Productive Games

productive games x @brainoperaSingTel Accelerate 2010

Michael Heilemann’s 25 Most Influential Gameshttp://www.flickr.com/photos/heilemann/5013484/

I'm interested in how game mechanics acts as a form of architecture that doesn't necessary focus on restriction, but rather stimulates specific behaviors.

From video games to real-world settings such as classrooms, we can be steered towards socially productive ends, e.g. to override tragedy of the commons

Why this is interesting...

Casual games consist of...

a crazy collection of addictive mini-games

drive the player to perform trivial tasks

in pursuit of the almighty “dollar”.

Real-life consists of...

a tired collection of boring mini-games

drive the player to perform trivial tasks

in pursuit of the almighty “dollar”.

Photo by flickr user: kenyee

Labor

need not be

laborious

our social responsibilityto make tasks fun

game mechanicsin the everyday

making house / work chores fun... chorewars.com

Epic Win

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/31/science/earth/31compete.html

Development StatusCultured Code

Cultured Code's development status dashboard @ http://culturedcode.com/status/

The Panic Status Board

The Panic Inc. Status Board as seen on http://www.panic.com/blog/2010/03/the-panic-status-board/

How the heckdo we create

fun ?

Be forewarned...this is sinister territory

What makes popular social platforms addictive?

To motivate students, I tried using Amy Jo Kim's game mechanics (2006)

Visible ScoreboardVisible Scoreboard

Amy Jo Kim explained game mechanicswith how Frequent Flyer Miles work

Photo by flickr user: Nemo's great uncle (Aug, 2008)

“I see a game mechanics working well on sites like YouTube, Yelp, Twitter, and Flickster. [...] like points, leaderboards, level-ups, social exchanges, and customization to a strong core experience.”

Amy Jo KimCreative DirectorShuffleBrain

Five Game Mechanics1. Collecting2. Earning Points3. Feedback4. Exchanges5. Customization

Amy Jo KimCreative DirectorShuffleBrain

Amy Jo Kim’s idea was in the presence of a scoring mechanism.

Established a blogging leaderboard via technorati.com authority ranking algorithm.

Provide our students a basic measure of how they were doing against one another.

Students also given weekly audits of the class overall performance.

Earning Points

For quality blog posts, students earned weekly awards

Variety of awards promotes diverse behaviors

Awards can be traded for extra credits or the ability to gain “immunity” from extra assignments.

Collecting Things

Comments and trackback allow students to understand the quality of the blog and wiki contribution.

Students are given the opportunity to improve on posts if they have not reached the assignment deadline.

Accessibility of feedback allows students to accelerate mastery in each week’s theme.

Feedback

Students instinctively personalized their blogs by the first week of use.

Low level: Blog templates

High level: Sidebar widgets

Social Objects- personal photos- favorite music- branding- chat box

Customization

To track the layers of interaction, we visually aggregated RSS feeds of their blogs and wikis using Netvibes.com

Exchanges

Title : JFDI Academy - http://jedi.ddns.comp.nus.edu.sgModule : CS1101S Programming Methodology @ NUSProfessor : Ben Leong / Collaborator : Su Yuen

Amy Jo Kim’s Community Building on the Web (Peachpit, 2000)

I work at The National Art Gallery, Singapore

foursquare iPhone app location-aware gaming with virtual & real-world rewards

art.sg/307

Artwork as Social Objects

✦ rapid & economical✦ shared experiences✦ game mechanics✦ granular analytics

Tiers of Social Media Engagement

“Barack Obama’s Social Media Toolkit” by Monte Lutz (Feb 2009)http://www.slideshare.net/montelutz/social-pulpit-barack-obamas-social-media-toolkit

ADVOCATE

SOCIAL

PERSONAL

Recruit others to donate Create a groupHost an event

Post pictures/videos Write a blog post Join a group

Create a profile Post a comment Make a donation Sign up for e-mail/SMSFriend on social networks

Thank you.

for a copy of

productive games

see (and retweet)

@brainopera