Seth Priebatsch, the CEO of SCVNGR, a company developing an interesting eponymous location-based gaming platform, gave a talk at TED recently. He covered some interesting ground, including a few game design patterns with in-game and real-world examples. If you’re as interested in this stuff as I am, it’s worth 12 minutes of your time:
Is it [...]
I wrote a piece about a year ago called Workplace Motivation and Game Mechanics which summed up some of my ideas for bringing some of the compelling character of video games to the office. Since then, some much smarter people have been doing some thinking and experimenting with similar ideas.
Jane McGonigal gave a terrific talk [...]
About a week and a half ago, Abigail, Liam and I got together with their friends Ryan and Eleen, my cohort Jason Young, and my brother Chris for another round of GURPS, the tabletop roleplaying game we’ve been enjoying lately. I had been planning to run an adventure in a Science Fiction setting this time [...]
A while back, I wrote a post on Workplace Motivation and Game Mechanics, where I speculated on the efficacy of using game systems, like achievements, awarding points, high score lists, etc., to help motivate people in the workplace.
Last week at the DICE Summit, Carnegie-Mellon Assistant Professor of Education and Technology Jesse Schell gave a terrific [...]
Liam has continued to show interest in creating computer games. His latest effort is Ghost Killer, a straightforward game where your sole job is to avoid the bullets descending from the top of the screen. He created it (with a little help, though much less than for Cat Maze) in Scratch, MIT’s terrific graphic programming [...]
This morning while walking the kids to school, I had Simon & Garfunkel’s “Only Living Boy in New York” running through my head and, since I have no filter between them, out of my mouth. As I reached for the low note at the end of a phrase, it occurred to me that the range [...]
WARNING: Nerdy, kvetchy, juvenile rant ahead. Those of a sensitive disposition may wish to avert their eyes. You must be at least 48″ tall to read this post. Pregnant women or visitors with neck or back problems should sit this one out. Please consult your physician before proceeding. Do not read while under the influence [...]
One of the things about writing software for a living is that customers are rarely happy when you tell them “It will be done when it’s done.” Even though development is fraught with uncertainty, it’s still incumbent upon us who practice this craft to be able to give people some idea of what kind of [...]
I manage a crew of about 5 programmers at work. During our performance reviews this year, I asked each of them how I could do my job as a manager better. One of them, in a bit of much-appreciated candor, said that motivation was one of his biggest challenges, and that he would be grateful [...]
A few weeks back, Liam and I were up in Austin to bring a sick iMac in to the Apple store. After having spent an hour driving up and facing a similar return trip, it seemed silly not to poke around town a bit more before returning. I thought for a bit about what was [...]
