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Check out this great slide next to the stairs of a train station in The Netherlands (Utrecht Overvecht to be precise)… I will slide down later today, but it was wet when I was checking it out today and I did’n want to have a wet tush at the start of my day… hahaha. More 2 Come!

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Will this be the future of social TV? – Sharing stuff we say about our favorite shows? Why not switching on Facetime or Skype while watching TV? I use Skype when I play multiplayer games with my friends…

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A game to improve your level of ‘healty lifestyle!’ on Facebook. I haven’t played it yet, but hey – I eat my vegetables and fruit every day, run 5 km every week and at least cycle once a week… 😉 Go check it out if you …like…

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Steam – the online store for all ‘epic’ games like Call of Duty, R.U.S.E. and really many, many more will offer five F2P (Free to Play) Launch Titles Offering Exclusive Content to Celebrate Launch

Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Counter-Strike, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), today introduced support for Free to Play (F2P) Games on Steam with the launch of five F2P games.

Available immediately, the launch titles are Spiral Knights, Forsaken Worlds, Champions Online: Free for All, Global Agenda: Free Agent, and Alliance of Valliant Arms (AVA). 

Beginning tomorrow (Weds) with Spiral Knights and concluding Sunday with AVA, each of the five launch titles will offer exclusive in-game content to those who try the “F2P game of the day” on Steam. In game transactions in all of the titles will be supported by Steam’s micro-transaction backend system that is available to Steamworks partners and currently used in Valve’s Team Fortress 2. 

“The introduction of Free to Play games is another example of the constant evolution of Steam,” said Jason Holtman, director of business development at Valve. “Free to Play games offer new game genres and game experiences for customers, while offering developers and publishers new revenue opportunities and the ability to reach customers in areas of the world where the traditional packaged goods model is less popular than F2P.” 

Specific details on the F2P games of the day and their exclusive in-game content will be made available in the coming days.

Steam is a leading platform for PC & Mac games and digital entertainment serving over 1,500 games to over 30 million active accounts worldwide. For more information, please visit www.steamgames.com

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Only 177 slides by a German called Sebastian Deterding from London…? 😉

Enjoy!

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Skip the short intro, and jump to Chief Scientist JP Rangaswami from Salesforce.com

It really starts getting interesting after 20 minutes when he starts talking about the 4 drivers people have:

1. Acquire
2. Defend
3. Bond
4. Learn

And the way he sees these elements in game genres, divided in hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs.

I can see the following comparisons based on our most essential drivers:

1. Acquire (greed: posses, collect, own, badges)
2. Defend (need for safety: a roof over our heads, safety, clothing, protection, food, etc.)
3. Bond (social, sharing, relations, interaction, CRM, Cooperative gameplay, teams, network)
4. Learn (skills, competences, knowledge, developing personality, rewards, level-up, XP, progress, etc.)

A lot of inspiration for my next book and a job I am currently working on! 😉

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A great shortfilm by David Kaplan and Eric Zimmerman about games, gamification and how it could intrude into our daily life. One thing is not correct though. We will always know when we are playing and when we are nog playing. Stepping in and out of the circle of play is eminent and makes us very conscious of gaming and not-gaming.

More information here: http://futurestates.tv/episodes/play

>After reading their free whitepaper about gamification I found this presentation on Slideshare. I believe Bunchball is one of the agencies that ‘don’t believe the hype’ but have their own vision of how gamification can help brands to achieve their goals… level up and +10 points for Bunchball – they just unlocked the RESPECT badge for achieving their goal of convincing me they know what they’re talking about ;-)!

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