Topic: Games and Gaming

What are the key elements that create real player engagement in a game? Nicole Lazzaro, president of XEODesign and expert on emotion and player experience design, identifies where on the emotional map game creators must take us to make their games popular and successful. The games that keep us coming back provide us with more than mere amusement. They challenge, surprise, and relax us while creating opportunities for what we really seek at the end of the day--a chance for social interaction.

Luke Hohmann thinks teams should engage more productively and creatively in the product design and development process. His career commitment to agile methods complements his latest professional focus: Innovation Games, originally designed as in-person, goal-directed, serious games. Now, Luke is translating the games to a new, on-line, serious gaming platform.

Do virtual worlds provide us the best tool to learn about the real world? While geo-location technologies let us create and play GPS-enabled adventures in the real world, they also allow us to simulate and model real physical geography within the virtual worlds of MMO's. Jeremy Irish, CEO of Groundspeak, and W. James Au describe how the latest geo-location applications are expanding the pathways between real and virtual geographies.

Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Keith Devlin, author of "The Unfinished Game," who talks about the letters exchanged between two mathematicians -- Pascal and Fermat -- changed our lives.

Computer gaming is a fast growing market and an important means of expression for an entire generation, but new online games are unstable and expensive to develop. In this presentation from the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, Chris Melissinos, Chief Gaming Office of Sun Microsystems points out some of the problems and opportunities in the online gaming market and how Sun's Project Darkstar will help make better online games.

Second Life is not a game - it is a social, interactive, 3D version of the Internet. In this talk from the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Philip Rosedale, CEO and Founder of Linden Lab, discusses the implications of the virtual world Second Life, his company's move towards open source, and the value of open source as a business strategy in a network-effects market.

On this episode of IEEE Spectrum, learn about controlling a computer mouse by voice, a better alternative to electroshock therapy, and citizen clean water activism. A new software program designed to compliment voice recognition software lets users control a mouse by making vowel sounds and clicks. Also, magnetic seizure therapy has been as effective as electroshock therapy in patients who don't respond to medication, but without the threat of amnesia.

On this edition of IEEE Spectrum Radio, class A ranked chess player Paul Hoffman talks about his new book "King's Gambit: A Son, a Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game." Hoffman also discusses how he has been involved with chess, from playing in competitions, to using chess as an educational tool.

If you haven't heard about ubiquitous games yet, now is your chance to get ahead of the curve. Jane McGonigal discusses this new genre of game that integrates alternate realities with everyday life. For developers of ubiquitous games, increasing happiness and the quality of life is the top priority. McGonigal cites some examples to illustrate the concept and challenges the technology industry to evaluate their own work in terms of the happiness it generates.

Raph Koster, author of the book "A Theory of Fun for Game Design", describes the grammar of fun. He gives a checklist of ways to make social media more fun based on his work in online games. Most important is to give users context and feedback for every action they take, and that fun comes at the edge of failure.