Tag: games

  • Lumos Labs – brush away the cobwebs of your mind

    Lumos Labs is a new site which, through a series of simple online games, excercise your brain. The site’s games are “scientifically proven to improve your attention, memory and processing speed.” Like doing situps for your mind, the site sends you through a series of short games that are fun, engaging and beautifully designed. Scores are tied to your account so you can push yourself to beat your high score or invite your friends to top you.

    The screenshot above is from a game called Raindrops where you solve the problems in each bubble before the raindrop hits the lake. As you progress, the math gets harder and the raindrops become more frequent. The game ends when the lake fills up.

    There are other games which require you to focus on pattern recognition, spacial memory, or attention and processing visual information. The approach here is similar to Brain Age (which runs on the Nintendo DS) but the appeal here is that all you need is an internet connection and a web browser with Flash to play.

    A glance at the about us page shows there’s some serious science behind the fun and games and there are presentations that you can download to learn more.

    And the best thing? Two of the founders are roommates of my sister! Way to go guys!

    Lumos Labs is in beta and free of charge.

  • Reuters opens up bureau in Second Life

    Reuters opens up bureau in Second Life

    The 200 year old news service which transmitted its first dispatches via homing pigeons has opened up a news bureau in the virtual world of Linden Labs’ Second Life.

    Adam Pasick, who goes by “Adam Reuters” in Second Life is the wire services sole correspondent, editor, and bureau chief.

    Being a financial news service, reporting is focused on news of economic interest with stories and interviews of some of the characters and entities that keep the Linden economy humming.

    The Reuters Second Life News Center also keeps track of the Linden Dollar vs US Dollar exchange rate and total USD spend in Second Life over the previous 24 hours ($436,291 as of 9:00pm yesterday!)

    Reuters has also built an in-world Atrium (Second Life s/w required) which you can visit and Adam has posted his hours on the site so you can visit with him and pass on your scoop.

    Markets are, to a certain extent, a shared hallucination. It only makes sense for Reuters to follow this story to its logical extreme and explore the edge of value creation into the virtual economy. The lead story on the site today, US Congress launches probe into virtual economies, is the strongest indication yet that what is virtual today will be real (and taxable) tomorrow.

  • 1K Project

    The 1K Project overlays 1,000 replays from the PC game Trackmania and composites them into a single video. A lesson in automotive physics and combustion driven liquid dynamics. No one knows who made this video or where it came from.

  • Yahoo Answers is a first person shoot ’em up

    Yahoo Answers is a first person shoot ’em up

    Danny Sullivan takes a look at the growth of answers.yahoo.com and compares it to other successful social media properties.  

    If it were a computer game, Wikipedia would be a strategy game in which you take a long view to win a campaign or goal. Yahoo Answers is a first-person shoot-’em-up. Questions appear, and as soon as one is shot down with an answer, it’s on to the next one.

    Some of the top players on the leaderboard spend up to 15 hours/day on the site, it’s definitely addictive. There’s even a Yahoo Group dedicated to kicking the habit.

  • Spore

    OMG! I’ve been hearing all about this game as the next greatest thing but until you see it, you can’t really appreciate just how cool it is. Joystiq has links to videos from E3 that show the game in action and it looks amazing.

    Joystiq Video, Wired Spore Event 

  • The New Yahoo Games

    yahoogames.JPG

    While the big gaming show E3 is going on in Los Angeles, Yahoo Games has released an update to Yahoo Games including a shiny new version of Yahoo Chess.

  • Social Software as a Game

    Three really great links that explore the relationship between a vibrant community site (i.e. Digg, MySpace) and an engaging multiplayer online game.

    Casual Games =~ Social Software – Duncan Gough

    Putting the Fun in Functional – Amy Jo Kim’s slides from eTech

    Write up of Amy Jo’s presentation – Bruce Stewart

  • Job Requirement : Level 60 World of Warcraft Guildmaster

    By John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas write in Wired that contrary to popular perception, multi-player online games are a good training ground for junior management.

    . . . the process of becoming an effective World of Warcraft guild master amounts to a total-immersion course in leadership. A guild is a collection of players who come together to share knowledge, resources, and manpower. To run a large one, a guild master must be adept at many skills: attracting, evaluating, and recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and adjudicating disputes. Guilds routinely splinter over petty squabbles and other basic failures of management; the master must resolve them without losing valuable members, who can easily quit and join a rival guild. Never mind the virtual surroundings; these conditions provide real-world training a manager can apply directly in the workplace.

    – from You Play World of Warcraft? You’re Hired!

    They write about Stephen Gillett who was hired by Yahoo as a Senior Director of Engineering.

    Joi Ito, who’s gone deep into World of Warcraft, talks about how he gets together with VCs to talk shop much like business folk from the previous century (I love saying that) would do deals over a round of golf.

    What’s next? Books in the business section titled, How to Level Up Your Character and Influence People.

  • Video Games Live with Full Orchestra

    Video Games Live with Full Orchestra

    Advertised in the entertainment section of my paper as, “A groundbreaking live event celebrating the music of video games,” comes Video Games Live, a full orchestra performance of the music of Halo, Zelda, Warcraft and others. Partially backed by Clear Channel, the performance will feature, “music from the world’s most popular video games performed by top
    orchestras and choirs across North America, combined with explosive
    video segments from each of the games, lasers and lights to create an
    exceptional, immersive entertainment experience” says the press release.

    In small print the advert says that there will also be a, “medley of classic arcade games from Pong to Donkey Kong.” I think that’s when the folks file out to get drinks and go to the bathroom.