Comments Off on Episode 59 – Productivity and Pleasure
The gang’s all here and we continue our discussion from last week’s ethics episode. Do you believe that we have the right to be told all the usage of data gathered from any game we play? It it our right, even when the game is free? Is there any difference between games and free services such as Gmail or Facebook? Should the data collection be opt in or opt out? How often do you read the emails you get from your favorite games or services, where they may be changing the terms of service? We discuss all of this and more.
Next week’s show will include Ross Smith from Microsoft, so drop us a comment or question for him in the comments below!
Porter Stowell joins Phaedra and Michael M for a rockin’ good time across a broad set of topics for this week’s show. Phaedra shares her stories from the Serious Play Conference in Seattle earlier this week, highlighting how Ross Smith has created a building with personality to interact with the people who enter and use it. We playfully riff off of the idea that a water fountain may say “glad to be of service” and how other aspects of the building personality may interact with people, and how municipalities could interact with citizens, rewarding them for taking action to help maintain the city.
Porter highlights how crowdsourcing has been incorporated in charity concerts, and the team speculates how technologies such as Foursquare (and Foursquare mayors) might be engaged for validation of the crowdsourced contributions.
The panel then turns to the question of ethics that was started during last week’s show, and reaches a consensus that disclosure is key for organizations using games to achieve a goal beyond that of simple entertainment. If you play a game, and the outcome of that play may be in the furtherance of another goal, the player should know in advance what their play is helping to attain so they may make an informed decision to play or not. Porter, Phaedra and Michael speculate on what it would take to gain informed consent to build the Death Star, and what kind of spin would be needed to do so.
How does Michael spend his vacation? Well, playing games! He shares his experiences with a couple of iOS games — Sid Meier’s Pirates, Plants vs Zombies 2, Motor World, and Simpson’s Tapped Out. We have an intense discussion as to whether mummies are zombies before Porter calms Phaedra and Michael back down. A thread between Motor World and the Simpsons is that both use doughnuts as a scarce currency. It’s all about the doughnuts.
Porter has been playing a game played by 30m people, growing by 60% every year, where you sorting through useless data points in order to win. Porter stumped Phaedra and Michael on this riddle – see if you can identify what game it is before Porter gives it away!
Comments Off on Mummies, Microsoft, Motors and much, much more!
Listeners — you are in for quite the treat, with a jam-packed show from last Friday, filled to the brim with stories from Seattle, debates about whether mummies are zombies (or whether Egyptian zombies are mummies!), buildings that have come alive with Microsoft technology, games with pirates and automobile construction and oh, so much more. So much more, that it is taking even longer for our post-recording team to create the audio file you need to hear. When we say “it’s all about the doughnuts”, you will see exactly what we mean shortly.
Comments Off on Episode 57 – These Are Not The Hosts You Are Looking For
While our Co-Host Michael Martine is on a bit of a well deserved holiday, Phaedra and Michael R look at wether Carrot is a good example of a social to do app. We also review how social investment may work based on Wired magazine’s work with Kapital, and then we go off on a tangent when Michael R – mis-reads an article. We look forward to our rescheduled interview with Emotiv CEO Tan Le. And, we tee up the idea of ethics and a game’s actual intent – should they be obvious to the player? All this and more – on Games At Work dot Biz!
