Jan 30, 2011

Games to Prevent Suicide

Kognito Interactive has created a game that lets teachers practice identifying students at-risk for suicide. Their studies have shown that teachers who have played the game are more likely to identify at-risk students and intervene on their behalf. I strongly suspect the success of this system is likely to greatly increase the amount of training simulations that involve interviewing virtual characters. Thanks to Fiona McDevitt of Kognito for the tip!

Videogame Bus Stops

Let's say you are waiting for a bus, and don't have a smartphone. Or a DS. Or a book. And, further, let's say that you don't mind touching a public touch screen at a San Francisco bus stop. In that case, does Yahoo have a great surprise for you! Not only are they instrumenting twenty bus stops with videogames, but the neighborhood with the highest scoring bus stop will get a free block party! Thanks to Zach Coe for the tip!

Seriously, though. WEAR GLOVES.

Jan 24, 2011

Biotic Games

Ingmar Riedel-Kruse at Stanford has created a series of videogames which involve controlling REAL paramecia with electricity and chemicals, to make them part of simple arcade games. Why? Other than the pure joy of cruelty, "Riedel-Kruse says his larger ambition is to find ways to make the games useful, perhaps in the context of science education, or even as tools for crowd-sourced research projects." The link has several videos that must be seen to be believed. I predict games that involve all the things living in the finger grease on your iPhone. Thanks to Scott Landsman for the tip!

Jan 16, 2011

Gamification Summit

The first Gamification Summit is this week. It's already sold out, however, you can still register to view streams of the talks. Lots of interesting speakers -- a great place to hear about the many experiments that are taking place in an attempt to accelerate the coming of the Gamepocalypse. Wish I could go!

Jan 5, 2011

Favimon

Hilarious idea! Battle corporate "favicons" against each other... from any website you choose! "Disney.com uses dysfunction against schellgames.com for two points of damage!" (Yeesh, that has actually happened) Anyway ... I think that Favimon is a sign of things to come! Thanks to Justin DeVore for the tip!