(empo-plaaybizz) When social games are anti-social (why Robert Scoble's personal concerns with Ingress are valid)

I want to get into an aspect of online gaming that I didn't explore in my 2010 post, The Farmville Sociopaths? It's been bouncing around my brain for a few days, but I finally put it down in written form in response to a Robert Scoble Google+ thread on Ingress.

Scoble started the thread by listing three roadblocks that prevented him from enjoying the game:

1. I don't like playing games (update: unless I can get value out of them immediately, IE I'm a casual gamer, think Angry Birds). Especially ones that require more than a few minutes of commitment.

2. I don't often have time to walk around a city. My first experience, opening up Ingress in front of the Chinese Consulate in San Francisco, was that I needed to walk up and down the street to hit various things.

3. Lots of people think I have invites. I don't and if I did I don't have time to take the hundreds of requests I have gotten so far.

In a comment, Trevor Schadt took on Scoble's first question.

Well, if you don't like playing games, especially ones that take more than a few minutes, you're not going to like Ingress. Pretty much period.

It's a game, and it takes more than a few minutes. QED.

I then answered Scoble's second question. I'm reprinting the whole thing here, but I'm going to concentrate on just one part of the response after that.

+Trevor Schadt addressed your first point, so I'll confine myself to your second point. (Until "the Bredehoft effect" becomes common terminology, I can't help you with your third point.)

If you happen to have time to walk around a city at some point, Ingress can be an enjoyable way to pass the time. A few weeks ago, I was waiting for a museum to open at noon, so I passed the time by walking up an down Euclid Avenue in Ontario, California visiting Ingress "portals." In addition, if you start Runkeeper first and THEN start Ingress, you can measure your exercise while playing the game. In this case, 0.8 miles walking with visits to 6 portals. http://empoprise-ie.blogspot.com/2013/03/empo-plaaybizz-first-e-is-exercise.html

Of course, those who live in and walk around urban areas have an advantage here, since there are more portals in such places. If you're in a less populated area, you have to drive to get between the various portals - and with the way gas prices are going, this makes Ingress an expensive habit.

After playing extensively in November and then pretty much quitting entirely, now I'm playing Ingress on my own terms. Yes, I'm only a Level 3 (a relatively low level) after five calendar months of play ("John, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!(tm)"), but I'm deriving satisfaction from the way that I play it.

Of course, our reaction and devotion to any game can be greatly affected if our IRL friends are playing it. If your IRL friends aren't playing it, a "social" game can become very anti-social.

Let me elaborate on my statement in the last paragraph.

I've played dozens upon dozens of online games over the years on Yahoo!, Facebook, Google+, and other platforms. Of those games, only two of them were consistently played by "in real life" (IRL) friends (in this case, co-workers): Farm Town and Starfleet Commander.

When you're playing games with IRL friends, then playing the game does not subtract from your daily routine. If you're going to see Peter or Craig or Kim or Steve anyway, then it doesn't really subtract from your life to play these games. But if you're playing games that don't involve your IRL friends, then you have to take time away from your IRL friends to play the game.

As of now, I am unaware of any IRL friends who are playing Ingress. So when I play Ingress, I'm doing it on my own.

Whoops, here comes the Correctness crowd:

John, YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG(tm). You are supposed to play Ingress as a collaborative game. If your friends don't play Ingress, then it's time to make some new friends.

But if anyone has been in the online gaming world for a long time, they know how this goes.

For example, let's say that a new game comes out called Diseased Obese Wombat. All of a sudden, DOW becomes the most popular game on the planet, Fred Wilson and Michael Arrington are investing in it, and even non-tech publications (yes, there are non-tech publications) are talking about it. And since Peter, Craig, Kim, and Steve are all playing it, I start playing it too.

And things go fine - for a few months.

But after a while, Peter drops out to start playing the American Idol retro game, and Kim drops out because she has gotten really interested in the Pink Floyd Wall game. Craig and Steve also drop out of DOW, but it's unclear whether they're playing a new game, or whether they're doing something work-related that they can't talk about.

So you've run off to adopt a new social game to play with your friends, and after a while you're all alone.

(In real life, I'm not actively playing in the Starfleet Commander universe in which Craig and Steve are playing, and Kim is still waiting for me to answer her SongPop challenge.)

If a game fits into your lifestyle, then there is a much greater chance that you will play it. And that's something that Zynga and EA and the other companies cannot control.

(empo-plaaybizz) Is the backlash against gamification hype ITSELF hype?

I've been talking about gamification for years, and the folks at the AppsLab blog have been discussing it for far longer. If I can take the liberty of defining it, "gamification" refers to the addition of incentives to an application to promote desired behaviors. Want someone to learn how to use Microsoft Word? Create a training game. Want to get people to tell you when they visit businesses? Create a service that rewards you for providing this information.

I think that I can honestly say that I've discussed gamification without hyping it, and I know that Jake Kuramoto has discussed gamification without hyping it. The same cannot be said for other entities:

Only last year, the US-based analysts Gartner predicted that 70% of the world's top 2000 companies will be using gamification in some form by 2014.

70%? Perhaps the definition of "in some form" is elastic, but this statistic seems surprising, even to the most starry-eyed gamification devotee.

