Episode 51 – Tea. Bojangles. Hot.

Dan Brown's Inferno

Dan Brown’s Inferno

Phaedra and Michael M riff on a number of topics, ranging from Dan Brown’s most recent book to embeddable computing games.  The premise of Dan Brown’s Inferno, which focuses on the rapidly expanding human population on Earth provides a launchpad for thinking about how games have helped people work through very difficult situations.  Phaedra mentions that the recently discovered 3 super earths could be a solution.

Mobile isn’t just something you can do with your thumb.  While today’s mobile devices are ones that you hold in your hand, as in a smartphone or tablet, it is easy to imagine that the interface and interaction will be via voice, gesture or thought in the near future.  With this in mind, Michael and Phaedra imagine what games might be like in 5 years, when games may take advantage of embeddable and wearable computing.  Phaedra postulates that MMO-style mobile games will be the rage, with people within a certain radius will be flagged as a “level 25 mage” coming up the escalator next to you.  Michael adds that a subdermal computing device may vibrate to alert you to the presence of that character in the game, and Phaedra adds that Google Glass may show that person as the character.  Gazoom!  Laser tag where you use your body to shoot, and you would feel it based on the devices that you are wearing.  Holographic gameboards to play chess in thin air.  People acting out stories, movies, books together in the same space, or in specially designed rooms hundreds of miles away from one another.  The future’s so bright, we gotta wear shades!

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Selected show links

Dan Brown’s Inferno — http://www.danbrown.com
Super Earths — http://arstechnica.com/science/2013/06/packed-star-system-may-have-three-habitable-super-earths/
Bojangles — http://www.bojangles.com
In-n-Out Burger — http://www.in-n-out.com
Contact lenses as human augmented computing from DogearNation e119 — http://dogearnation.com/2009/09/06/dogear-nation-episode-119-heebie-jeebies/
Games for Change Conference — http://www.gamesforchange.org
Ian Bogost — http://bogost.com
Interview with Ian on e17 — https://gamesatwork.biz/2012/08/26/episode-17-things-are-weirder-than-expected/

Podcasts and patents

A few weeks ago, both Michael M and Michael R came across the same content about a challenge to podcasts which could change the way many of us provide and receive our content. In the US there has been a claim that a specific patent from the mid 1990’s is underlying how most podcasts are created and distributed.

The podcast community has been asked to help find prior art to invalidate the patent in question. For more information please check out the following link. Also, if you are a Podcaster, please link to this article and ask your community to help out too.

Episode 50 – Sexy Time

We begin our family show with a bit of risky fun including Oculus Rift going adult with an upcoming VR Adult Game called Wicked Paradise. We reminisce a bit about old school games Leather Goddesses of Phobos and Leisure Suit Larry, and are surprised to learn that an updated to Leisure Suit Larry is just around the corner. After a bit of fun discussion we get serious discuss the latest security test on Wall Street where they are playing War Games on their infrastructure. Can they benefit from something like Chaos Monkey? What if these threats could leverage Adaptive Learning? Can you? Of course you can, check out our discussion of Knewton – the adaptive learning platform. Also, check out our post on Google+ about game based learning.

Links:
Wicked Paradise
Oculus Rift Co-Founder Dies in Police Chase Incident
Leather Goddesses of Phobos
Infocom
Leisure Suit Larry
Wall Street plays Cyber Warfare!
Chaos Monkey
Gamers really do see reality differently!
Adaptive Learning
Behind the scenes of the worst parking ever!
Desert Island Jukebox
Phaedra – Guild Wars 2
Michael R – Mine Craft
Michael M – Guantlet
Breakout!
Punch Out

Episode 49 – Crowdsourcing & Crowdfunding

Episode 49, Crowdsourcing & Crowdfunding was recorded Friday the 14th of June 2013.

While Michael R is recovering or enjoying (or perhaps even both!) from his 6-shot espresso drinks, Michael M and Phaedra discuss adaptable games, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding and much more in this episode of the podcast.  Concepts such as gaming as a service and simulations as a service are explored, as Phaedra and Michael consider how micropayments, donations and volunteerism can speed the delivery of key functionality in games for the education and defense spaces while leveraging marketplaces such as Kickstarter and Indiegogo.  Waze and Dragon Box surface as some key examples, alongside some tried and true games such as Fold.it, Civilization, Ingress and oh, so much more.

Selected show links
From fantasy to reality: The story of Vugar Huseynzade — http://espnfc.com/blog/_/name/bootroom/id/330?cc=5901
Football Manager — http://www.footballmanager.com
The Screen Savers — http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0240295/combined
Soda, Pop or Coke — http://web.ncsu.edu/abstract/science/you-say-tomato-i-say-soda-or-is-it-pop/
Civilization — http://civilization6.com
Railroad Tycoon — http://www.2kgames.com/railroads/railroads.html
Eterna — http://eterna.cmu.edu/web/
Fold.it — http://fold.it/portal/
Ingress — http://www.ingress.com
Waze — http://www.waze.com
Noah Falstein — http://www.linkedin.com/in/gamedesignexpert
Internet Response League — http://internet-response-league.com/
Crowdsourced searching for Jim Gray — http://www.wired.com/techbiz/people/magazine/15-08/ff_jimgray?currentPage=1
Kickstarter — http://www.kickstarter.com
Indiegogo — http://www.indiegogo.com/
Dragon Box Algebra game — http://dragonboxapp.com
Microprose — http://microprose.com
Bean Traders — http://www.beantraderscoffee.com

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