In a web2.0 Expo presentation from the perspective of a game designer, Amy Jo Kim uses the word ‘gamification’ to clearly present her core concepts of what makes an exceptionally designed game, from strategic analysis of potential customers to customizations and advancing levels. She states key requirements for creating an engaging game, like challenges, unlocking levels, and an eye towards fun and satisfaction.

The game theorist Jane McGonigal, in her new book, Reality Is Broken, advises me to eat candy and eat it without shame. My editor asked me to say a more about who McGonigal is, but I couldn't really pin her down. She seems to be one of those lucky people who delivers keynote addresses at prestigious conferences and thinks about the future for a living—at Stanford. Let's call her a Keynotist. Anway, my desire to play games makes perfect sense, she argues, because games offer structured environments, clear goals, and instant feedback on success or failure. The real world is uninspiring and dull in contrast. We rarely have the chance to feel heroic when working at our jobs or going about our daily business. "We are starving, and our games our feeding us," McGonigal writes.

One of the nice things about the game Bananagrams is that the game lends itself to rule modifications.

What I am saying at a higher level of abstraction is that meaning does not come from playing a game... it comes from playing WITH a game. It is the manipulation not only of the actors in the game that is meaningful, but the manipulation of the game itself. This discussion is not about how to make a game more meaningful. It is about how games mean.

imagine 5 on 5 basketball, in bumper cars, with jai alai scoops for the ball. in ann arbor on varsity drive. a lot of fun for adults.

nice gamer perspective on management, collaboration, learning, coordination, flexibility. compare with the corn farmer perspective (measure ratio of inputs to outputs, and then get back to your tractor)

On the other hand, there is a café in your village where you can go and sit on a stool at the bar and order a cup of coffee, prepared by a laconic pigeon. Drinking the coffee serves no purpose in the game — indeed, it even costs some of your hard-earned currency. And yet it is an example of pure play, at least on Mark Twain’s definition. You are not obliged to drink the coffee. Drinking the coffee changes nothing. And of course the coffee doesn’t even exist. You can’t smell or taste it. But you can drink the coffee whenever you like (subject to the café’s opening hours). And there is something mysteriously pleasurable about it. It is a gratuitous, interstitial moment, offering the player a chance to admire the scenery, perhaps listen to some Japanese electro-jazz, and meditate on nothing in particular along with her avatar, sipping an imaginary beverage.

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. That’s largely because I’ve been traveling a lot, giving talks, and most recently relocating to a new city. It became clear to me a while ago that I wasn’t going to get around to making more videos anytime soon. So, I figured I would make a post about the projects that I would probably make videos of if I had more free time. The content of this post has been in the talks that I’ve been giving, but I’m just sitting down to write it out now for my trusty blog readers.

The Hasbro version of the history of Monopoly is bullshit. The real history is closer to this very abridged version, which is supported by patents, Ralph Anspach's research and book, the article excerpted at the link below, and The Monopoly Companion (Philip Orbanes' book): Lizzie Magie invented a game called The Landlord's Game to push Henry George's Single Tax concept. The lesson intended was that only land should be taxed; anything else is bad for the masses and only good for the rich—that this evolved into Monopoly is not too surprising.

MONOPOLY HISTORY, LANDLORDS GAME HISTORY
Game Images, Game Rules, Articles, Commentary
History of monopoly and Landlords games; popular myths vs. historical facts...

MONOPOLY AND LANDLORD'S GAME
A HISTORICAL REVIEW

A mathematics major at Cornell who spent his junior year in France, Mr. Lehman has a ready sense of humor and was an avid game player in college. As a freshman, he said, he spent many nights playing Monopoly with Jay Walker, a friend across the hall (who later founded Priceline.com). During winter break the next year, the two wrote a book, ''1,000 Ways to Win Monopoly Games.''

Mr. Lehman graduated with distinction and went on to earn degrees in public policy and law at Michigan, where he was editor in chief of The Michigan Law Review. Besides working for Justice Stevens, he was a law clerk in Portland, Me., for Chief Judge Frank M. Coffin of the United States Court of Appeals. He also practiced law for four years at Caplin & Drysdale, a Washington law firm, before returning to academe.

Yesterday I found my kids playing Monopoly with the crazy dice. If they paid $5 to the bank, they got to use one of the crazy dice. If they paid $10, they got to use two. If they used a die with a color dot, they got to move to the set of properties with that color.

