Episode 116 – Monster Bash

This week we are especially delighted to have two special guests on the show, Eric Mertens from Galois, Inc.  and Aaron Camerata from voidALPHA to share their insight and experience on the Verigames project with DARPA over that past couple of years.

Aaron does a fantastic job explaining how playing the game Monster Proof helps improve code quality by players playing the game in his recent blog post “Games…for Science!”  http://voidalpha.com/blog/ce6a4/monster-proof—how-it-works .

The concept here is pretty simple — can crowdsourced players playing a game perform formal verification / code testing faster and more cost-effectively than testers following the traditional development testing methodologies?  And if so, can these same kind of constructs and methods allow for code creation to write new code to solve new problems?

Some of the selected links from the discussion on the show
Penn & Teller’s Desert Bus game — http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/10/4510388/why-teller-created-desert-bus-the-worst-video-game-in-history
Desert Bus by Amateur Pixels for iOS — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/desert-bus/id470288016?mt=8
Desert Bus by Amateur Pixels for Android — https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.tueidj.DesertBus&hl=en
Iavor Diatchki — https://galois.com/team/iavor-diatchki/
DragonBox algebra learning games — http://dragonboxapp.com
FoldIt — http://fold.it/portal/
Zachtronics —http://www.zachtronics.com
Elevator Saga, the elevator programming game challenge — http://play.elevatorsaga.com
Rosalind platform for learning bioinformatics and programming via problem solving — http://rosalind.info/problems/locations/
Waze — https://www.waze.com
The Curve by Nicholas Lovell — http://www.thecurveonline.com
Attention economy — http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/5.12/es_attention.html

Games we are playing these days
Eric Mertens — TIS-100 — http://www.zachtronics.com/tis-100/
Aaron Camerata
Slingshot Braves — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slingshot-braves/id857514427?mt=8 
The Sailor’s Dream — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id895869909
Framed — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/framed/id886565180?mt=8
Magic the Gathering — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic:_The_Gathering
Knights of Pen and Paper — https://www.paradoxplaza.com/knights-of-pen-paper-1-editionMichael R –Hearthstone —  iOS https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/hearthstone-heroes-warcraft/id625257520?mt=8 and Android https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blizzard.wtcg.hearthstone&hl=en
Phaedra B –Grim Fandango — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/grim-fandango-remastered/id978524071?mt=8Michael M
Does not Commute — https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/does-not-commute/id971756507?mt=8
Bang! the Wild West card game — http://amzn.com/B001Q4XWB8

Episode 115 – Old Games New Money

Michael R. and Phaedra are together to talk about the business side of games… How big is the serious games market? How can you make money at it? We also look at Disney’s latest announcement – Playmation. We think about changing our mood with Thync’s new Mood Altering Headset. And, we discuss which of the new Video Game Hall of Fame inductees we like playing the most. So sit back, pour yourself a nice big cup of coffee…and get ready to play some Games At Work!!

Show links:
2015 Serious Games Market Sizing
Epic offers $60k for your winery build
Disney teases Playmation
Thync’s Mood Altering Headset
Disney Launches it’s own minecraft like world
World Video Games Hall of Fame
Daily Tech News Show
Pixels Movie

Episode 114 – Augmented Shazam


The Michaels look at the latest Augmented Reality announcements from DARPA, Apple, and Shazam, so you don’t have to. We look at the new Apple acquisition of MetaIO, DARPA’s gaming initiative for uncovering bugs in code, a website that is helping scientists map neurons within the human brain, and Shazam’s new visual tagging application. We discuss how far Augmented Reality apps have come since 2008, and Yelp’s initial Monocle, and also our favorite wine tracking apps.

Show Links:
Apple Buys MetaIO
DARPA Code Games
Shazam AR
Game to Map Brain Neurons
Cellar Tracker App
Brickies App
OBDLink Tool
Blush For Wine App
ViVino App
AR Contact Lens

Episode 113 – Conferences Galore

We welcome back our long lost co-host Phaedra, who has been burning it up as a speaker at whole bunch of conferences lately. Michael M. and Phaedra look at how games are being used to help, influence, and impact the lives of teens (both for good and bad). We discuss citizen advocacy games, social responsibility games, and how in order to win in the game of business we all must win together.

Show links:
GDC in San Francisco
SXSW – Panel – Future of serious games for school
East Coast Gamers Conference
City of Raleigh’s Digital Connectors Program
Switchpoint Conference
Summit on Extremism
Fresh Biz game
Serious Games Association