Amy Jo Kim will be giving a talk on Oct 12th at Stanford on Collaboration and Collective Action in social gaming. In this talk, she’ll examine the fundamental difference between zero-sum and non-zero-sum games, review the audience and platform trends in social gaming, and take a deep dive into the collaborative structures and systems that are driving category-defining games like Minecraft, Foldit, and Kickstarter. Hope to see you there!
The Wall Street Journal (May 14, 2011) featured an in-depth profile of Scott titled “The Mind of a Puzzle Master”.
Scott Kim has an odd talent—he’s a brilliant problem maker. Mr. Kim belongs to an elite cadre of “puzzle masters” who spend their days building logical mazes and brain teasers. In more than 20 years as a professional puzzle designer, Mr. Kim has worked on everything from word, number and logic puzzles to toys such as Railroad Rush Hour and computer games such as “Obsidian” and “Escher Interactive,” which features interactive puzzles based on M.C. Escher’s optical illusions. Lately, he has been developing smartphone game apps and contributing a bimonthly puzzle column to Psychology Today. More…
The New York Times interviewed Scott about his ambigram lettering designs in connection with his Apr 7 talk “Symmetry, Art, and Illusion” for the Museum of Mathematics. Click here to read more about Scott’s mathematical art.
Level-up Your Product Design
Do you want to harness the power of games to create more engaging, compelling products and services? This dynamic, hands-on workshop will introduce you to the tools and techniques of Applied Game Design, and teach you how to apply insights and techniques from social gaming to your projects. We’ll reveal the process and techniques behind gaming’s biggest hits, and equip you with powertools for injecting smart game design into your product development process.
Best Practices and Hands-on Learning
During this Workshop, you’ll learn key insights from gaming psychology, techniques and best practices. We’ll reveal the best practices behind some of gaming’s biggest hits — including The Sims, Rock Band, Farmville, and Frontierville — and lead you through a series of hands-on design exercises for applying these ideas to your project. You’ll learn how to craft a gaming experience that drives lasting engagement and retention – and how to apply smart game thinking to your current project.
Key Takeaways
• 7 core concepts for applying game design to your product experience
• How dynamics, mechanics & aesthetics work together to drive engagement
• Design for Social: bringing Bartles 4 Player Types into the Facebook age
• Design for Progress: game mechanics that “light the way” towards mastery
• Design for Engagement: build fun/delight/satisfaction into your core activity loop
• Design for Retention: use Social Engagement Loops to drive Lifecycle engagement
Instructor
Amy Jo Kim, Ph.D. is social game designer who’s worked on Rock Band, The Sims, Ultima Online, eBay, Netflix, Lumosity, MetroGirl, family.com and there.com. Amy Jo is a world-renowned speaker and educator – currently adjunct professor of Game Design at USC’s Digital Media school, recently named top US-based game design school. She also wrote Community Building on the Web (2000), a design handbook for digital communities that’s used worldwide at game studios & universities
As part of the Museum of Mathematics talk series “Math Encounters”, Scott Kim of Shufflebrain will give a presentation called Symmetry, Art & Illusion on Thursday, April 7, at 4:00 and 6:30pm, in New York City. Summary: Join artist and author Scott Kim on a dazzling journey of exploration into the world of symmetry and art. Discover the surprising mathematical patterns behind the art, and see how the same patterns reappear in art, music, dance, and animation. Audience members are also invited to participate in a hands-on workshop with Scott, where they will learn to draw their own symmetrical ambigram lettering designs (as featured in the book Inversions), play with symmetrical rhythmic patterns, and join in a full-body investigation of symmetry. This talk is appropriate for ages 12 and up. Details….
As part of the Web 2.0 expo, Mar 28-31 in San Francisco, Amy Jo Kim of Shufflebrain will be giving a keynote speech called Beyond Gamification: 7 Core Concepts to Create Compelling Products on Wednesday, March 30, at 5:10. Summary: Games are infiltrating every aspect of daily life. Early-on, “gamification” meant adding simple game mechanics like points, badges and leaderboards to websites and apps. But that’s not what makes games truly compelling. Good games take players on a journey, giving them something the learn and master. Smart companies are creating game-like digital systems that shape real-world behavior, using a blend of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. In this short talk, we’ll cover 7 Core Concepts for Smart Gamification, and learn to “think like game designers” so we can develop more engaging products and services. More…
Scott’s upside down lettering art is featured in the May issue of Wired Magazine, including this ambigram of the words “Reverse Engineering” specially commissioned for Wired.
You can now take any public Photograb game into a widget! Just goto the Game page and click EMBED to get the code for your blog or SNS page. There are three sizes available: small, medium and large. Here’s what the Medium size looks like. Check it out – and let us know what you think!
I’m excited to be speaking at GamesBeat next week. Our panel is at 2:15, here’s the description.
The Influences of Video Design
How are gaming principles stimulating innovation in the non-gaming world? Moderator: David Edery (co-author “Changing the Game”) Participants: Bing Gordon (Kleiner Perkins), Rajat Paharia (Bunchball), Amy Jo Kim (Shufflebrain), Gabe Zichermann (rmbr)
Promoting human interaction is the key to achieving success in business and in life, and gaming has become the most effective way of encouraging these interactions. We’ll discuss how gaming principles are changing the rules of engagement to the extent where they foster learning, reading, customer acquisition and basic application design
The lineup looks great — check out the agenda and speakers. Should be an illuminating day.
Amy Jo Kim, ShuffleBrain CEO, will be speaking on a panel at SXSW called Strong Gaming Communities: Text vs. Speech. The panel will cover recent data analysis, best practices and lessons learned for suing text vs speech in gaming communities like Everquest, WOW, Second Life, and There.com. The other panelists are experienced and insightful; it should be a lively and informative session. We’m looking forward to being part of it – come by and say hello if you’re around! And if you’d like to meetup with Shufflebrain at SXSW, send us an email with your contact info.
What is ShuffleBrain?
ShuffleBrain is building smart games for social networks. We're inspired by the recent explosion of Brain Games, and passionate about creating personalized, lightweight, socially connected games that keep you sharp.
Amy Jo Kim, ShuffleBrain CEO, will be speaking on a panel at SXSW called