Posted by: Ryan Stewart March 16, 2012 at 11:09 am
Startup Village Accelerator Alternate Mowgli Games is soon to release their latest application (Songster) during South by Southwest, the social phenomena they are preaching is what makes this content worth watching. “Songster” is a Facebook application which empowers end-users with music remixing tools. Users participating in this “Social Creation” activity develop pieces of work from gaming and laboring in the interactive music remixing program. This novel subject, “Social Creation” is soon to bloom in the social media environment and will be leading discussions in future Interactive panels. Below is an interview with Adam Kunz, COO of Mowgli. If those who love what they do emit a brilliance then Adam shines a very sunny disposition about his work and the potential for Songster and Social Creation.
Posted by: Ryan Stewart March 13, 2012 at 12:27 pm
SXSWi panel "Can Gaming Make the World Better?"
To kick off this Sunday morning of SXSWi, all those with altruist concerns congregated for the enlightening panel called “Can Gaming Make the World a Better Place?”. This panel was a must-see for I feel a strong, magnanimous aclivity for any person or organization working to improve the world and not just their bank accounts.
The panel consisted of 5 panelists from a diverse array of organizations and companies that utilize and employ gaming and “gamification” in their daily arsenal. The panelist line up included George Weiner from Dosomething.org, Adam Bosworth of Keas, Samantha Skey from RecycleBank, and Nadya Direkova game mechanic from Google inc. The overarching theme of this morning session was the potential of gaming and gamification inacting large scale good by providing incentives to educate and motivate end-users.
Fortuantely for us viewers, the panel was superbly moderated by Gabe Zicherman from www.Gamification Co. (great gamification blog with no room for shameless product placement). From the beginning, Gabe set the record straight and provided a great forum for discussion on a number of intriguing topics for instance reward systems and how its related inciting positive actions and results.
After much discussion, what stood out to this viewer was the battle-tested representative from DoSomething.org George Weiner. His repertoire of experience provided numerous, useful responses and many effective strategies regarding “inciting” a population with goals of deriving social good.
“Make it fun, everything must be fun in some sense. What we are terrified of is competition, there shouldn’t be a loser when competing for positive social change” -George Weiner, Dosomething.org
Adam Bosworth of Keas dispensed a number of health-related responses affording a unique angle to “Gamification” and human welfare. A number of queries he answered were situational examples relating his experience as a parent in order to clearly state his position or knowledge
“The primary goal is to have users constantly challenged to succeed and try to get people to compete against themselves instead of each other”
As you can see in the video above (with George), the world can be made better with gaming and “Gamification”. Those who are looking to impact the world with “Social Good” through Gamification need to focus on effective strategies and creative execution rather than shameless adoption resulting in countless failures.
This year with so many panels and events going on simultaneously, it is easy to overlook or miss a panel of great value/importance. On Monday March 12th, “The iPad: The Second Coming of the CD-ROM” is a SXSWi panel any digital user or producer should not miss.
When the CD-ROM became mainstreamed in 1985, the computing community was overjoyed and infatuated with all the possibilities this new technology had to offer. Companies were able to create products packaged with large amounts of information distributable to anyone with a readable CD-ROM drive. This technology provided us, the users, with relatively intricate games, multimedia programs and other software packages previously not so plentiful or easy to install.
Most tweeple know how challenging it can be to say what you want in 140 characters or less, but these kinds of constraints are exactly what give Twitter a unique advantage in the gaming industry. In the Playing with 140 Characters: Designing Games for Twitter Games panel today at SXSW 2010, game designers Eric Zimmerman, Colleen Macklin, John Sharp, and Michael Edwards talked about some amazing developments in what might soon be called “microgaming.” Beginning with an actual interactive game with colored note cards in the audience, the panelists talked about basic game principles such as rules and structure, limitations, and systems. And while these principles are common in any game, they can easily apply to Twitter’s platform. For example, Twitter already employs “rules” and “limitations” like being able to DM only those people who are mutually following one another, and it is a system with many moving “parts” like @replies or links.
With its unique structure, some pretty interesting games are already being formed for Twitter. Here’s a video of Colleen talking about the two categories of Twitter games and some examples:
Simpler, more casual minigames like Twivial and Twitbrain allow users to participate at their leisure, while other MMOs (massive multiplayer games) like King of Pop, 140 Blood, Spymaster, and Twirdie (Twitter golf!) might require more participation and interactivity, as well as more incentives to play.
Are Foursquare and Gowalla Really Games?
This new platform is opening up the idea of what a game really is. Even applications like Foursquare and Gowalla are considered “games” because they create challenge, game incentives, and interaction. Here, Colleen talks about Foursquare and compares it to Gowalla:
Currently, these panelists and other game designers are trying to incorporate multimedia into Twitter gaming, and there still are many directions to go. RPGs, more data-based games, and Twitter-native games are just a few of the ideas that were discussed today. Do you play Twitter games? If so, which ones? If not, do you think you would ever play one? What are some potential concerns that might arise?
As Kristin and I searched for parking and entered the Austin Convention Center Friday afternoon, the sacred arena of SXSW Interactive, we were overwhelmed by the amount of laptops, cameras, video cameras, smart phones, (the list continues) in one given area. We met up with Dee Kapila from GirlStart as she was checking in, and she shared a few words about her panel Monday at 10:00 a.m. “Gaming As A Gateway Drug: Getting Girls Into Technology.” Pretty much the hippest girl gamer around.
Join us as we cover SXSWi 2012. Use this site to follow all the action. We've been posting panel previews, and we'll be updating the site during the event. Your comments and participation are appreciated! Thanks for checking in.
