Android’s and iPhone’s use of GPS facillitates augmented reality camera work. Aim your camera at a city street, for example, and see live tags of each business in view, user-generated reviews of that restaurant, historical details on this statue — you get the idea. Gamers are often acused of living in our own little world, and now we can. With tech likes this, we can augment the real world to be a game world with puzzles, enemies, challenges of all flavors awaiting where we live. Since I can see the Texas state capitol from my office, how about topping the dome with a boss enemy visible when you line the dome up in your camera? Lob fusillades at him to whup his ass, else the monster wins and Texas secedes. (Yikes, I’m scaring myself here.)
Below are two examples, one from Wikitude for travel, the second from Sekai Camera for a museum in Japan.
I’m often asked about how to break into the game industry, particularly as a producer. This short piece provides a good primer on some tactics to breaking in and staying in:
As a game producer — and this holds especially true for producers with no or limited industry experience — your personality is often your greatest asset. The communication and leadership skills that you bring to a team start with an interview, and the best way to get that interview is with a face-to-face introduction.
“One of the ominous things for the video game industry is that almost
none of these Funware ideas or businesses have come from game
companies, which are now failing to catch on to an expansion
opportunity. It’s an odd situation, given that game designers are the
ones who best understand how to keep consumers addicted, Zichermann
says. What’s more, it’s possible that social networks that use fun game
mechanics may actually be robbing games of their audiences, he adds.”
I’m heartened to see this program. It’s precisely what many groups in Texas strive for as they integrate arts into elementary school curricula. It’s big time experiential learning.
Movies thrived during the Great Depression. Folks wanted to escape, and nickelodeons offered relief for little money. Some speculate that video games could fare just as well during a recession. While games aren’t cheap, they’re good value. $50 buys dozens, maybe hundreds, of hours of escape.
“We’re still going to spend the same amount of hours entertaining
ourselves,” said Michael Pachter, an analyst with Wedbush Morgan Securities. “It’s just a matter of which entertainment we choose to
buy, and games are still perceived to be a super value.”
The number of news stories about libraries embracing video games to lure kids and, in some cases, turn them on to reading is increasing. Here’s the latest one to cross my screen, this one from the Big D:
Registration is open for the International Game Developers Association Leadership Form, San Francisco, November 13 – 14. I hit last year’s event and really enjoyed it. Focused on game development, it’s an intimate conference devoted to improving game developers’ leadership and management skills and improving their personal development.
I’m giving two talks, one tailoring David Allen’s GTD and various Merlin Man-esque lifehacks to game development, the other sharing tactics to improve a studio’s performance, profitability and employee retention with civic engagement.
If you’re interested in attending the conference, register here.
The Economist Online has a preview of an upcoming book, “Changing the Game,” by David Edery and Ethan Mollick, that echoes many of the notions I’m hearing day-to-day.
According to Messrs Edery and Mollick, by making work more fun and by allowing firms to tap into wisdom beyond their walls, game playing can dramatically improve both productivity and bottom lines.
We game developers always like to talk shop, but in the last two years, folks from other industries increasingly ask me how to use game-like approaches and tools in their businesses. Some are natural fits, such as music production and simulations; others, like finance, banking and municipal budgeting, are more of a reach. While game elements can enliven serious subjects, what tickles me more is how this broad interest in games reflects on our culture. Just a few years ago, other industries and the government thought games merely child’s play, something fine to distract junior but certainly not in the purview of adults. How quickly that’s changed.
I credit two causes, Nintendo and the economic engine that games have become. While not the only one to aggressively court non-traditional gamers, Nintendo has made the most inroads. There’s no shame in being an adult with a Wiimote or DS in your hand. I see it all the time in airports as business men and women whip out DSes for a little fix. And the rush on Wiis shows no sign of slowing. How great that as a culture we’re allowing ourselves to enjoy a little frivolous play. Long ago we came to terms with idling away time watching TV. Games are on par with the tube, perhaps even a smidgen more productive.
The second reason is folks who don’t play games, don’t care about games, don’t believe that games are anything more than a leisure activity, see how games have become a big economic engine. Here in Texas, Governor Rick Perry has caught game fever, speaking at E3, penning op-eds in newspapers, all championing Texas as a great place to develop games. Despite some noteworthy layoffs, Austin game companies, mine included, continue to grow. If Edery and Mollick’s thesis is true, this is just the beginning.
Tracy Russo, John Edwards’ campaign blogger, makes a good, albeit prickly, point about the need for candidates to grasp technology if they’re to create policy governing it.
The movie will show first in Austin, Tex., where its writer-directors, the brothers Mark and Jay Duplass, got their filmmaking careers in gear. Then “Baghead” will probably move on to Dallas, Houston or, maybe, Portland, Ore. — cities that, in the words of Tom Bernard, the co-president of Sony Pictures Classics, “tend to connect with what’s new and different.”
Rodney founded and runs a game development studio in Austin, Texas. Active in Austin's digital media community, he helps expand economic development opportunities in games, web and other flavors of digital media, and he's a frequent speaker at conferences.More
