When researching our project background I happened across an article by Nick Yee at Stanford entitled, The Labor of Fun.

This article was particularly interesting to me in that used massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) as an example base. I used to play World of Warcraft pretty regularly, and it is the most popular MMO on the market.

Yee describes different facets of the game that motivate different people. These include: desire to understand the game mechanics, socializing with other players, competitive drive to defeat others, desire to achieve rare items and levels that others have not.

I myself fall more into the final category. But what was interesting to me was how these different things all really mean the same thing. These gamers want to understand and succeed in the world around them. Whether that's a fantasy world or reality seems not to matter.

This is an important distinction, because as my group has been progressing with the GALLAG concept, I've been wondering to myself, "what's the point?" Why would people be interested in accruing points on some insignificant iPhone app? I still don't know if I understand the reasons behind the desire to achieve something in a game, but it is at least clear to me now that people do want to achieve goals in games, and that desire can be exploited in the GALLAG system.

Augmented Map Reality

One of the top talks on TED.com from the TED conference last week right now is Blaise Aguera y Arcas's presentation of Bing's new augmented reality mapping system. It was an incredible demonstration of how live video can be used to augment the experience of looking at somewhere that the viewer is not.

In the talk, Blaise calls some friends who are at Pike's Market Place in Seattle who are providing live video from their iPhone. This video is overlaid the map on Bing, and is placed automatically to match the surrounding environment.

It's nice to have an idea of the kind of computing necessary to go into this, and while I'm very impressed by this, I'm honestly surprised this hasn't been implemented before. I would wager this has more to do with availability of streaming video than the aspects of image matching on the map. Regardless, it's an impressive sight.

This has many possibilities for future implementation. Trip planning, live meetings outside, and military operations come to mind. This is just one step closer to eye implants that are live updating images that are either in our vicinity or not. I welcome this.

Science Fiction Predicts and Sets the Future

I read recently a short story by Marc Stiegler called The Gentle Seduction. It chronicles the life of a woman in the approximate present time who is initially afraid of technology and how it changes her life, but over time grows to accept it. She begins to use cybernetic devices that at one point save her life. The woman begins to appreciate the uses for technology, and eventually she is able to disconnect her consciousness from her physical body. People in this reality are essentially immortal, and they have expanded far beyond the reaches of our solar system. The story has a sci-fi bent, but that misses the larger point.

The message of most technology-based science fiction is that we must not only adapt to new technologies and how they affect our lives, but also be careful in their adoption. So many times throughout the 20th century, we could look to science fiction authors for guidance. Jules Verne predicted nuclear powered submarines able to submerge for extended periods of time as well as space travel to the moon.

Humans are a species generally resistant to change, but more often than not, change comes anyway. This is why it is important for us to be concerned about where technology is taking us. It's important to have technically-sound people deciding our policies. It's important so we avoid a Cylon takeover.

A Really Beautiful Flash Game

I came across a wonderful flash game this morning called Record Tripping. Its appearance right away is stunning, and the user can tell this is going to be a good experience. The game runs you through a demo of using the scroll wheel on your mouse to scratch a record forward or backward. The mouse input then causes the voiceover reading from Alice in Wonderland, to scratch just like a DJ would with a record. Then the game begins.

There are 5 chapters, each with several difficulty stages. The voiceover begins again with chapter 1 from Alice, while also playing some popular rock songs. The goal of chapter 1 is use the up and down scratching method to turn a barrel that is rolling up a hill.


On the side of the barrel is a labyrinth-style maze with a ball in it and the goal is to get the ball out.

Chapter 2 continues with a combination lock and clues must be read off the side to determine the combination.

The game ends after 5 chapters, and three more games have been played. The visual, auditory, and tactile experiences in this game were just awesome. I wish there were more games with this level of presentation out there.

Incidentally, the makers of that game have three other games available on their site, Bell Brothers.