Set Cubed TM SET Cubed is The Curious Game of Clever Connections, challenging a player's ability to identify SETs between the dice in their hand and those already on the board. players can play up to 3 dice per turn making as many SETs as possible. Create SETs up, down and across the board, the more SETs you create, the higher your score. As the number of dice on the board increase so do the possible SET combinations. Rack up points by using BONUS SQUARES! Roll a WILD dice and unleash the possible number of SETs that can be made during your turn! How many SETs can you make?! The player with the most points wins! Game includes 42 dice with cloth bag, playing board and instructions game plays 2 to 4 players, ages 8 to adult.

I’d like to talk about the card game Set. Why? Because the goal is to find affine lines! Huh?

Well, first you have to understand that we’re not working over the usual fields we draw our intuition from.

Golly is an open source, cross-platform Game of Life simulator currently under development by Andrew Trevorrow and Tomas Rokicki. Our goal is to write a world-class Life simulator, solicit ideas and help from the planet's best Life hackers, and share some

"old" here is Apple //e era - they also want 80s color television sets as displays

Anyterm is a web-based terminal emulator; in this demo, we see it running Bastet, a Tetris clone.

The five game mechanics discussed were collectiing things, earning points, providing feedback, exchanges, and cusomization.

the extent to which players are experiencing satisfaction of these needs can be quickly and objectively measured and show statistically significant relationships with enjoyment and immersion, as well as commercial outcomes such as ongoing subscriptions (d

word game for food aid

type the letters on the sharks before they eat you. WATCH OUT FOR THE PIRHANA!

I'm a game designer living in Brooklyn, NY. Much of my personal work has revolved around 'big games' or location-based game projects. I am one of the founders and organizers behind the Come Out & Play Festival.

Ever since the stripe was added, every time we walk by the building at night, 5-year-old Nemo says, "Look papa, that building has an update!" The other night he added, "or maybe it got a message from one of its friends."

"video game events are like a gateway drug for libraries" - one gamer said this about AADL's tournaments

Spacewar (the original!) in Java!

We estimate there were 70 different kinds of machines, although it's difficult to know for sure since they were made at facilities that were closed to the public," said Maxim Pinigin, the museum's custodian. To set up the museum, Pinigin, along with three

Last month, the four officially opened the Museum of Soviet Arcade Machines in a Stalin-era bomb shelter under a university dormitory. Packed into two rooms are dozens of Soviet-made video game carcasses in various states of repair. Some work perfectly; o

In Super Paper Mario, life begins as a regular 2-D game -- your Mario is a flat, "paper" cutout in a world of paper cutouts -- until he suddenly acquires the power to shift into a 3-D perspective. Suddenly you can see that all your 2-D enemies are wafer-t

these rules go well also for any other kind of ad hoc social groupings - lunch groups, book clubs, etc

ambient quest = free online pedometer RPG

This particular CONE (Collaborative Observatory for Natural Environments) is related to Goldberg and Song's efforts to bring robotic cameras to bear on the search for the legendary Ivory-billed woodpecker. According to Goldberg, the latest massively mult

a piece of a big urban game.

We keep playing as long as the hope and promise of more flow states remains. The player remains engaged as long as the play remains engaging. This seems like a simple truism; it's only when we start to explore how different players become engaged that it

upper body and lower body workout, so it is promised

Mr Perry is hoping to take advantage of so-called crowd sourcing or "accepting that the combined intelligence of all these people is far beyond your own."

we have a genuine one of these in the office

like fantasy baseball, except for fashion

Wii didn't start the fire

"rupture" = myspace for WoW?

pocket pedometer with built-in virtual pet

zork + asterisk mashup

human computation as applied to machine vision

Half of my time is spent inventing novel techniques for utilizing the computational abilities (or "cycles") of humans. The other half of my time is spent working on theoretical cryptography and security.

graphical visualization of survey results, and in general games-influenced social research tools

shell for the web w/ideas from mud and moo. sounds fun.

"They always ask if you can play it on the Internet—it's so cute how they still call it 'the Internet'—and I tell them, 'Hey, you can play this against 63 other PS5 owners simultaneously. At least you can in 14 years,'"

the most popular games as checked out by a local public library

the history of the atari 2600 et video game, as a video. a classic. this should be on rocketboom.

playing mancala and mille bornes at the library. no x-box needed

shopping help.

linden labs changes in-game physics, and a game that depends on some fiddly details of how objects move stops working

all-digital ad for Ann Arbor District Library gaming tournaments produced by the library for local theater

think tamagochi meets pedometer. the more you walk, the more your little digital creature does.

on blogs as massive multiplayer online games

Saul has learned to play this as a board game

how long does a typical Chutes and Ladders game take?

Start with a circle of people. Pick a Unix command and one of its optional arguments. It goes on from there.

label images, to aid in retrieval, as a game; as seen in a May 05 2006 talk by Luis von Ahn from Carnegie Mellon at UM School of Information.