Good news on a lost episode and intro to Tiny Tycoons

We have some good news for our podcast listeners — while there was not a recording this past Friday, an episode thought to be lost has been found! There needs to be some cleanup, and that will take place over the next few days. So in the meantime, let us remind you that we are interested in your feedback and are eager to hear your suggestions on topics that you would like us to cover. In the meantime, there is one topic that we’ve been very interested here over at Games At Work, and that deals with location-based computing, coupled … Continue reading

Episode 71 – Grinding at Work

Episode 71, Grinding at Work was recorded Friday the 3rd of January 2014 — Happy New Year! Phaedra, Michael and Michael start the new year off with a bang, sharing the games that they’ve been playing over the holidays, discussing the Virtuix Omni 360 degree treadmill device, and exploring how grinding gaming experiences may lend themselves to improved customer and employee engagement. A very interesting gamification idea emerges for how Kinect-like devices could provide biofeedback to call center employees to help them stay “in the zone” and be as effective as possible. Have a listen! Selected show links: Games we’re … Continue reading

Episode 62 – Gamification Carrots & Sticks

Phaedra and Michael M hold down the fort for the podcast, discussing the treatment of video games in the media in the wake of the tragic Navy Yard shootings and drawing some interesting thoughts on the nature of serious games to assist with mental health. Gamifying Travel They continue with a discussion on gamifying travel, and explore an idea where the game is to crowdsource the best travel options & prices between city pairs, setting up a competition to find the best solution using humans instead of algorithms.  The suggestion for how to monetize this game brings up the experiment … Continue reading

Episode 60 – Bubbly Bubblers in Gamified Buildings

Phaedra, Michael and Michael were delighted to be accompanied by Ross Smith, Director of Test in the Skype division of Microsoft for this show, centered around games for employee engagement. Ross described the recent work that he and his team have done with giving personality to buildings and using the building itself as the ‘game master’, to orchestrate and facilitate employee engagement. Games for health One of the intriguing examples (also discussed in Episode 58, but without the benefit of Ross’s first hand experience) uses a water cooler with personality as the mechanism for gamifying health.  While drinking eight glasses … Continue reading