Why Do I Care About Achievements? It’s My Caveman Brain!

All the talk about the “Gameification” of video games in the Dead Island review Jason posted yesterday reminded me of a great TED Talk I watched about a year ago. In it, Tom Chatfield discusses the seven ways games reward our brains, from random rewards to purposeful tasks to receiving rewards on a schedule. And at the end he spends a few minutes talking about how these principals might be applied to the world around us.

I’m excited by the possibilities of applying these theories to real life (non-virtual) situations, if only because I’ve seen how video games have motivated me in ways that seem meaningless and silly to anyone who hasn’t experienced online gaming.

If you’ve got 20 minutes to spare, I think it’s definitely worth a watch.

Tom Chatfield: 7 ways games reward the brain | Ted.com

Interesting Dead Island Review

This is an interesting take on Dead Island.  I agreed with many of the points the author made regarding his frustration with the characters, the inventory, and the endless weapon names, none of which seem to make much sense - to say nothing of the economy where you can sell duct tape for $3 and buy it for $150. 

I do disagree with his distaste in Gamification.  When playing Battlefield 2, I found myself jumping on to Statsverse daily to check my progress. I have no idea why, but I love stats. 

When reading this, I had to look up the word 'bathykolpian'.  I had a chuckle, and I'll have to use that word in a sentence soon.

Video Games Killed the Video-Game Star (On Dead Island) by Tom Bissell  [Grantland.com]