Episode 25 – Social Reciprocity

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As the the day are getting shorter, and our day jobs are getting busier, the Michael’s have a lot of fun talking about the latest tech news and how it ties back to playing games at work. Michael R even gushes a bit about the possibilities of Microsoft’s Surface RT, and how well they presented it to the market on Thursday. While there was no Oprah moment at the announcement, there were multiple people who walked away with one.

Links:
Windows RT Announcement
Apple’s iPad Kickstand
Data Visualization Widgets
Windows 8 is NOT Metro
Bean Traders
Awesome Coffee Visualization
LinkedIn Skills Profiles
Today’s Podcast on Storify
Michael’s iPad mini Review
Demon Costume

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 30:56 — 42.7MB) | Embed

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Episode 24 – Stop Zombie Mouth

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The Michael’s talk about how you can leverage gaming technology to achieve zero-overhead in your business processes by leveraging good gaming design principles. How can you enable your customers, employees and partners to level up on your business processes? We tell you how! You too can become CPO (Chief Procurement Officer) by playing games. So sit back, grab a big cup of your favorite beverage and play with us!

Links:
Zero Overhead principle Healthcare
Raph Koster – Fundamentals of Game Design
Stop Zombie Mouth
Microsoft Clippy
What is Halloween
Zamfir for your diet
The Rock Doctors
Upcoming Tech Announcements
Google’s financial woes

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 29:15 — 40.4MB) | Embed

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Episode 23 – Mystic Transitions

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We continue our discussion of the Freemium model, to talk about platform expansion and extracting customer value! (Welcome to business school). Trying to figure out the fine line between fun fermium and painful exploitation, as well as how can a business successfully transition from the pay model to the Freemium model. We talk about the musical instruments we want to play, thanks to Ian Hughes who brings us a review for RockSmith. Which get’s us to think about the transitions of musical styles and musical learning. So lean forward, grab your rhythm guitar, and jam with us at Games At Work dot Biz!

Nick Lowe

Nick Lowe and Eric Hodge at Rocktoberfest in Chapel Hill, NC.

Links –
A Real Educational Game that Rocks!
The Simpsons Tapped Out
Castle Walls from Styx

Nick Lowe
Dave Alvin
Yep Roc Records

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 25:04 — 34.6MB) | Embed

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Episode 22 – Play for Free on Free to Play

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Phaedra and Michael M discuss free to play game economics — both from the game designer and the game player perspective as well as how this changes when the game is focused on individual paying players vs larger enterprises as the target market.  With micropayments for in-game purchases being the revenue source for free to play games, Phaedra mentions that at the recent Game Developers Conference that free to play games can be more profitable than $50 boxed games.  Michael shares that he likes to avoid such in-game purchases, hence the title of the show.  🙂

 

Cross genre gameplay also gets the GamesatWork.biz treatment when Phaedra and Michael brainstorm on what may make for a good cross genre game.  An interesting idea emerges combining maps, geocashing and Habitat for Humanity Restore opportunities.

 

Some of the games mentioned on today’s episode include

Simpsons Tapped Out — http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-simpsons-tapped-out/id497595276

Tiny Tower — http://nimblebit.com

Plants vs Zombies — http://www.popcap.com/games/plants-vs-zombies/home

SimCity — http://www.simcity.com/en_US

Monopoly City Streets — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_City_Streets

Hivemind — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hivemind_(software)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:27 — 32.4MB) | Embed

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