In Focus This Week: The Arcade Base Camp!

[Yugali]

Welcome to the latest in The Arcade—In Focus this week, where we will feature different levels, challenges, and games in The Arcade that you can take on to build your Cloud Skills and earn Arcade Points!

This week, we have our eyes on the Arcade Base Camp!

Consider it as your first challenge when you enter The Arcade. Whether you are new to cloud or a pro in The Arcade, the Arcade Base Camp will help you pick up essential cloud skills and refresh your basics at the same time.

What’s more? You can earn 1 Arcade Point once you clear the Base Camp.

The Arcade Base Camp is also available in Spanish and Portuguese (BR) and here’s what is has to offer you this month:

• Working with JSON, Arrays, and Structs in BigQuery: Learn how to work with JSON data, arrays, and structs in BigQuery to improve your data analysis.
• Autoscaling an Instance Group with Custom Cloud Monitoring Metrics: Understand how to use custom metrics in Cloud Monitoring to automatically scale your compute resources based on performance.
• Monitoring Multiple Projects with Cloud Monitoring: Learn how to manage and monitor multiple Google Cloud projects from a single place, giving you a clear view of your infrastructure’s status.
• Creating and Alerting on Logs-based Metrics: Find out how to create logs-based metrics and set up alerts to keep track of important events in your cloud environment.
• Running a MongoDB Database in Kubernetes with StatefulSets: See how to deploy MongoDB databases in Kubernetes using StatefulSets to ensure reliable data management for your applications.
• Troubleshooting and Solving Data Join Pitfalls: Get practical tips on how to avoid and fix common issues when joining data from different sources to ensure accurate results.
• Web Security Scanner: Qwik Start: Get started with securing your web applications using the Web Security Scanner to identify and fix vulnerabilities.
• Speech-to-Text API: Qwik Start: Learn how to quickly add speech recognition capabilities to your applications using Google Cloud’s Speech-to-Text API.
• Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL: Qwik Start: Discover the basics of setting up and managing a PostgreSQL database in Cloud SQL, Google Cloud’s managed relational database service.
• Using Custom Fields in Looker Explores: Explore how to create and use custom fields in Looker for more tailored data analysis.
• Understanding and Analyzing Your Costs with Google Cloud Billing Reports: Learn how to monitor and analyze your cloud spending with Google Cloud Billing Reports to keep your projects on budget.

If you haven’t completed it yet, now’s the perfect time to jump in and get started. The adventure awaits—grab your 🎮 and take on the challenge!

See you in the Cloud! 

[Babar_Ali]

Please reveal the criteria for Arcade Milestones and how the point system will work for each Milestone this season. We've been earning Arcade Points since the Arcade Monsoon Challenge and have accumulated quite a few points so far, but we don't know when or where to stop. Last time, the criteria for Arcade Milestones were revealed early. Without knowing the point system criteria for the Arcade Milestones, we might miss out on unlocking a specific milestone that we are aiming for.

For example, I want to unlock the Premium Milestone this time, but I've already earned a lot of points earlier. I currently don’t know which Arcade Milestone I fall into. This situation is really frustrating because it’s possible that I have enough points to unlock the Premium+ Milestone when my actual target was the Previous Premium Milestone.

[TheInfernitex]

The point system is very confusing. The monsoon challenge provided 1 point for each skill badge instead of the usual 2, implying that points do serve a purpose. But they seem to be redundant in reality. The swags are linked to milestones and the milestones seem to be : complete x games, y trivia, and z skill badges. So why does it even matter if we have 100 points or a million, if the swags are based on milestones and the milestones are according to the number of things completed and not the points(at least for this season, don't know about the previous ones)

[Harsha4603]

The 'complete x games, y trivia, and z skill badges' thing is only meant to earn bonus points (if you are part of the facilitator program). The milestones for swags (standard, advanced, etc.) will probably be similar to that of the previous season and will eventually be revealed at a later time.

[Saqib_Patel]

Please reveal the first Swag of this Arcade Season! We are eagerly waiting for it and will help us a lot in completing milestone.

[S8ul]

Hello @Yugali I want to bring up some concerns regarding my recent experience with Google Cloud labs

Firstly, I noticed that a user named Qikashi appeared to be completing labs at an incredibly fast pace during the certification zone time. According to the leaderboard, Qikashi started doing labs at 12:15 and completed all of them by 12:30. Given the length and complexity of these labs, it seems impossible to complete them at such a rate. Additionally, Qikashi's score was over 2 million, which further raises suspicions of potential cheating.

Secondly, the recently imposed 15-labs-per-day limit is proving to be quite restrictive, especially in light of the frequent bugs and errors within the labs. These technical issues often require restarting or repeating labs, which eats into the daily limit. As a result, even more time is lost, making it difficult to progress effectively. While I understand the intention behind the limit, it can be particularly frustrating when compounded by these bugs, ultimately discouraging us from fully engaging with the platform.

I believe addressing these concerns will significantly improve the overall experience for everyone using Google Cloud labs. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

[Nguyenan112]

Great labs! I really enjoyed them

[Rushina1]

hmm, since I have done almost all the skill badges, the facilitator program is not for me :). Am enjoying our regular trivia and games and hope the points grouping is revealed. I may reach advanced and that's good enough for me 🙂