Recent Projects

Developed with renowned game designer Jane McGonigal on behalf of the World Bank Institute, Urgent Evoke is part social game and part crash course in changing the world.

The Foresight Engine won't tell you what's going to happen in the next 50 years, but it probably knows all the same. Created with our friends at the IFTF, this online game crowdsources ideas, stretches thinking, and casts our sights toward ... the future.

AOK is a social game for social good. The currency is kindness. The collaborators are the founders
of TGO.tv and SHFT.com.

Gameful.org is a "Secret HQ for world-changing game designers" and a collaborative enterprise with
thousands of monsters hell-bent on the positive power of play.

Teh Daily Scrambler is a Twitter race to unscramble the headlines (and get newsified doing it). Just tweet @scrmblr with the #tag and your answer. Odog ckul!

If we didn't promptly answer your email last week, it was probably because we were entrenched in an Applied Gaming Workshop. These one- or many-day sessions tease the senses with Applied Gaming principles and send participants home with their very own game design toolkit (made entirely of magical ideas!).

We built Shmoozl in about the time it takes to cook a lamb, but we’re still proud of this real-time reputation minigame. It brings the simplicity of LinkedIn recommendations to the mayhem of the conference setting.

Survival Horizon is less of a game and more of a daily reminder that, hey, maybe the end of humanity is just around the corner. Developed for the IFTF's Future of Persuasion.

In the shadow of a million-dollar intranet that nobody uses, Zipline is our ongoing conversation about Knowledge Management Systems, usability, and gameplay.

News Archives

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Chopsticks Would Break Your Neck

Posted on October 12th, 2009

This video is getting linkage lately, and it illustrates one of the reasons we take fun so seriously: fun isn’t merely a motivator, it’s an anesthetic.

While redirecting exertion is difficult, it can often be accomplished through traditional usability techniques. Redirecting and multiplying exertion, however, demands a payoff that the participant can appreciate before they’ve even committed any effort. Once they’ve engaged their “player” mindset, they tend to override their body’s reminders that, hey, these are actually a bunch of stairs and I am out of shape.

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