Well, there's a more recent prediction out:

Just 12 months after Gartner predicted the huge growth in the genre, it released another report saying that “gamification is currently being driven by novelty and hype”. By 2014, it predicts that 80% of gamification applications will fail to deliver “because of poor design”.

Well, when Larry Rosenthal saw this quick about-face, he offered the following comment:

Gartner soon needs to print the UP and DOWN "finding" of its Hyped techs at one time.

Actually, this is unusual behavior for one of these analysis companies. Normally the company will issue a prediction in 2007 saying that widgets will be really really big by 2010. By the time 2010 rolls about, the company predicts that widgets will be really really big by 2013. I don't think I've run across such a contradiction of a previous prediction before.

Perhaps the analysis companies think that we have short memories, and didn't realize that at least one BBC reporter (Nic Fleming) does have a longer memory.

More later.

(empo-plaaybizz) My rant against Electronic Arts - Zuma Blitz ad blocks SimCity Social access

What most of America is completely immersed in issues regarding the Sesame Street character Big Bird, I'm thinking about IMPORTANT stuff.

I should start by saying that I realize that online game companies need to make money. It's impractical to expect that they would provide these games completely for free.

And I understand that if you're playing one game from a game company, you're a logical target for advertising for other company games.

But when Electronic Arts' advertisements for its new online Facebook game, Zuma Blitz, do not allow me to proceed to play EA's existing Facebook game, SimCity Social...that is inexcusable.

When the Zuma Blitz ad appears, all access to SimCity Social is blocked. The only option that appears to be available is the option to play Zuma Blitz.

After several tries, I've found that there are only two ways to proceed:

1. Click on the Zuma Blitz ad and then immediately close the window that opens.

2. Quit SimCity Social altogether, re-enter from Facebook, and hope that the Zuma Blitz ad doesn't pop up again.

And yes, I realize that Gary Johnson is completely in favor of this behavior (or at least believes that government shouldn't get involved). But at least that's more honest than the pandering major party candidates, who will promise to call a Congressional hearing or something. (And yes, I know that Presidents can't call Congressional hearings, which is what makes the pandering worse.)

Oh well, at least my favorite game isn't part of the EA/Zynga oligopoly.

(empo-plaaybizz) When you cannot play the game

Taking the lead from others, I've spent some time on this blog discussing how gaming mechanics can contribute to business. When a business introduces game mechanics, this gives certain people an incentive to buy additional products and services from the business. And I'm not just talking about Zynga; there are a number of companies that offer badges or points or things that you can earn by buying stuff or doing stuff that benefits the business in question.

But what when the game is broken, and the incentive is lost?

I'm not going to name the company, but its name rhymes with "bartrucks." This company offers a rewards program in which you can earn benefits as your purchases from the company are tracked. The company also offers smartphone apps which facilitate purchases - if you register a gift card with the company, you can use the app to use your smartphone to make purchases which are subtracted from the gift card.

For the last few months, I've been using the "bartrucks" gift card to track my purchases, and when I recently acquired a smartphone again, I began using the "bartrucks" Android app to make my purchases. To do this, I start the app, see how much credit I have on my gift card, and then press a button that reveals a barcode that the "bartrucks" employee scans to complete my purchase. I can then go to another tab on the app and see how I'm doing on earning my rewards.

Usually.

About a week or two ago, I went to look at my rewards, and I got a message saying that reward information was unavailable and to try again later. I tried a little while later, and still couldn't get my reward information. A day or two later rewards data was available again, but it really put a damper on the game when you didn't know your score.

But a few days ago it turned more serious. As I mentioned, the app allows you to see your gift card balance and make a purchase; after the purchase is made, your gift card balance is immediately updated.

Usually.

Over the weekend my wife and I walked into our local "bartrucks," each armed with our smartphones. (We are a smart family.) In turn, each of us walked up to the person behind the counter - I won't reveal what they're called, but it rhymes with "turista" (whoops, forget that) - and made our purchases.

After I made my purchase, I noticed that my displayed gift card balance wasn't updated. The same thing happened to my wife, so we both checked with the "turista" who confirmed that our purchases went through.

But I didn't know how much value I really had on my card.

At the same time, there was an outage on the rewards side of the app - another of those "reward information is unavailable" messages.

So now I don't know how I'm doing on my reward level, and I don't know how much money I have to make purchases. And because the amount of my purchase was almost as much as my gift card balance itself, I didn't know whether I even had enough money to buy one of the tiny products that "bartrucks" sells, much less one of their larger products.

So what happens when you don't know your score, and you don't know how much time is left on the clock?

You take a time-out. Don't play. Don't buy anything.

Thankfully, that outage cleared up a few days later.

But the game is certainly less fun when you can't play.

(empo-plaaybizz) News FTW?!?

I was visiting my Google News page, and I noticed that I had earned a basketball badge.

A badge? For news?

Yes:

The U.S. Edition of Google News now lets you collect private, sharable badges for your favorite topics. The more articles you read on Google News, the more your badges level up: you can reach Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and finally Ultimate. Keep your badges to yourself, or show them off to your friends.

