Play

Here's a weird little short film by David Kaplan and Eric Zimmerman that is kind of a metaphysical exploration of the psychology of the Gamepocalypse. It's fun, anyway. It brings to mind VURT and Living Real. Can a game be so real that we forget we're playing it? It happens in dreams...

New RFID Tag Could Mean the End of Bar Codes

Shawn Patton pointed me to this WIRED article about new RFID tags that can be inexpensively printed right onto cereal boxes and potato chip bags. Of course, we could be playing more and better games with our grocery shopping right now, but this new tech should help grease the way to the coming Gamepocalypse.

Text 2.0

Don't believe it when I say that e-readers will soon have eyetrackers on them that will track every word you read? Watch this video.

Believe it now?

In some ways, it's creepy, but I keep thinking about all the cool reading games we'll make! Reading a book is already an intimate experience -- imagine how much closer the reader and the author will become when every book can also be a game!

Spark Radio Interview

Nora Young, the host of Spark, interviewed me for a show this past week. It's a 45 minute discussion about trends in gaming, and the implications of the Gamepocalypse. My favorite part is not on the recording -- when we were getting set up, there was some kind of mismatch in digital bit rates between the two recording studios, and Nora sounded like a giant monster. I begged them to do the whole interview that way, or let me be the giant monster, but instead we just had a nice chat. Spark is a super cool show!

Why is Every App a Game?

Great post from Alex Wilhelm on thenextweb.com about Gravity and the "badgification of the Internet".

Boktai

An oldie, but a goodie! Boktai was a series of games for the Nintendo GBA that featured an ultraviolet light sensor built into the cartridge. The theme of the game is that you are a vampire hunter, and you kill the vampires with your "solar gun" that you charge up with real sunlight. You don't have to be in the sun all the time that you play, because of the charging, but when you fight boss monsters, you better be outside, and it better be a nice day! I never played beyond the first game, but I was fascinated with how the game made me view the world differently. "Oh no! It's getting late! If I'm going to kill that vampire today, I better head outside now!" I actually woke up a few times thinking "It's a great day ... for boktai!" Anyway, I get a feeling this game was ahead of its time -- I suspect that sometime soon, other toys and games will revisit the idea of a sun sensor... but for what? Sometimes I fantasize about an MMO where each character class uses different sensors out in the world -- water wizards with some device they dip in lakes, puddles, and rivers, wind wizards who have a device that gets magic from the winds, sun wizards, moon wizards, animal wizards who get power from taking pictures of animals... it could be vast and fascinating. Anyway, thanks, Boktai, for scouting out yet another inroad to the Gamepocalypse!

Lee Sheldon gets Slashdotted!

Lee Sheldon's XP method of giving out grades I mentioned in my DICE talk got slashdotted today! Sorry, Lee, if you are getting unwanted attention. I think it is funny how people assume that the class has "no grades" because of the XP system -- when really, it is exactly the same system everyone else uses (each assignment is graded, the grades are combined), the only differences being that:

1) Averages are delayed. By delaying averaging, you delay achievement, which can be a good thing, because it gives you something to look forward to.

2) Your grade never goes down. People HATE losing progress. If you've been getting A's all semester, and then you get a D on your final project, you have the experience of going from an A average to a B average, and it feels like lost progress, certainly a decline. But, if you've been getting A's all semester, and all this has earned you is a "C-", then when you get a D on the final project, you are still making forward progress to a B. Same final grade, but you experience going from C- to B instead of going from A to B.

3) By explicitly calling it XP, it associates the experience with a game, which makes sense because the class is about multiplayer gaming. I suspect there is a novelty to this that lends it appeal, but of course, this would fade if it were widely implemented.

4) By making everything about cumulative points, it is actually easier to add in extra credit -- you just throw some more points on there. With an averaging system, you have to talk about adding percentage points, and it can be nebulous and confusing. A simple clear extra credit system makes it easier to give extra credit, and increases motivation to want to earn it, and therefore the teacher is more likely to seek and find novel opportunities to give it, and the students may try harder to earn it, since they know exactly what it means.

It seems strange to me that no one has done experiments of this kind before to see if an "additive" grading system as opposed to an "averaging" grading system provides more meaningful and motivating psychological rewards. Anyone know of research on this? I'd love to see it. I just got my copy of Punished by Rewards today -- maybe it has something.