I enjoy the format and tools. Two stars because the app regularly has to be rebooted to sync properly and each reboot requires a lengthy load/boot screen. Spend less time on making the logo fancy and more time on efficiency.

The game is really fun but really poorly balanced. The ideal way to win is to only recruit five people getting 10k steps a day. If you actually open up the team to all employees you wind up penalized for any underachievers. Instead of everyone feeling valued or like their effort matters, the higher achievers have to do extra work to balance out everyone else, instead of the teams working together it becomes very clear early on if victory is even achievable.

I think this was a great motivation to get moving but the actual app and game left much to be desired. It was not a good fit for our team.

I play each spring through work and love it. I pushes me to get steps because I want to try to make it to the safe house first. It’s a great motivator.

It is fun, but teams on the east coast always reach the Safehouse first thus earning points that teams in other (especially west) can never earn. Is there a way to make it more fair? Even our division is spread across time zones, and that is a bit frustrating. Another problem is that the app just won’t open sometime. I just get a pulsing red hand.

My husband got invited to join a work participation race. Everybody was excited and since he was doing it I joined in on the Freeplay quests. Before the game started he was excited enough that he was looking at the pay platforms wanting to see if we could start family challenges after the work challenge ended. After a week of us walking 5 miles a day He experienced a huge flaw in this game. His entire team hasn’t participated including the managers who were boasting excitement prior to the start. He went from almost no daily steps to walking 5 miles a day to participate. His efforts are split between 7 people who haven’t logged even 2 steps and his efforts alone are greater than the participants on the winning team. Why is it not mandatory that if after 3 days of non participation the dead weight gets dropped and the actual participants get regrouped and shuffled to participating teams? He’s carried the entire 7 person team and they’ve come in and used his exercise points to heal themselves but not contributed anything. Because of their lack of effort he’s not going to experience the safe house, and yet he’s put in 3 times the effort of anyone on the team ranked in 1st place. But because he couldn’t walk the extra 26 miles in 2 days to carry the team to the finish is kind of messed up. There should be a safeguard to combat those who consistently ride the game on others efforts. Those non contributing people have obviously been doing this a while because they have special in-game reward based extras. The idea of this game is awesome and could be a good motivation tool. However, the lack of options if you get put into a team that doesn’t participate is very discouraging and really makes you want to say “forget this, and why bother?”.

I didn’t really get the plot or the point. You just upload your steps every day. Hard to see how you compare to others. A 17,000 step day seems about the same as a 5,000 step day. As a work event, I’d say opposite of team building.

This game has kept me competitive if I notice I was short on my steps before bedtime I would go for a night walk just to make it up started wearing my phone during soccer basketball or any of my activities to get my steps in everything counts great game.

The first two weeks the app worked great and the game was fun and motivating, but starting with week 3, the app started to work against players. First, it rewarded Health point steps randomly. Fewer steps for one member, awarded 158 power points. I walked continuously for 1 hour (more than double the steps, and earned 30). By the end of day 1, I I had 18,000 spent steps and earned 80 power points. What is up with that? Day 2 of third week, the app won’t open beyond the pulsing red hand. Very disappointing and unmotivating. ☹️