The default behavior is to hide a badge, but you can hover over the badge and choose to share it.

I admit that badges and sharing can motivate people to do things, but this is sounding a little ridiculous even for me. I was about to joke about the IRS issuing an "I paid my taxes" badge...until I remembered that my tax preparation software gave me the option of sharing my tax completion on Facebook.

I guess now the question is as follows: what actions CANNOT succumb to the badge frenzy?

I challenge you to think of one.

(empo-plaaybizz) GameStop has competition - for the Worst Company in America, that is

Remember my January post about Christine Cavalier's scrutiny of GameStop's business practices - which lead the company to aggressively push customers to take used games rather than new ones, since used games are much more profitable to GameStop.

Steven Hodson linked to a VentureBeat story that mentioned GameStop - and a company even worse than GameStop:

Video game publisher Electronic Arts has a new feather in its cap: it has won The Consumerist’s Worst Company in America award.

The tournament rookie beat out America’s other most-hated companies by a landslide 64% vote. Rival honorees included Walmart, PayPal, Bank of America, and even fellow game industry villain, Gamestop.

Although I missed the earlier rounds, it appears that the Consumerist modeled its voting on the National Collegitate Athletic Association's recent college basketball championships, in which entities compete against each other until only four are left, and then only two are left, and then a final entity survives. Which means that Electronic Arts is Kentucky/Baylor and Bank of America is Kansas/Notre Dame.

The Consumerist explained the decision:

After more than 250,000 votes, Consumerist readers ultimately decided that the type of greed exhibited by EA, which is supposed to be making the world a more fun place, is worse than Bank of America's avarice, which some would argue is the entire point of operating a bank.

The vote has outraged some people who believe that Bank of America's sins are serious and EA's are not. The Consumerist addressed this line of thought:

To those who might sneer at something as "non-essential" as a video game company winning the Worst Company In America vote: It's that exact kind of attitude that allows people to ignore the complaints as companies like EA to nickel and dime consumers to death.

And it's not just companies like Electronic Arts and GameStop. Turn on your television and look at your local television news. Compare the business reporter and the sports reporter. One of them appears in conservative attire, is probably wearing glasses, and never cracks a smile. The other one is yukking it up, and may be wearing a silly cap. Yet the "fun and games" guy is talking about multi-billion dollar industries - industries which are not taken seriously. Imagine if Wall Street were covered in a sports style - oh, wait, we don't have to imagine it; I forgot about Jim Cramer.

Returning to Electronic Arts, how did they react to the news that tens of thousands of people loudly declared that EA sucks? According to Kotaku, EA was not humbled by the experience:

In a statement to Kotaku, EA Senior Director of Corporate Communications John Reseburg said:

"We're sure that British Petroleum, AIG, Philip Morris, and Halliburton are all relieved they weren't nominated this year. We're going to continue making award-winning games and services played by more than 300 million people worldwide."

Perhaps when GameStop goes to Lamar Smith to enlist him in the battle against a rogue game market, Electronic Arts will also go to Lamar Smith to enlist him in a battle to make sure that rogue groups like the Consumerist and its 200,000+ voters don't illegally use the concepts derived by such outstanding groups as the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

(empo-plaaybizz) Two and a Half Faces

I have previously tried to make biometrics cool, but it's an uphill struggle. For many people - whoops, I forgot the disclaimer:

[DISCLAIMER: I AM EMPLOYED IN THE BIOMETRICS INDUSTRY.]

For many people, biometrics conjures up the idea that every fingerprint scan and every police picture is automatically shared with every police agency in the entire world, plus selected really bad police agencies in other galaxies. This, despite the science fiction element, is considered to be extremely uncool.

But last January, I was trying to think about ways to make biometrics like cool and stuff.

Assuming for the moment that casual use of a technology can increase the acceptance of its use in law enforcement, perhaps this same practice can be applied to other technologies.

Such as the body scanners used by the TSA.

How come the trendiest clubs haven't bought some of these body scanners to install inside their party zones?

Imagine - it's one o'clock in the morning, the star deejay is in the middle of her set, the lights are flashing...and a guy in a police uniform rushes out to the applause of everyone.

"OK," yells the pseudo-cop, "who wants to get scanned?"

After some pushing and shoving around, a few young women and a few young men move toward the pseudo-cop, and The Machine is unveiled, along with a large monitor. One by one, the participants go through the body scanner, and the crowd cheers or jeers depending upon the results of the scan. Winners are selected, and participants will get the option to purchase photos of their scans.

Now I'm sure that some people would charge that this would violate pornography laws, but the nightclub owner will claim that these are just standard Federal Government practices.

Well, I hit upon another idea - why not use Ashton Kutcher to promote biometrics in some way? He's on a hit TV show, he's pals with Robert Scoble, and he's highly regarded as reliable source - well, maybe not. But there is a significant segment of the population - over 7.8 million people - that would listen to Kutcher before listening to Janet Napolitano.

And he's already associated with cameras - see ashton.nikonusa.com.

So why not extend this association and give him superbiometric powers?

Now I have never watched Two and a Half Men, but I understand that most of network TV is really really successful when it has a laugh track. So if you crank the laugh track up really loud, you can sell anything.

