Sorry for the abrupt termination of the previous part of the Mindtrek series. Sometimes my under-development posts stay open for far too long on my computer and I eventually have to restart and/or close the tab.
Back to the Mindtrek. The next part that I visited was the Game Research Lab. There, individual presenters exposed their research projects done at the Uni. The first man to present, showed his project which was about merging the teacher and students life together. To do this, they created a series of trading cards, and a game, to involve the two parties and try to "gamify" the working and studying environment.
The trading cards had information on the different teachers and students, a picture, hobbies and other information about them. The aim of the game was to have these cards show information about people and then challenge players to "fight" for them. The game went like this: Everyone was given X amount of cards, the person to have the most cards at the end of the allocated time (in months i believe) would win something. To gain (or loose) cards, players had to challenge each other. You would choose a card from your deck and then ask the person you challenged, to give you the information about the person who's card you had. I.E: if the card was info about "Monica" then you would show the person you challenged the picture of Monica and ask what her hobby is. If they answer correctly, you loose your card and they keep it. If they answer incorrectly, then you get a card from them.
He explained how it took a long while to get players to start interacting, and when eventually the traction was good, the time was almost over.
There was another presenter who explained her project. They made also a card game to help managers motivate the employees. She showed a lot of theoretical information they gathered for the game but at some point it hit me. There is no game in this "game". It was more of help card for managers, but there weren't players per-se involved, there was no game mechanics, no interaction between players and no purpose to the game. The cards she mentioned were color coded, had pictures and showed an overwhelming amount of information. They seem to be better suited at being picked by random in the morning by the manager, being read, and then trying to apply the information onto real life.
It is important to understand the theory behind, the psychology, and aspects of motivation, but only by understanding game mechanics can you make a project into a game.
The next presentation I'll write about is for the Open & Connected presentation. It was a long presentation about open source and data connectivity in medicine. But To me it was more interesting when he started talking about Watson. I love Watson. I'd love having a tiny A.I. to own and teach things to. It gave me an idea for a game. But back to the presentation. I think it was very interesting the idea that your medical history can follow you around. It would make things much easier and smoother when changing hospitals/clinics. He spoke how checking your vital signs and other levels, the system could detect life threatening conditions 24 hrs before the symptoms appeared. I think that's quite commendable. It's like when you know you are about to fall ill with the flu and can do nothing about it, but you know it's coming and prepare for it.
This presentation did, however, made me wonder about Skynet. You know. If the computer can grow to the point of having all the relevant information, there would be a time when humans would no longer see the need for studying. This would create an idiotic society that eventually would be enable to sustain itself, and if allowed, A.I.'s would become humanity's caretakers. Existing, among other reasons, to maintain the health of people.
Again.. Sorry, I'll have to cut this again, on toward part 4.
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