That’s definitely something I do. For my favourite families, or if I encounter multiple species of the same genus, I start “collecting” these observations. (As in, I get excited when I find a new species of that genus) and try to find as many different ones as I can.
For example: Coccinellidae, Chrysididae, Campanula, Veronica
The other game I play is trying to remember the scientific names of species I encounter on “dry stretches” where I find nothing particularly interesting to observe.
I like to set targets. So I identify with the Milestones thread. I also want to see my Species count get ever higher, and I just enjoy seeing new things for the first time. I did also enjoy trying to keep a long streak going, and also made a journal everyday for a month. I also like the badges on this forum :)
These self-set targets can push me on days when motivation is low or the weather doesn’t co-operate.
I totally gamify, and it’s all about species. But my games have contradictory goals. I’m always trying to increase my species list, and I strive for a decent ratio of species to observations. I try to keep number of species at 25% or more of my observation count. But then I also get competitive in bioblitzes, I set a goal to get 100 or 200 spp. So after a few bioblitzes I’m racking up multiple obs of the same boring things in my local ravine. I know exactly where to find things like certain escaped non-native tree species etc so I go back to them every year to get my bioblitz counts up. It’s gotten to the point that I feel like I’m in the “Groundhog Day” movie, living the same day over and over (he relives the same day and knows the future so he spends his morning saving people from pending accidents). It’s pretty hard to have a good spp:obs ratio when I post the same weedy spp every bioblitz.
Another thing I aspire to is to have more IDs than observations, but that’s more of a personal obligation than “fun”, and I’m way behind.
I know what you mean. I have a mental list of places I can observe species that are difficult to find, both weeds and native species. During the bioblitz I get involved in, I move from one known spot to another. I don’t feel that I’m exploring, which I like to do. I get decent species totals, though. 
Then what do you find rewarding about the Bioblitz? Obviously you get something out of it or you wouldn’t be sure to do it each year.
I do most of my iNatting in green spaces in and around the city where I live, which means that botanically there are not a lot of surprises anymore.
So there are a few games I play to amuse myself:
Finding unusual/aberrant individuals, e.g. white-flowering specimens of plants that are normally blue or pink (so far: Lamium purpurea, Lamium maculatum, Echium vulgare, Chichorium intubus, Geranium robertianum, Ballota nigra). Also Plantago lanceolata with deformed inflorescences and plants blooming at unusual times of year (accounting for several observations of non-wild Aesculus hippocastanum)
Adding new species by documenting escaped garden plants growing in sidewalk cracks (and Solanum lycopersicum growing beside park benches).
Looking for host-specific bugs on common plants (Oxycarenus pallens on Centaurea, Elasmotropis testacea on Echinops, Metatropis rufescens on Circaea, Platyplax salviae on Salvia, etc. I have been searching in vain for Corythucha ciliata even though Platanus is a common street tree here). I am fairly bad at finding caterpillars and galls, but one could presumably play the same game with them. As a result of these efforts, I have probably skewed the iNat distribution maps for Oxycarenus pallens and Elasmotropis testacea in Germany. There is a user nearby who does the same thing for Metatropis rufescens and I have concluded that I am unlikely to ever catch up to her, since Circaea is much more common around her usual haunts than it is in mine.
Im in the group that sees inat like a pokedex and i want to capture the most rare pokemon and all ot my area hehe. I like the score thing as well. I see the leaderboard with lots of dedicated people. That’s awesome. I want to get that high.
@carnifex came up with a game in which the goal is to find multiple similar species at the same location – i.e. several members of the same genus, or lookalikes in different genera. The rule is that they all have to be visible in the same photograph. This has the useful side-effect of producing some great botanical comparison photos.
I believe the record so far is 5x Trifolium (plus 2 additional species also present at the site but not quite close enough to fit in the photo). The most I’ve managed is 3, but I’m keeping a lookout in the hopes that one day all the local Lamium species will decide to congregate at a single location.
Have you also tried looking for the pink-flowered Cichorium intybus, which is normally blue?
I do this with Tridax daisies. There is a lovely, little variation that appears from time to time and I look for it.
So what’s that about anyway? I’m a bit of a newbie so I only have about 600 observations and one of them was liked. It was a generic shot of some ducks (mallards, of course) and Canada geese on a pond near my house. I had assumed that I would not get any likes until I got a photo of some rare thing, and then my only like is a pond shot? I don’t get it.
Likes are very subjective to the one doing the liking. I have “faved” observations of both common and rare taxa based on the visual appeal of the image. Someone else may “fave” for completely different reasons.
I “fave” especially beautiful or funny or weird photos that I’d like to be able to see again. Also observations with good views of technical plant parts that are rarely photo’d but useful for identification, ones I may want to reference in the future. Or some rarely photo’d life stage, like a juvenile rail (bird). I wouldn’t bother to “fave” just for rarity because I can always search for the rare species by species name. People differ in their motivations for this. The favorites are an idiosyncratic little gallery for each of us.
Haven’t had the opportunity to see a pink one, but it is a ubiquitous roadside plant around here, so I imagine it’s a matter of time.
I’ve always found the blue/pink variation rather interesting. There are a number of plants where the color of the individual flowers change from pink to blue as they age. Borage is the one I most vividly associate with this, but many other Boraginaceae follow this pattern, too. I’m not sure off-hand how common this is in other families.
I definitely agree with this. When I mention RG or talk about leaderboards it’s more of a way of measuring how much impact/data I’ve generated even though it’s not that straight forward. It’s evidence of my iNat adventure I guess
there is a record record of 5 Carex species within a distance of less than, I guess, one meter
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/81684895
whereas I myself managed to get a quintuple of Veronica in even closer distance to each other, but the photo to cover them all does not provide much details
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/204135891
I think I like best the four Acer species basically touching each other
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/181423160
I’m not quite sure whether small goals count as gamifying. If they do, then yes. Mostly because I aim to have an identification to observation ratio of 2:1, and because I like to annotate a bunch for one species and then check the graphs . . .
If goals don’t count, then not really. I like nature anyway, and so I never really thought to make a game out of it. But I think it could be quite fun to do that every so often.
A quick brainstorm mostly resulting in more variations on the theme of goals, but one more game like idea to make a set of ‘misdirection’/adventure cards for observing. Similar to the cards found on this website: https://gettinglost.co.nz/collections/all. Each card would give a rule for your next observation based on what you’ve just observed. A simple example would be ‘find something to observe in a different kingdom from what you just observed.’ Maybe not everyone’s idea of fun, but to me it seems like a scavenger hunt with no preparation needed!
My other idea worth sharing was to create very small identification guides using amigurumi (crocheted animals) to point out key features of a plant. Not sure that qualifies as a game though.
I think IdentiFriday and Annotation Sunday should count as “gamification”.
I’m waiting for someone to get both a honeybee drone and a drone fly in a single photo…
Most of my likes are my own observations! Ones that interest me, ones I’m proud of, ones I want to quickly find again to show people, etc…
It’s like built-in iNat bookmarks