Wendy Norris's List: Gaming

"By now, we're used to letting Facebook and Twitter capture our social lives on the web -- building a "social layer" on top of the real world. At TEDxBoston, Seth Priebatsch looks at the next layer in progress: the "game layer," a pervasive net of behavior-steering game dynamics that will reshape education and commerce."

"When Facebook recognized that early social media games were getting a free ride on their network, they shut down the free viral channels these games relied on for audience, started charging market prices for advertising, and demanded a cut of all commerce transactions (see “Facebook Credits”). This changed the economics of social games dramatically. Reaching a large audience easily and for free ceased to be a benefit of developing social media games."

"A virtual loyalty card lets any local business reward you as an individual for your loyalty, or as a group for your collective visits."

* Buy and own your favorite real-life locations
* Collect rent when other people check-in to your shops
* Upgrade your shops to increase their value

"White label geolocation apps for your brand."

A new social network that helps you experience your neighborhood in fun new ways, while it a better place to live and work.

You can keep tabs on the neighborhood Buzz, check in to Places and gain recognition, find new People with shared interests and save money with the social Shop features.

"Download our free Whitepaper! "From Hype to Holy Grail" details the opportunities and challenges of location-based marketing and the location-based services (LBS) industry. It's a must-read for marketers seeking to understand and leverage this new channel. "

"The Backseat Budgeter is an interactive budget simulation tool that enables you to make decisions about where public dollars are spent and how revenues are raised."

"Anyone can master the fundamentals of game design — no technological expertise is necessary. The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses shows that the same basic principles of psychology that work for board games, card games and athletic
games also are the keys to making top-quality videogames."

Carnegie Mellon Social Web course readings

"On the surface, it defies logic. I think most people would agree that whatever economic value news and information has, it's greater than a virtual piece of clothing, or something that gives your avatar a special power in a gaming environment, or that gives you elevated status on a social network. But in terms of consumers' actions, the exact opposite is true. "

FTC-sponsored game on advertising directed at young people.

" In the economy of engagement, it is less and less important to compete for attention, and more and more important to compete for things like brain cycles and interactive bandwidth. Crowd-dependent projects must capture the mental energy and the active effort it takes to make individual contributions to a larger whole. \n\n But how, exactly, do you turn attention into engagement? How do you convert a member of the crowd into a member of your team? To answer these questions, innovative organizations will have to grapple with the new challenge of harnessing "participation bandwidth." To do so, they may start to take their cues not from the world of business, but rather from the world of play. Game designers, virtual world builders, social media developers, and other "funware" creators have the potential to offer essential design strategies and economic theories for otherwise "serious" initiatives. "

"Jane McGonigal takes play seriously. She studies the power of games to impact the real-world -- and she creates games that do just that."

""We believe that playing games (reading) and making games (writing) is the new literacy. What makes Globaloria a unique program is that it embraces a set of guiding and interdisciplinary principles that use social media technology and computational tools for project-based learning. What makes Globaloria is successful is our strong partnerships with government, education departments, private and public foundations, local business, industry and institutes of higher education, and a culture of transparency and collaboration that we bring into schools," says Dr. Harel Caperton."

"All of these posit a zero-sum, competitive definition of the concept. Of course, competitive and egocentric motivations are mixed in with most social activity. Identity entails self-expression, affiliation with kin and tribe, and expression of status. Gifts involve generosity, understanding of the other, reciprocity, and status for giver and recipient."

"I’m interested in producing complexity out of simple parts. This page contains bookmarks that I collected while working on games; I did not write most of the content linked from here. As a result the set of links here reflects the types of things I needed to know: only a few specific topics (not everything related to game programming), general ideas instead of platform-specific information (graphics, sound, compilers), and ideas and designs instead of source code (I find it easier to go from an idea to code than from code to an idea). Other sites, like Gamedev and Gamasutra, cover lots more topics than mine does."