About Michael Rowe

Michael Rowe is the co-founder and co-host of GamesAtWork.biz. He maintains the website http://www.michaelrowe01.com.

Episode 100 – Malaria-Ebola and Freemium Games

Our 100th episode is extremely special with us all in one room and with two special guests Jonathan Estes and Porter Stowell. Jonathan is the CEO of Smart Games Systems, Inc. SGSYS has been working in subsaharan Africa on games for infant mortality and malaria vectors. The transfer of habits from games to real life can truly be a question of survival around health and safety concerns. Exploring these themes we enjoy an amazing conversation about playing games at work! We discuss how games are being used to extend beyond simulation to real engagement of individuals with replayability and increased … Continue reading

Episode 99 – Free Beer Tomorrow

We celebrate episode 99 with three co-hosts talking about some really cool serious games. An episode so good it is SCAREY!!! Our games cover the gambit of history, geometry, leadership, and DNA. We begin with a game targeting high school students and let them understand what it was like to be a Czech citizen during some very turbulent times. The art style is very film noir. We spend some time on Chocolate Covered Broccoli, and commit a few Word Crimes. We also go back to the idea of, is it right to secretly teach things? Does it have to be … Continue reading

Episode 97 – The Laws of Online World Design

Michael and Michael are back this week to talk about how the rules of game design from Raph Koster could be used in order to improve the engagement factor of serious games within a business setting. Are you an explorer, a quester, or a crafter? Do you like to uncover new things? Do you like to understand and follow processes? Do you like to create things? Is this just logical market segmentation, or can you progress a gamificiation platform that progresses from the explorer to the quester to the crafter? Michael R. mentions the hackathon he is working on and … Continue reading

Episode 96 – The Professional Line Sitter

The Michael’s are back with a bit gamification for travel, we try and take a different approach then our prior episodes were we talked about how the Airline Industry was gaming boarding, and see if we can setup an on-line auction for improving your seating on the plane. Perhaps we can get a bit of advice from Zaboo and his seat saving network idea (see “The Guild” season 5). How can you make this game work for both the passenger and the airlines? When at restaurants can we figure out a way to swap locations in line? Can the Restaurant … Continue reading