Earn New Visual Studio Achievements When Developing in Windows Azure

A few months back the Channel 9 team created Visual Studio Achievements which has inspired more than 80,000 downloads.Developers see achievement badges as a fun way to socially share the accomplishments they earn in what can sometimes be the lonely act of writing code.

New badges are available today, so now developers can unlock new achievements when using Visual Studio to write code for Windows Azure. Badges can be earned for proper cloud development usage, mobile+cloud scenarios, social gaming scenarios, or a dozen other developer-related accomplishments.

Got to play the game to win it

In the same way that FourSquare and Xbox users earn badges for the activities occurring within the community, Visual Studio now has 15 new achievements for developing applications in Windows Azure, bringing the total number of badges to 47.

Some achievements even seamlessly integrate the previously announced Windows Azure Toolkit for Mobile Development and Social Gaming. The program extension is complete with fun badges, a public leaderboard and built in social media sharing options. With achievements like “Show Me the Cache” for using Windows Azure Caching and “Tired of Waiting In Line” for using timeout features of Windows Azure queues, we’re excited for more people to get started and show off their Azure coding skills.

For MSDN subscribers, Microsoft Partners or BizSpark members this is also a great opportunity to take advantage of the free Windows Azure Benefits.

For more information

Download the updated Visual Studio Achievements Extension here

Read more on Channel9

Check out the latest Achievements Leaderboard.

 

Bruce D. KyleISV Architect Evangelist | Microsoft Corporation

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 30, 2012
  Nice to see the achievements are expanding... a fun new element of gamification in VS :)