Instead of educating TSA inspectors, DHS could just buy the entire advertising block of Two and a Half Men, with the option of introducing things into the scripts.

Such as letting Ashton's character (whatever he's called) wear some super biometric glasses that tie to a DHS database and allow him to immediately know the first names of hot babes his character encounters.

THE DORKY CHARACTER: Hey, who's that hot woman over there?

ASHTON: Hey, kid, get me my glasses!

KID: Here they are.

(ASHTON puts on glasses. Lights on glasses blink.)

ASHTON: Hey, Sara!

(loud laugh track)

Of course, you have to have Ashton's character go through all the biometric modalities. Using a mobile fingerprint scanner to find out who was playing his video game. Looking deep into someone's eyes - deep enough to see the iris detail. Gazing at a woman's wrist, a vein recognition reader close at hand. And, of course, voice recognition.

KID: Telephone! ... Hello?

THE DORKY CHARACTER: Is it for me?

KID: No way!

(loud laugh track)

ASHTON: Hello, who is this?

VOICE: You don't recognize me?

(ASHTON applies a device to the phone receiver. Lights on device blink.)

ASHTON: Demi?!?

(loud laugh track)

Network executives will love it!

(empo-plaaybizz) If a company were run like a Zynga game

As I walked into the conference room, a woman rose to greet me.

"You must be John Bredehoft," she said.

I replied. "And you must be Ms. Johnson."

"Please," she said. "Call me Amelia. We're all on a first name basis here. Welcome to your first day at NewCorp."

"Thank you, Amelia," I replied. "I'm ready to get started."

"OK," Amelia said. "We'll start you in one of our groups. Would you like to start in telemarketing?"

I tried to conceal my disappointment. "Hmm, telemarketing. What options are available?"

"Numerous options," replied Amelia, smiling. "You can also start in finance, marketing, engineering, purchasing...the list is endless."

I thought for a moment. "Could I start in finance?"

"Certainly," replied Amelia. "Right this way."

We walked down several halls, then entered a room in which a bunch of people were sitting at banks of phones.

After a moment, I said, "This looks like telemarketing."

"Actually, it's finance," replied Amelia. "Getting our customers to FINANCE our continued profitability." She let this sink in. "You see, at NewCorp, our chief business is business. We need our customers to purchase products from us, and therefore we must constantly contact our customers and give them opportunities to purchase things from us." She walked toward a desk in the back. "You'll be based right here. Any questions?"

"I have one," I replied. "No one has ever told me the specific duties of my job. Do I have one or two goals that I should fulfill?"

"Good question," replied Amelia. "NewCorp believes that goals are important, and we constantly give our employees goals to strive for. Now if you look at the left side of your computer screen right here, you can see that you already have one goal that you need to meet. As you progress in your employment, you will be provided with additional goals. For example..." Amelia said as she gestured at another computer "...Joe here has been with NewCorp for two weeks already. As you can see, Joe has so many goals that they don't all fit on the left side of the screen any more. But if you click on this icon at the bottom, you can see that Joe has many additional goals that he needs to meet. NewCorp clearly believes in the importance of goals, and we try to give our employees as many goals as possible."

While Amelia was talking, I was keeping an eye on Joe. He was furiously contacting customers by clicking at icons on his screen. When customers replied positively, "Task Achieved!" messages would appear next to the goals on his left. Joe could then choose to share his accomplishments with other employees, and the other employees could then click on his accomplishment notices and use them to achieve their own goals.

I need to befriend Joe, I thought to myself; that should help me advance...

(empo-plaaybizz) Making tires cool

When boys (and some girls) are growing up, they talk about cars a lot. Perhaps they'll have favorite makes - Ford for one, Mercedes for another. Perhaps they'll talk about the color of the car. As boys become men and girls become women, they begin looking at other aspects of the car, such as fuel consumption.

And there are a lot of games associated with cars. You can turn on your TV and watch cars racing around tracks. You can go to the store and buy Hot Wheels or model cars or other car-related toys.

But cars, at least as currently designed, would go nowhere if they didn't have wheels on them. And most of the wheels in use today have tires.

Did any of you talk tire traction when you were growing up? I doubt it.

But the Riverside Press-Enterprise notes that tire companies such as Kumho and Continental are aiming to change that. The Kumho application, described on Kumho's "Kumho Tire Drive" Facebook page, will be available shortly on various Apple platforms, and should eventually be available for Android. As you equip your car, Kumho reminds you of one important thing that you must do:

Put on some Kumho Tires. Make sure you always equip both wet and dry performance Tires.

But Kumho was beaten to the punch by Continental, with its ContiTireRace application for Apple platforms.

The goal of the game is to take the race track with ContiWinterContact TS 830 as quickly as possible, collecting valuable points along the way that give the rolling tires additional speed and thus better lap times. The race can be “run” using either the keys or by tilting the phone. Snowy and icy roads suitable to the season and winter tire model make it all the more exciting.

Now let's see if the windshield wiper vendors get into the act.

