Forbes are saying it too. WoW gets all the press - I wonder what people think about Eve?

There's some interesting stuff in Second Lives to cull in relation to this - compare/contrast.

Compare with Nethernet, Stumbleupon, I suppose.

And this is pretty much what everybody's saying. It's like 'arty' films where you know - in advance - it's going to be difficult so you think harder. Non-gamers just won't tolerate this, so they keep telling me.

Which makes it hard to produce something original.

Not sure about this. Here via rejuvenilia and all of that sequence of books that came out a couple of years ago (that I didn't read).

The data on failure in games is extraordinarily rich. It's, after all, one of the defining features of games.

Players like failing. At least, they like specific types of failure. "Although players do not want to fail, they may nevertheless enjoy it when feeling responsible for it."

Game mechs and gameification - what a headline.

There really needs to be a whole series on this, I think.

A whole motherloving series. It's really interesting stuff.

The 'right to dream' is the right description of Echo Bazaar. As, I suppose, is wabi-sabi. And trickery. All of those are good things.

The idea that you make something appear much bigger than it actually is is one of those things that's easy to say and very hard to do.

What are the tricks?

There's also a lot here about the role of script/screen/writing in the art of games design. You don't tell people what to think but give them enough clues etc. Again, if it was easy, everybody would be doing it.

Is this Skinner-boxing? Or motivational? Or fun?

Much to ponder about these things.

Wikipedia blurs the line between work and play - it's playful in that the system is dynamic.

This kind of makes sense.

And it's another take on Cognitive Surplus? Cognitive Surplus is translated into Play, not torpor?

This is related to the High-achiever/Low-achiever gestalt shift/dichotomy of fun. Fun doesn't work for about half the people. Challenge doesn't work for the other.

Is immersion the same as FLOW? Hmmmm.

This actually works for me - a pervasive game where the core mechanic (in this case running around the streets) is actually related to the objects. Which is a bit like urban development and town planning, as far as I can make out.

One the problems of 2+-sided games and collaboration/kingmaking/gamestates and all that palaver. Good stuff, ugly decks.

I loved Choice of Broadsides, so I'm glad this is here.

Note: this game was used to teach people about non-verbal comms and psychology and all kinds of stuff. It looks a bit mental, to be honest.


There's a set of epic rules on this epic wiki for Epic Mafia!
http://wiki.epicmafia.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

And the 'game was big in Silicon Valley'
http://www.wired.co.uk/wired-magazine/archive/2010/03/features/werewolf?page=all

Selected as one of the top 50 most important games since 1800:
http://boardgames.about.com/cs/gamehistories/a/timeline.htm

Extra:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/18219/the-50-most-historically-and-culturally-significan

It's like they've chosen the most evil name they could find.

Are they on the big list of companies?

Sensible list. Everybody will ignore it.

It's a bit like Foursquare except you score points for traversing plots of land using your GPS. It'll ony be useful to a select few, but it seems more playable than Foursquare for non-city dwellers.

via Jesse Schell. Get points for riding the bus.

Pretty much the same as 'Rescue the Princess' and is related to the ideas of Jordan Mechner too.

Is it an art game? Or a joke? In any case, there's something here, even if it's only atoms.

Finite and Infinite Games? I've lost this reference.

Wow.

This is actually interesting.One to test out over the weekend.

From Dave Gray. And so it's awesome, natch. Not necessarily this post but the whole ruddy thing.

Very very good points. Facebook interacts with the real world and that's why it's disruptive.

Social Games also interact with the real world.

This is confusing.

Hom Ludens 2.0 is probably enough for me. Key points: Digimedia encourages playfulness because it's easy to take apart without breaking it.

If you analyse a film, it soon becomes broken. You need the willing suspension of disbelief. The same is not true of digimedia because of infinite deferral. This is a half-thought.

Young people play with sexual identity online. This confusion will cause problems for the oldsters. Who are used to geography not topology. You can be in two places at the same time.

Make-believe is mimicry. Learning was too much alea. New sim-learning can be agon and ilinx. This is a crucial crucial point. Allocentricity FTW.

Via @aquito

There's some good points here. The main one is that 'aesthetics' doesn't mean the look and the feel. It's more similar to the ethos.

Game aesthetics matter - especially in gameification. If you have a Farmville/metric-led aesthetic, your game will, ultimately, suck.

The points made here are slightly opaque, to me. But the fact there isn't an aesthetics vs mechanics dichotomy makes intuitive sense.

The big question is whether they're a duality.

Yep, it's a round-up. But it highlights my key/core belief. It's play, not games, that is important.

The Enterprise is always about playing dicky games that aren't playful. How did they ever accomplish this feat?

Actually, that's a surprisingly good question. How the heck do I answer it?

Oh man. It's him again. But this is interesting.

Some of these cross over. Is this a problem? Do I cross post or do two-parters with a learning bit and a game end?

Anyhoo, Systems Thinking For The Win.

Key: embodying.

Interesting toy. I use the word advisedly. I think that, slowly, the #KM-ers are beginning to realise that people prefer KM toys rather than KM apps.

See video about 1 min in for the key line about playing.

You have to be able to play with the data for it to be any use at all.

Starts off meh. Gets more interesting when you think about it.

I started on Twitter as a single-player. And there's loads of things I don't play with properly because I can't think of a single-player option.

This, for me, is the big weakness of ARGs and the like.

Forgot about this. It's kind of fun and there are some interesting questions/results. NB the Woebegone Effect is demonstrated. (I've saved some screenshots in Evernote)

Add this to 'problems with points' and see Goodhart's Law.

Like the ARGs, this joins the long list of things that are really cool but that I will never ever play in a million years.

This is a really good point. And one that's been made about games time and time again.

Mario was super-successful because of its game verb. It is a game about jumping. And that's all it does and it does it very well.

Most RPGs have loads of game mechanics but they're primarily about the story. And that's all they do.

You do get jumping and shooting games. But there's a gestalt thing going on there.

STILL don't know what to call these frickin' things.

Good point here: how many games are designed where the team either wins or loses and there's no individual score possible.

Pandemic comes up everywhere and is worth investigating further.

Kind of tangentially related to this:
I'd like to play a RPG with people that works in a very simple way - you play as yourself.

Players get together and spend a day customising their 'character' based on a number of pertinent questions. They're working on personas, basically.

And the 'game' is played about a year later. Ah, there's the twist. The 'game' is a wargame or other kind of sim.

Quora's a slightly less icky version of those Q & A sites you see and which end up link spamming Google.

A question close to the heart.

We're getting closer to the Young Lady's Illustrated Primer.

Big theme:
Small pieces closely joined to make the mega-projects: AI - new life and YLIP - ultimate teacher/companion

Play is found in the space between ‘what is’ and ‘what if’. It’s when we find it difficult to cross that space that things become interesting.

Too much crossing into the 'what if' and you have a problem. Too little and you have stultification. How to tell if you have too much or too little?

Kickstarter? Prediction Markets? Markets, in general?

One thing's for sure. It's not 'management', if you want to have any fun.

You can have corporate Facebook, Yammer, Prediction Markets - why not something playful like Kickstarter?

How about using a Google-like 20% time?