Previously, I reviewed a research paper that investigated the relationship between task and reward interdependence and fun, flow and performance in a MMORPG, in effect, using research to improve games (see “Evidence Based Gaming”). Today I review a research paper looking at the potential value of simulations in social psychology research (in effect, using game technology to improve research).
What the article is saying: Read More
If you haven’t seen the FarmVille satire ad video circulating lately, you should. It’s funny stuff!
I’d just never thought about it in these terms until we were chattering in the office last week, but FarmVille has over 75 million users every month. It’s almost certainly the single videogame played by the most people, ever. You can stop pointing to WoW as a success story for simplified gameplay — WoW is to FarmVille as Star Fleet Battles is to WoW. Certainly, it seems that large-scale financial success (in terms of an enormous userbase) is tied to simplicity. (For multimedia cross-reference, please see “Reality TV” and the “Twilight” series of books and film.) Implications of this discovery are left as an exercise for the reader.
“Normal” affectations, like being a businessperson, or a sports enthusiast, have well-defined guideposts to sartorial excellence. Even with those guideposts, entire channels of mainstream media exist to feed advice about classic and changing couture to the masses. Sadly, an informal sampling indicates that no such guidance exists for the more nerd-inclined among the population. A long course of ethanol-reinforced research has convinced us that there is, in fact, a Nerd Style Sensei out there. Perhaps he lives in a reclusive place atop Mount Fuji with other great gurus; perhaps he simply spends his time in a dive bar quaffing whiskey and water. Wherever he lives, he sure does know a bit about style. Therefore, starting today, we will consult the Nerd Style Sensei with these weighty Nerd Style questions!
Dear Nerd Style Sensei: I have recently acquired a T-shirt that is extremely funny and witty. But I worry that my non-nerd friends simply won’t “get it.” How should I quickly explain the joke so that they can share in my merriment? – Funny Chest
Dear Funny Chest,
Yes, yes. The cake is a lie. Ho, ho,ho. I’m going to begin this response by making the conventional assumption that you do, in fact, hope to have sex on at least one occasion in your life. With that as a guidepost, you should observe the following rules when wearing a “funny one-liner” T-shirt:
- If you have to explain the joke, you should pass.
- Similarly, avoid T-shirts that reference poor hygiene or lifestyle choices that would cause a reasonable person to wonder if you are now or have ever been a psychopath, sociopath, or stalker.
- In fact, “one-liner” shirts should be avoided entirely unless they also manage to have some visual appeal. Don’t trust your nerd intuitions here. Ask someone for feedback, and continue doing so until you can routinely anticipate the response correctly.
Do you have questions for the Nerd Style Sensei? Post them in comments here, or email them to tachevert (at) worldiv (dot) com.
Games can be used to teach. To anyone that reads this blog, that likely isn’t news. I do, however, enjoy reading anecdotes that support this belief. Wired.com has an article up “Game Changers: How Videogames Trained a Generation of Athletes” that discusses how games and simulations have impacted professional sports:
Just before he reached the end zone, with 17 seconds remaining, Stokley cut right at 90 degrees and ran across the field. Six seconds drained off the clock before, at last, he meandered across the goal line to score the winning touchdown. [...] I asked him point-blank: “Is that something out of a videogame?” “It definitely is,” Stokley said. “I think everybody who’s played those games has done that” — run around the field for a while at the end of the game to shave a few precious seconds off the clock. Stokley said he had performed that maneuver in a videogame “probably hundreds of times” before doing it in a real NFL game.
A recent article on Science Daily, “Learning the Art of Creating Computer Games Can Boot Student Skills“, sings the praises of game development as a method of learning … not playing games, but developing them.
… teaching people how to use off-the-shelf tools to quickly build a computer game might allow anyone to learn new thinking and computing skills. [...] the process involves storytelling, developing characters, evaluating plots, and working with digital images and music.
It’s not a new, thought. Alice, a free system designed to engage students in learning object oriented programming of interactive virtual environments, has been around for years.
The Wikipedia entry for Alice cites the following evidence in support of Alice:
In controlled studies at Ithaca College and Saint Joseph’s University looking at students with no prior programming experience taking their first computer science course, the average grade went from a C to a B and the retention increased from 47% to 88%.
I’ve been working a whole lot lately. Enough that it’s interfering with, well, just about everything. That’s not a complaint — in my experience, I tend to perform better with hefty goals. I’m lucky enough to have a spouse who’s understanding about the time commitment I’m making for my career, and no children to feel like I’m neglecting. (The cat does feel neglected. She’s a cat. She’ll cope. Cats have great coping skills. If we could learn from them, we’d probably revolutionize the field of psychology.)
What am I working on? Island Life on Facebook, an entrant into the social/farming game scene. So what does a day of that look like? Why can’t I be bothered to blog? Well, it’s something like what you can find after the cut. (This is a sampling, not an actual minute-by-minute recreation of a specific day.)
Read More
Old news, but I ran across the website for fbFund, apparently an incubator for social Facebook games. Selected items from the fbFund About page:
fbFund is a $10M seed fund and joint venture run by Facebook, Founders Fund, and Accel Partners. Investment capital for the fund is provided by both Accel and Founders Fund. For the current fbFund REV 2009 incubator program (our third company competition), selected companies are eligible to receive up to $100K in equity investment. This year we have 25 companies participating in a 12-week program from June thru August in Palo Alto, CA.
fbFund provides the following benefits to our startup company participants:
• Funding: Receive up to $100k in investment from fbFund, provided by Founders Fund and Accel Partners.
• People: Have you ever been surrounded by 50+ brilliant people, all hungry to create meaningful and innovative technology? fbFund participants share a vision to make the Web more social for users.
• Education [...]
• Mentorship [...]
