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Springing happily into games design

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Spring and new projects

Today is the first working day of British Summer Time 2009. The daffodils are out along the paths and the highways of England. It is light by 6am and it is time to spring clean my apartment.

I am also going to revamp my blog.

This is the third revamp or fourth incarnation.  I will still write about work and opportunity and I will still write about positive psychology – that is, the psychology of what goes well rather than the psychology of what goes badly.

Happiness engineering

What I will focus on for the foreseeable future is “happiness engineering” or “fungineering” or “happiness hacks”. These are all terms used by preeminent games designer, Jane McDonigal who has pointed out that games designers use basic work psychology to make engaging games far more effectively than managers, HRM and psychologists use the very same body of knowledge to make engaging work.

Learning games design from the beginning

I have no experience in game design. Zip. I don’t even play games – much. So this is the blog of a rank amateur exploring what games designers have to teach us about making work and play engaging in the 21st century, in our built up urban areas, with the threat of climate change and financial ruin hanging over our heads!

A community of amateur games designers

I suspect there are a heap of people out there who want to do this too. Please drop me the name of your blog if you also blog. Or join in the comments and suggest puzzles and conundrum for us to solve. And we will do our best.

Here’s to a winning 2009!
Jo

Published in Economy & International Relations

3 Comments

  1. Ned Ned

    Cool idea. Someone was telling me about some “Facebook Mafia” which I find interesting. I haven’t tried it, though.

    A friend of mine who is a big gamer loves to create his character or avatar. Often, he’ll spend more time creating his character than he will playing the game. And from one standpoint, playing the game is about enhancing the avatar.

    I have another idea, but I’m going to post it on Church of Ned because it goes along with a topic I want to write about. Haven’t got the new website going yet, but I’m itching to write…

    Peace.

  2. Jo Jordan Jo Jordan

    Hi Ned, Nice to see you around again. Yeah, I’m visually challenged so avatars defeat me.

    I think we all put more effort into the games that we find easy. We have artists over here who attend conferences and meetings and sketch what people are saying.

    Avatar specialists help us in the same way, I think. By bringing our characters alive for us.

    Team building specialists are doing something similar when they ask, what kind of a car are you. They help us understand the roles we have chosen for ourselves.

    I can imagine running a team building session with an avatar designer. I think it would be quite productive!

    Cool, I think you’ve just imagined my blog post for today!

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