Some good ideas here.
Aside from the gamification aspect, we've done a lot of these things through the Saturday Savers Club on the @eddie-earner account. We're just now planning for 2025 which will launch on 4 January 2025. In fairness, there have been other initiatives, too, over the years.
It's taken four years to build the Club, but we're ready now to bring new comers to Hive. I did some workshops at a Conference in June where there was a lot of interest and which helped me understand what people needed to get started. I'll be running a couple of online workshops with a community I work with leading up to the next Launch.
I'm also progressing another idea for a readers and writers community, with an emphasis on bringing more readers/consumers/curators to Hive.