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…

Download Reflection Maze, a puzzle Scott created specially for The Wall Street Journal.

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.

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

Click here for details and registration

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….

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.

There’s still a few seats left — you can register here and get 10% off with discount code. Please come say hi if you’re able to make it. I hope to see you there!