Zynga now accepts American Express Reward Points!

Why not celebrate the 100th post of Gamepocalypse Now with a wedding between the real and virtual worlds? Zynga and American Express are connecting their currencies! Do you have American Express points you don't know what to do with? Now you can spend them on virtual cows you won't know what to do with! Dean Takahashi has all the details here.

A big Gamepocalypse Now set of best wishes to the happy couple! I'm sure we'll soon hear the patter of little feet! Horrifying, horrifying, little feet.

Gamification Needs to Level Up -- Here's How

A high level article talking about pros and cons of attempted gamification. Thanks to Amy Jo Kim for the tip!

David Rowan's Gamification Report

David Rowan has prepared a report for NESTA (UK's National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts) about Gamification. It contains a nice overview and some good examples. Wired UK feature here, and actual report here.

TSA's Playful Tweets

You know how I'm always saying that communication in the world is getting more playful? Error messages, bank advertisements, I mean, sometimes that's nice, but sometimes, it goes too far. I mean, the only thing kids are going to have left to rebel against is stupidity. Gah! What if that's the plan??

Old Navy in-game virtual store

Old Navy has put a link to their online store in a virtual store, partly as a promotion for their real store... uh... nope, I'm lost. Anyway, you can read more about it here, and you can try it out in Crowdstar's It Girl game on Facebook.

Man, I can't believe Clara Bow sold out like that.

Everything is Intelligent

A cute comic about the downside of disposable computing. Thanks to Drew Davidson for the tip! This one is relevant, too.

Crowdflower

So -- Crowdflower is a labor on demand crowdsourcing service. What does that have to do with the Gamepocalypse? Check out this article about how you can perform crowdsourced tasks and get farmcash in exchange! Thanks to Bobby Schaetzle for the tip!

Mobile Phones to Diagnose STDs

I have wanted to pee on my phone many times, but now there's a good reason! The race to make a game out of it is on! Thanks to Steven Ramirez for the link -- I swear that's all he gave me.

Can't Play, Won't Play

Great Post from Margaret Robertson about the ugly trends of so-called gamification. Thanks to Geoffrey Chew for the tip!

The Future of Virtual Characters

Unite 2010 / Keynote - Part B from Unity3D on Vimeo.
I was part of the keynote at Unite 2010. It was a super fun conference -- David, Brett, and Christian made all kinds of cool announcements! I think Brett's scarf made him nervous. Skip to minute 6 to hear my talk. I tried to make an edit that was just me, but my edits all came out blurry. Christian Nutt was kind enough to put a good summary of my talk on Gamasutra, if you like reading better than listening.

Kinect

Kinect is here, baby! And as usual, Penny Arcade sums up the situation nicely. Everyone's been talking about the gesture stuff, but no one's been talking about the voice commands. I continue to believe that voice commands, that is, having a dialog with inanimate objects, will become a distinguishing mark of the twenty-teens. Yeah, you heard right -- I'm calling this decade the twenty-teens. Hey Kinect -- stop looking at me.

iKlip

Want to put your iPad on a mic stand because somehow you are turning your musicianship into a game? Now you can! Thanks to Mk Haley for the tip!

The AppDroid Apocalypse

Great post from Steve Peterson about a different kind of Gamepocalypse. Hard to argue with, and he doesn't even mention cloud gaming. Thanks to David Shaver for the tip!

True Ventures Poster

I did a talk recently about "keys to gamification" at the True Ventures camp (slides visible here), and Sheryl Nigro was kind enough to make a poster of it while I was there.