Last winter Stanford University hosted the Metaverse U Conference to “bring together industry leaders, artists, and academics to discuss a range of topics surrounding virtual worlds.” For some reason that seemed important at the time I couldn’t attend, but as the July 4th holiday nears I’ve taken time away from a social media-cum-virtual world-cum MMOG […]
Archive for the 'Serious Games' Category
Green Report from the Metaverse
Published July 3rd, 2008 in Emerging Technologies, Serious Games, Social Networking, User Experience and Web 2.0 & Beyond. 0 CommentsCan You Grock It?
Published June 19th, 2008 in Educational Technologies, Serious Games and Uncategorized. 0 CommentsGrockit, a San Francisco startup which raised $2.7m several years ago to seed their game project has taken down an $8m B-round according to Ed Tech Design’s Sari Follansbee, who brought this to my attention today, and the company’s own press release:
Integral Capital Partners lead the $8M round with Benchmark Capital, who lead their Series […]
What Happens Here Doesn’t Stay Here
Published May 28th, 2008 in Educational Technologies, Serious Games and User Experience. 0 CommentsDoes what you experience and learn in virtual environments like MMOGs and videogames have any relevance to real life?
Thought leaders like Jim Gee and researchers like Jeremy Bailenson, director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab (VHIL), assert that it does. Bailenson has been studying ways that online behavior affects daily life (.pdf) and in […]
The New Convergence
Published May 20th, 2008 in Business & Finance, Educational Technologies, Serious Games, Social Networking and Web 2.0 & Beyond. 0 CommentsThe new convergence of products that combine aspects of online games and simulations, social networking and user generated content in the service of learning was the topic of our panel at the SIIA’s annual Ed Tech Industry Summit:
Krista Marks, Chief Executive Officer, Kerpoof
Carly Shuler, The Joan Ganz Cooney Center at Sesame Workshop
Dave McCool, President, Muzzy […]
The Search Game
Published May 7th, 2008 in Emerging Technologies, Marketing, Serious Games and User Experience. 0 CommentsA shout out to Eliane Alhadeff for her recent post Search as a Serious Game which highlights a seriously cool search interface from SearchMe.com. A picture says a thousand words so file this under User Experience and go take it for a spin to see what web search + gamer centered design might look […]
Spy vs. Spy
Published May 6th, 2008 in Business & Finance, Culture, Educational Technologies and Serious Games. 0 CommentsAs a cold-war baby one of my favorite cartoon strips was Mad magazine’s Spy vs. Spy. That all flashed back to me a few years ago at the second Serious Games Summit in Crystal City, VA, just across the highway from the Pentagon.
There, it didn’t take long to realize — with equal measures of horror […]
Making Games That Don’t Suck
Published April 10th, 2008 in Dust or Magic, Serious Games, Uncategorized and User Experience. 1 CommentHow could you go wrong choosing William Shakespeare’s plays and characters to be the centerpiece of a massively multiplayer online game?
Just ask Ted Castronova who received a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation to create Arden: The World of William Shakespeare, then discovered genius alone isn’t enough. As Chris Baker reports in WIRED […]
Getting Down to Business
Published April 4th, 2008 in Business & Finance, Culture, Emerging Technologies, Serious Games and Social Networking. 0 CommentsFed up with leaving a huge carbon footprint as you travel on business? As the Virtual Worlds conference concludes here in New York, David Wortley of the Serious Games Institute in Coventry, UK writes that CNBC Europe has broadcast a feature story that discusses the use of virtual worlds for distance meetings and other core […]
Can a video game evoke human emotions more subtle than the adrenaline rush of offing gun-toting zombies and other digital miscreants? After playing a demo of The Graveyard, produced in an expressionist film noir like black and white by Belgium-based Tale-of-Tales, I’m that sure they can. From Tale-of-Tales’ press release:
The Graveyard is an experiment […]
Metaplace Test & Metachat Live
Published March 19th, 2008 in Emerging Technologies, Serious Games, Uncategorized and Web 2.0 & Beyond. 0 CommentsTonight was the second public stress test of Raph Koster’s Metaplace virtual world and being there over the course of a half-hour gave up some hints of what’s to come. The local client runs in Flash and logged-in users arrive in the lobby where they can invoke help, learn about the rules, or play […]
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