(empo-plaaybizz) If you can sell facial recognition as fun, you can sell anything

[DISCLAIMER: I WAS PREVIOUSLY EMPLOYED BY MOTOROLA, AND IN THAT CAPACITY WAS EXPOSED TO TECHNOLOGIES THAT WERE SUBSEQUENTLY ACQUIRED BY ONE OF THE COMPANIES MENTIONED HERE.]

Gee, this sounds fun.

Back in mid-December, Facebook's Justin Mitchell wrote a blog post entitled Making Photo Tagging Easier. First, Mitchell presents the problem:

While tags are an essential tool for sharing important moments, many of you have said tagging photos can be a chore. (Like that time you had to tag your cousin and her fiancé over and over and over again in 64 different pictures of their engagement party, and then go back and tag the guests.)

So Facebook is rolling out tag suggestions to make your life easier. How do they do it?

Because photos are such an important part of Facebook, we want to be sure you know exactly how tag suggestions work: When you or a friend upload new photos, we use face recognition software—similar to that found in many photo editing tools—to match your new photos to other photos you're tagged in. We group similar photos together and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos.

Now Facebook isn't the first online service to incorporate facial recognition. Google acquired such technology in 2006, and incorporated it into its products by 2007, although a full rollout may not be performed due to privacy concerns.

Yet casual users are getting more and more accustomed to facial recognition, which can lead to wider acceptance of the use of the technology. Which is a good thing, because it's not just the casual photo taggers that use facial recognition - governments are using software from various companies, including my own, for passport checking and other applications.

Assuming for the moment that casual use of a technology can increase the acceptance of its use in law enforcement, perhaps this same practice can be applied to other technologies.

Such as the body scanners used by the TSA.

How come the trendiest clubs haven't bought some of these body scanners to install inside their party zones?

Imagine - it's one o'clock in the morning, the star deejay is in the middle of her set, the lights are flashing...and a guy in a police uniform rushes out to the applause of everyone.

"OK," yells the pseudo-cop, "who wants to get scanned?"

After some pushing and shoving around, a few young women and a few young men move toward the pseudo-cop, and The Machine is unveiled, along with a large monitor. One by one, the participants go through the body scanner, and the crowd cheers or jeers depending upon the results of the scan. Winners are selected, and participants will get the option to purchase photos of their scans.

Now I'm sure that some people would charge that this would violate pornography laws, but the nightclub owner will claim that these are just standard Federal Government practices.

And if these tactics help to sell body scanners, look for the nightclubs to follow that up with Waterboarding night.

(empo-plaaybizz) ASCII Farmville

This was created for my friends Bloose and Starfish from the Grotto BBS. It's been a couple of decades since the days of the Grotto, and now they're on Facebook and playing Farmville. What if Zynga had been around back in the day and had created games for WWIV BBS users?

(empo-tymshft) (empo-plaaybizz) Again, gaming drives industry (a petabyte of Avatar data)

One of the people at my church is a Microsoft employee, and when he isn't rocking out on his Zune, he's sharing news related to his employer. But before I share the item that he shared, let's look at storage.

I've never seen "Remember The Titans" (I'm not a movie person), but I did attend summer school at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Virginia a few years after the events depicted in the movie. And when we weren't listening to the Rolling Stones' "Some Girls," we were messing around with the class' Star Trek game, written in BASIC. The cassette containing the game could be run on two computers - one with 8 kilobytes of memory, and the other with a whopping 16 kilobytes of memory. I remember that I once edited the game on the 16K computer, and then discovered that it wouldn't run on the 8K computer - if I recall correctly, I was able to salvage the earlier version of the game. I hope.

Time progressed, and our demands for memory space, either to run programs or to store data, increased. When I got my Mac Plus computer a few years later, I had a hard drive with 20 megabytes of disk space. Yup, we had moved up a prefix, from "kilo" to "mega."

Fast forward to 2009, the last year that I attended Oracle OpenWorld. One of my co-workers was part of a panel about usage of large amounts of data in Oracle applications. Our fairly impressive usage, however, was dwarfed by one of the panelists that was managing telescope data. The telescope would regularly generate hundreds of terabytes of data.

Fast forward to the article that my friend shared. Remember that the Oracle OpenWorld example involved serious stuff with telescopes and scientists and things. But my friend's data storage example involves game stuff - namely, a movie.

Five years ago, Nadine Kano visited James Cameron at the offices of his film production company, Lightstorm Entertainment. Kano, a senior director in MSIT's Product Group Strategic Initiatives (PGSI) team, had flown to Los Angeles to explore whether Microsoft could help on the director's latest project.

Cameron then showed Kano a 3-D clip - one of his initial concepts for the movie "Avatar."

Kano was impressed, and everyone else was impressed. As a result, Microsoft provided technical assistance to Cameron.

If the record audiences flocking to "Avatar" sit through the credits, they'll see proof of Microsoft's involvement when the "Special Thanks" message rolls across the screen.

The acknowledgement is for what Cameron and Lightstorm dubbed Gaia, the Digital Asset Management (DAM) system that served as the hub for all the digital content and metadata generated during the production. Essentially, the entire movie was turned into data that was almost exclusively housed on Gaia. Microsoft built the data-collection application from the ground up for "Avatar,"

OK, so how much metadata was generated?

