“Dear Friend, it is our great pleasure to invite you to a White House meeting for a discussion of games as powerful tools to tackle grand challenges in education, health, energy, defense, and other key Presidential priority areas.” To be honest, it went straight to my spam folder. Question: How many friends do I have at the White House? Answer: About the same number of friends I have in Nigeria that want to send me money. With the number of DC-centric email announcements that head westward to Colorado, I have my email filters set...
read moreThe Fun Theory Award is a yearly award offered by Volkswagen, which asks groups to submit videos with their best ideas for learning. The question is simple: can fun change behaviour? Judging by the entries received, the answer is a resounding ‘yes!’ Here at FES, we work with scientists and others that most often just don’t understand the value of games. In their minds, games are for ‘fun’, and education and science are serious things. We see the world a bit differently: fun and games are a basic part of life....
read moreBusiness has gotten complicated! Talk with any manager in any industry, private or public, in any country, and you will hear the same compliant. Running a business or government or any organization in today’s economy is complicated! Supposedly we have lots of technology – business intelligence – to help deal with this complexity. And it does help but falls short. This blog suggests an approach to apply gaming design to a collaborative process of data analysis. In other words, the challenge is involving all stakeholders in the...
read moreIn her book Reality is Broken – Why Games Make us Better and how they can Change the World, Jane McGonigal has a great list of fixes for this reality. Jane McGonigal’s list of fixes for reality: Compared with games, reality is too easy. Games challenge us with voluntary obstacles and help us put our personal strengths to better use. Compared with games, reality is depressing. Games focus our energy, with relentless optimism, on something we’re good at and enjoy. Compared with games, reality is unproductive. Games give us clearer...
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