Amy Jo Kim

Pay Attention Gamers: Facebook Changes promote Spectator Mode

At the F8 conference last week, the main example used to demonstrate this new functionality was a game of Words With Friends from Zynga. Not only will games between your friends show up in the Ticker stream, but you can hover over the update to get a live view of what the current word being played is, and even click on the thumbnail to watch the game in a larger window.

The American Dream is dying a long, slow death – its core premise – a better life – has been badly misinterpreted by multiple generations of Americans as a bigger life. Now a bigger life is achievable by fewer and fewer Americans. And ironically, that may not be a bad thing in the end. Perhaps this is what it will take for us to finally realize that bigger does not necessarily mean better – and that the quantity of our lives is not always a relevant measure of the quality of our lives. The truly hopeful thing is this: If we interpret the American Dream to mean a better life – and no longer a bigger life – then we make it possible for every American to achieve the American Dream.

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—	The People’s Economist: The New American Dream

Politicians don’t represent the interests of people who don’t vote. They barely care about the people who do vote. They look after the corporations who get them elected.

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—	m.guardian.co.uk

I’m prepping for a FailChat about gamification this evening http://t.co/Y55aztu

Charles Hudson, the moderator, just sent me a set of interesting questions, including this one:

Loyalty programs, reward programs, etc have been around before we had the term “gamification” - how are the things we’re talking about now different from classic concepts of loyalty or other usage incentive systems?

I see a lot of confusion between loyalty programs and games — partly because the two areas share a common set of mechanics — Redeemable Points, Levels, Rewards, Collectibles, and Premium Services for Big Spenders.

One fundamental DIFFERENCE between loyalty and games revolves around skill, learning and mastery (or lack thereof). As you progress within a loyalty/rewards program, there’s no real skill involved - you’re learning to “play the points game” and maximize your points. It’s not about engagement - it’s about sticking around and spending/consuming.

OTOH when you progress in a (good) game, you’re learning something - you’re developing some cognitive, social or perceptual skill. That’s part of what makes games so compelling - the sense of getting better at something, of being engaged and shaped by the experience.

Here’s a VENN diagram showing some common mechanics is Gaming and Loyalty. I’ve also thrown in Cialdini’s Influence Principles, because they’re so common and central in social gaming.

What you do think? Can you make a better version of this diagram? Ever seen something similar? Let me know.

Countdown to Smart Gamification

Event Registration Online for Smart Gamification: 7 Core Concepts for Compelling Products

Although we’re only starting to grasp how the insides of buildings influence the insides of the mind, it’s possible to begin prescribing different kinds of spaces for different tasks. If we’re performing a job that requires accuracy and focus (say, copy editing a manuscript), we should seek out confined spaces with a red color scheme. But for tasks that require a little bit of creativity, we seem to benefit from high ceilings, lots of windows and bright blue walls that match the sky.

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—	Jonah Lehrer on Buildings, Health and Creativity \| Head Case - WSJ.com

Games that originally emerged in the hobby gaming market (such as Magic: the Gathering) laid the groundwork for virtual economies by showing that elements of games could be collected, traded and derive value from the intersection of their scarcity and utility. Most early MMORPGs built business models around subscription rather than virtual goods–which caused secondary markets to emerge for trading in items. Today, many games in the Free-to-Play (F2P) market have turned this on its head, by making virtual goods the way the game publisher monetizes; because this has become such a good way to attract players and monetize attention, this has become “the” business model of current social network games. Likewise, virtual reward systems and metagames such as the Xbox Live Achievement system prefigured the underlying mechanic of Foursquare and Music Pets. The current social network game market is the confluence of several big trends: social gameplay, along with asynchronous play patterns and a virtual-goods business model that has been shaped by market forces. We’re only at the beginning of seeing how far we can take the genre. It’s my belief that the next wave of games will draw upon many of the elements we’ve seen work in the past: great storytelling, challenging decision-making and a sense of tribal belongingness that surrounds popular games.

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—	History of Social Games

How Engagement Killed Gameplay [Language] - What Games Are »

The downside is that because negative engagement ultimately squeezes players, these games do not generate sustained virality (I mean true virality, not the spam-publishing kind). If they are novel then they might see a significant early bump, but after that they rely on permanent advertising budgets to nag players back into playing again and again. So while their business process is replicable and expandable, it does not inherently sustain itself. Games based on negative engagement are also very easily copied by competitors.

Why Glenn Beck lost it - The Washington Post »

Beck, in losing his mass-media perch, is repeating the history of Father Charles Coughlin, the radio priest of the Great Depression. Economic hardship gave him an audience even greater than Beck’s, but as his calls to drive “the money changers from the temple” became more vitriolic, his broadcast sponsors dropped him. He gradually faded from relevance as his angry themes lost their hold on Americans and his anti-Semitism became more pronounced. It is a sign of the nation’s health and resilience that Beck, after 27 months at Fox, is meeting a similar end.

Social Gaming Is Not the Answer for All Marketers | Small Agency Diary - Advertising Age »

Maybe some of the concerns that I have may simply come down to the name itself. The term “gamification” sounds as if you can wave a wand and badges, points and mayorships magically appear, instantly transforming your site or application into something more engaging and successful. Games are lot more complex than that. There is no generic solution. Designing them well is a custom challenge, for every audience and context.