In "Avatar," every blade of grass, every cloud in the sky, every vine in the jungle existed digitally and had to be stored somewhere. According to [producer Jon] Landau, the production generated more than a petabyte–or one million gigabytes–of information.

However, Microsoft isn't the only one moving a bunch of data around. Compare the "Avatar" statistic to the September 2010 gaming statistics from Zynga (from TechCrunch):

Zynga’s properties move a whopping 1 petabyte of data daily, and the company operates its own data centers; using a hybrid private/public cloud infrastructure.

That's not metadata, that's petadata.

And of course this is going to go on beyond petabytes. I've already talked about zetta (10 to the 21st power) and yotta (10 to the 24th power), as well as proposals for even larger numbers (including 10 to the 42nd power, or sorta). What will things be like when he can hold a device in our hand that can manage 3 sortabytes of data?

(empo-plaaybizz) RunKeeper can be a WalkKeeper

Over the weekend, Loic LeMeur shared the link to his RunKeeper profile, in advance of his run in the New York Marathon. RunKeeper allows you to document your runs in preparation for a marathon, and also has badges that you can earn as you make progress. (Doesn't everyone have badges? I bet you that the online bank that Alex Payne joined has badges also.)

After looking at Loic's profile, I immediately thought of a former co-worker who is also a runner. I shared the RunKeeper link with her, and made the following comment (among others):

I don't think I'll be using it myself, but it sounds like it's up your alley.

I am not a runner, so I didn't see how RunKeeper could be used by me.

But then I saw the profile of one of Loic's friends, an Australian with the RunKeeper ID dunanriley. (Some of you may know this person.) And when I saw that profile, I realized that I could use RunKeeper also. Dunanriley, you see, is not a marathoner - he's a walker.

But there was one more obstacle to overcome. Initially, RunKeeper was designed as an app for iPhone and Android users, which pretty much leaves me out in the cold. However, earlier this year, RunKeeper released a new version of its website that now allows dumbphone users like me to manually track their running/walking/whatever.

So I went ahead and joined RunKeeper over the weekend. It let me register as a walker, and it also let me input a couple of my walking routes (and measured the distance of the routes for me). Hopefully RunKeeper will motivate me to actually USE the walking routes more often than I have been lately.

(empo-plaaybizz) Gaming the election

Have you ever noticed how the current election is always the most important election in our time? Well, since it is the most important election in our time, both the Libertarians and the Green Party want to make sure that everyone gets out to vote. Oh, and other parties want you to vote also, such as the American Independent Party and the Peace and Freedom Party. Did I miss any?

This year, there's a new wrinkle in the get out the vote efforts. In past years, my precinct would give me an "I Voted" sticker, which I would wear proudly until it fell off. Now, your "I Voted" status can be a little more public:

Foursquare is promoting civic responsibility by promoting the "I voted" badge.

First sign up at Foursquare.com, so you are already a registered user. Then look for your precinct or add it to the list of venues when you go there.

To earn the "I Voted" badge, simply check in at your precinct, and when the window asks you to add a "shout," simply type #ivoted in the window and finish checking in.

But Foursquare isn't going it alone, according to the Hattiesburg American:

Mashable.com reports that a number of organizations have partnered on the project, including Foursquare, Rock the Vote, Pew Center, Google and the Voting Information Project.

Meanwhile, Facebook is doing something similar, but I don't know that they're partnering with anyone. Zuckerberg likes to do things all by himself, and especially likes ideas that he created all by himself without anyone else.

(empo-plaaybizz) There oughta be a cyberlaw

The Empoprise-BI business blog has previously discussed the intersection between games and business, and the idea that businesses can be more productive if they incorporate gaming techniques into their businesses. The example that comes to mind is the effort by many retail establishments to drive people to their businesses via tools such as Foursquare.

On the flip side, it should be noted that games themselves have become a lucrative business, with many people (including myself) spending money to buy virtual goods.

Take Italian gamer Paola Letizia. The English site metro.co.uk reports that Letizia spent the equivalent of £88 on virtual items in the game Pet Society. Afterwards, she ran into a virtual problem that was very real:

When Paola Letizia discovered a burglar had ransacked her flat, she called police straight away.

Now the hunt is on for the thief – even though the property they broke into was a virtual home, designed for a virtual pet and decorated with virtual paintings and furniture.

She ended up reporting this to the police, who did NOT laugh off her complaint. You see, the thief violated postal laws by committing an online robbery.

The story resulted in a comment from metro.co.uk reader JMG:

Loser.com

However, I differ with JMG's assessment. Frankly, there is no practical difference between losing a virtual painting that was purchased with real money, and losing a stock certificate that was purchased with real money. I'm sure that JMG would howl if someone stole his 401K - or, since he's presumably in Britain, his 254K (based upon the current dollar to pound exchange rate).

(empo-plaaybizz) Another "fight club" games post

I'm not a movie person or anything - I defer to Jandy Stone on all things cinematic - but I know enough to cause trouble, as I have already demonstrated via my August 17 post with a tangential reference to the "minimal rules" idea from "Fight Club." In that post, I talked about the rule-light game "Sleep is Death."

But let's take a look at another game, Foursquare, which has an established set of rules.

Or does it?

