links for 2010-02-25

I have mixed feel­ings about this talk. On the one hand, any effort to bring per­va­sive gam­ing to the main­stream is good news. On the oth­er, I’m wor­ried that peo­ple might think that game design is as sim­ple as slap­ping a reward mech­a­nism on any­thing. Schell talks about the need for skilled game design­ers to get involved, but he does­n’t explain what their con­tri­bu­tion could be.

Anoth­er report on the last edi­tion of This hap­pened — Utrecht. Ser­vice­able, but I would’ve liked some com­men­tary beyond the fac­tu­al report.

Some great thoughts from Raph on the pro­lif­er­a­tion of rewards sys­tems in ‘real life’. I feel that what is often over­looked with all these things is the activ­i­ty design itself. Also, I’m a strong advo­cate of social games being adaptible by their play­er communities.