Archive for March, 2010

Professor Lee Sheldon’s students aren’t so fussed about As or Bs. For them, it’s all about the XP.

Instead of traditional grades, game design students earn experience points from their Indiana dungeonmaster. According to Professor Sheldon, “the elements of the class are couched in terms they understand, terms that are associated with fun rather than education.” We couldn’t have said it better.

The idea resonates with the Baxters who, neck deep in a hoppy North Pacific IPA, speculated about a future workplace with similar game bent. After all, what is a quantitative performance review if not an opportunity to level up?

We’re interested in discovering how Sheldon’s system accounts for qualitative measures (style points?), and it looks like we’ll have the opportunity to ask him directly: the innovative prof has invited the Baxters to sit in on a game design class. Look for our report in a mid-April post.

h/t Escapist Magazine

The Baxters want you to make meaningful connections at the 2010 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. And, natch, we want you to have fun. So we created Shmoozl, a free networking microgame that puts some smarts into schmoozing.

Shmoozl encourages players to press flesh with new and interesting people, and reward recommendation badges to the most remarkable of the bunch. That recommendation badge lets other players know that, hey, this is definitely someone worth engaging. And just like your LinkedIn profile, multiple recommendations imply a level of wholly uncommon cred. Essentially, Shmoozl empowers players (and non players) with a real-time, organic, visual recommendation system to better identify potentially meaningful connections within a daunting crowd of 20,000+ game hounds.

Players are also encouraged to bounce over to the mobile-minded Shmoozl microsite and register their unique Shmoozl player ID. Not only can they publish their LinkedIn and Twitter details to keep connections alive with other players, but every time one of their recommendations also registers, the originating player nabs an entry in our random drawing for a nifty Shmoozl prize. (Players can rest assured that Natron Baxter will never spam them with marketing blather, either. Registration isn’t required to play, and you can provide as much or as little information as you’d like.)

Shmoozl is designed exclusively for attendees of the GDC, and is initiated the old fashioned way: with a handshake. So while you’re nursing your Nintendo thumb, keep an eye out for Mr. Natron Baxter himself. He’ll supply you with your Shmoozl starter pack and help get you connected.

Throughout the GDC, we’ll post status updates and additional clarification in the comment thread of this post. You can also track the whereabouts of Natron Baxter on Twitter.

[Jah love to the log-gnawers over at Busy Beaver Buttons for their heroic buttoneering.]

Were any of us a trumpeter, we’d toot that thang. Instead it sits, spit-coated and lonely in the corner, rusting in synchronicity with our Nordic Track.

The fanfare (instead, silence) would sound the launch of Evoke, the newest endeavor of esteemed gamestress Jane McGonigal on behalf of the World Bank. In what she’s lovingly titled “a crash course in changing the world,” the game empowers young people all over the world, and especially in Africa, to start solving urgent social problems like hunger, poverty, disease, conflict, climate change, sustainable energy, health care, education, and human rights. You know, the little things.

Natron Baxter Applied Gaming is lucky enough to have designed and developed the Evoke platform (we did so atop the sometimes moody Ning), built the backend, and brought the astounding work of McGonigal, Kiyash Monsef, and illustrator Jacob Glaser to life. Cheers to all the hardworking Baxters involved.

The game launched March 3rd and runs for ten weeks, so get thee evoking! (The world ain’t gonna fix itself.)