If you're a Foursquare user, take a moment and think to yourself exactly what the rules of Foursquare are.

Take a moment. I'll wait.



OK, now read this description from an About Foursquare post.

If you’ve spent much time on foursquare at all, you’ve no doubt noticed that some users play the game a little, well, differently than everyone else. You’ve probably also noticed the vast majority of those users are from Indonesia.

Judging by their foursquare histories, they appear to trot all over the globe, unlocking a badge in Los Angeles one minute and another in London the next. Without some sort of teleportation device, it would be impossible to travel as quickly as they do. Yet, with some digital trickery, they’re able to unlock new badges within minutes of them first becoming active.

This has inspired a lot of "cheater" accusations, as evidenced in this thread. In response to a request that the mobile Foursquare website be banned (in other words, requiring you to use a GPS-enabled smartphone to use Foursquare), one person replied:

Some ppl don't have bb's or iPhones (like me) & need the mobile website. But I still agree with you that the cheating needs to be curbed. WHY CHEAT? It's stupid & immature & it's not like 4sq gives you actual prizes & stuff for badges. It's suppose to be fun.

But About Foursquare claims that's exactly what the Indonesians are doing - having fun.

So what if a user has unlocked almost every badge without leaving their couch in Indonesia? Someone who looks at the game a different way doesn’t affect the way I play the game at all....

In conversations with some of these “cheaters,” (who will not be named) it’s become clear to me that they simply view foursquare differently than most Americans. To them, the badges are a puzzle to solve, similar to a crossword or jigsaw puzzle. In many ways the cryptic clues given by foursquare do make badges difficult to solve.

They tell me their fascination began because mayorships soon became boring and there were few badges that were naturally unlockable in Indonesia, so they thought it would be fun to try unlocking some of the badges that were tied to US venues.

When considering whether Foursquare should ban the Indonesians, or ban the dumb-phone people like me, or ban people who use their smartphones to check into nearby sites that they don't actually visit, we need to keep one thing in mind. The people who are checking into Foursquare locations are NOT Foursquare's customers.

Let me repeat that (I've been listening to too much Jim Rome, I guess) - Foursquare's customer base is NOT the people using their iPhones or Android Phones or netbooks to check into Foursquare locations.

Foursquare's customer base is the locations themselves. And are the locations harmed by Indonesian visitors? According to About Foursquare, they are not:

For businesses who sponsor the badges, there’s no harm in having more users unlock them, if anything the branding value increases as those badges get posted to Twitter and Facebook, whether they were unlocked honestly or not.

Now there is a scenario in which the so-called cheaters could have an effect on the so-called honest players. Let's say that I'm trying to earn a mayorship at the northwest Ontario, California Starbucks. Now let's say that, instead of the mayorship being held by an employee of a nearby business, it's instead held by someone in Jakarta. Now obviously the person in Jakarta is never going to come to Mountain and 6th to claim any prize - but at the same time, I am denied the prize.

Think through this. If I want to earn whatever prize that Starbucks has to offer, then I have to check in more times than the person in Jakarta.

Remembering that the Starbucks, and not the Foursquare player, is Foursquare's customer, this sounds like a win-win for Foursquare, no?

(empo-plaaybizz) Sleep is death - the "fight club" of games

I joined Amplify over the weekend, but currently am reading it more than posting to it. I found this item from Kol Tregaskes, which led me to a Randy Smith blog post which asks, "When Is A Game Not A Game"? When I play Starfleet Commander or Sudoku, I play within a defined set of rules. An Atlas can't overpower 5 Ares, and I can't place 9 one's in a row. Smith describes another reality:

The only strange thing about this talking wolf is the high quality of its conversation. “I could shoot you, you know,” I threaten the wolf, having already established that my daughter might still be alive inside its belly. That wasn’t picked from a dialogue menu; I typed it in. Without missing a beat, the wolf responds, “I’m afraid you’ll have to.” Sentient characters and interactive dialogue have been common this entire play session. Impressed? The game’s responses are driven by game designer Jason Rohrer.

Yes, I do mean that he designed this game, Sleep Is Death, but I also mean that he’s controlling the world I’m exploring and typing in the responses for each character I speak to. It’s through the magic of this ‘man behind the curtain’ solution that Sleep Is Death is easily able to bring players to places few videogames are capable of, meaningfully exploring stories about family, euthanasia and coming of age, to name a few.

This is nothing new, at least for those of us who played Dungeons & Dragons in the 1970s. For those who never played the game, a Dungeonmaster would set up the initial world in which the players roamed, but the Dungeonmaster could always interject a level of personal control, or change things around to meet the situation of the players. And until computer artificial intelligence becomes much better, and games learn much more about the people who play them, the personal touch of a game "master" will provide a much richer experience than something that was programmed by a staff of people.

Now games such as baseball, basketball, and football (whatever flavor) have entire books of rules. A simplified rule set can be frightening, but it can also be liberating. I'm not a movie person, but I'm well aware that "Fight Club" has few rules:

Welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: you DO NOT talk about Fight Club! Third rule of Fight Club: if someone yells "stop!", goes limp, or taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule: only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule: one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule: the fights are bare knuckle. No shirt, no shoes, no weapons. Seventh rule: fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule: if this is your first time at Fight Club, you have to fight.

Compared to the rules for other games, that's nothing. And while it's a stretch to apply it to Microsoft's attempted takeover of Yahoo in 2008, there are certainly some possibilities to use "fight club"-like tactics to score a business knockout.

More details about Rohrer's game can be found at http://www.sleepisdeath.net/.

(empo-plaaybizz) Owen Van Natta plays around

The last time that I wrote about Owen Van Natta, it concerned the mixed messages that Van Natta and his boss Jon Miller were sending out about MySpace layoffs. On the one hand, Van Natta was telling MySpace employees were "friends and colleagues," and that the round of layoffs was a difficult decision. On the other hand, Van Natta and Miller were telling investors that MySpace was "bloated."

I hadn't followed Van Natta since, but apparently Jon Miller determined a few months later that MySpace was still a little too bloated, and one more layoff was required:

The long-running telenovela that has been MySpace over the years took yet another dramatic turn late today when News Corp. Chief Digital Officer Jon Miller fired MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta, whom he had hired only nine months ago to turn around the troubled social networking site....

While News Corp. tried to paint the departure as more mutual in its official statement, it was most definitely not, as problems among top execs finally came to a head today....

Sources...noted that Van Natta...had begun to bridle at not being able to select his own execs and at increasing meddling in the MySpace turnaround by Miller.

Like I said, I missed all of this news when it happened in February. But I definitely caught the recent announcement of where Van Natta was landing.

Zynga.

Zynga, the dominant social-gaming company that seems to spend most of its time raising money, has finished up yet another deal: It has officially brought in Web veteran Owen Van Natta, giving him the title “Executive Vice President of Business Operations.”

Following last month’s hire of Allen & Co. vet David Wehner as CFO, the move will be interpreted as yet another signal that Zynga is moving toward a big-money public offering.

Zynga headed for an IPO? A. J. Patrick Liszkiewicz can't be pleased.

(empo-plaaybizz) A mundane application for Evoluce screens

Wow, two natural user interface posts in two weeks! (Here's the previous one.)

I peeked in my Natural User Interface FriendFeed room recently, and saw that there has been a lot of talk about Evoluce. Back on May 7, @multitouch1 tweeted about a video from Evoluce.



As you can see, the Evoluce technology is highly dependent upon hooking to features that are already present in the Windows 7 operating system, as well as various technologies such as Flash and Java. (The product page specifically lists support for Windows 7, Java, XML, and TUOI.)

The product itself is called the Evoluce ONE.

Evoluce ONE

47-inch Multi-touch Full HD LCD Screen

Evoluce ONE is a 47-inch interactive Full HD LCD Screen with true multi-touch and multi-pen (multi-stylus) functionality. Evoluce ONE delivers sharp, bright images for sophisticated multimedia applications ranging from educational teaching and learning environments to medical imaging and interactive gaming.

Engadget has briefly mentioned the technology in English and German posts.

Needless to say, the gaming crowd (which can drive innovation) has weighed in on the screen. My favorite comment:

That guy sucks at Tic-Tac-Toe.

Of course, if you're buying a 47 inch monitor to play Tic-Tac-Toe, you're probably Paris Hilton.

(empo-plaaybizz) Why you need gamers in your corporate environment

I had encountered something at work that involved network latency, so I did some online research to understand latency better. In the course of my research, I checked Wikipedia's definition of lag. The Wikipedia article included an introduction, then an overview...then a discussion of "Lag in Multiplayer Gaming."

I continued my research, and then ran across a thread on an Australian message board with a detailed discussion of problems in accessing World of Warcraft. The discussion included pings, reports of disconnections, and dozens upon dozens of traceroutes. The thread was active for several weeks in March and April 2009.

Why is it easier for me to find network latency write-ups for consumer applications, than it is to find write-ups for business applications?

Perhaps it's because business applications tend to be confidential. (You may have noticed that I refrained from saying WHY I was researching network latency.) While your average World of Warcraft player has no problem posting a traceroute, I seriously doubt that Alex Payne will be publishing traceroutes that involve his new employer.

It's undeniably true that a number of technical issues, from network latency to interface design, have benefited from major contributions of people who play games.

So maybe corporations need to seek people who are interesting in various types of games, since they will have a perspective that can be applied to business issues. Interestingly enough, AMD has a game forum that is devoted to the topic, and presumably gets a lot of intelligence from the forum members that can be applied to improving AMD products. Look at this question:

Im looking to overclock my processor (athlon II X2 240) but it is not supported in my bios (american megatrends). i have a compaq cq5320f with a m2n68-la (narra6) mobo, gigabyte radeon hd 4350 graphics card, nvidia mcp610 chipset.

Can i flash my bios or is there software to download to help with this. please help!!!!

I would hope that processor manufacturers and BIOS manufacturers were following that thread.

So you can argue that companies need to seek out gaming employees and gaming customers to advance their products. Then again, an argument can be made that our technical knowledge is also advanced by pornography, and I don't know that corporations want to actively seek out pornography consumers...

P.S. For a broader view of gaming and the enterprise, see Why Gaming is the Future of Everything.