NY Times article on Gamification and Mobile Apps

[Larry Cebula]

Friends:

Interesting piece in a recent NY Times travel section about apps that make a game out of exploring a city. Has anyone tried one of these apps? Would you like to see similar features added to Curatescape?

Larry

Larry Cebula
Associate Professor of History, Eastern Washington University
Assistant Digital Archivist, Washington State Archives
Tel: 509.847.5232
Blog: NorthwestHistory.blogspot.com
Take a History Tour with your smartphone with Spokane Historical.

[Mark Tebeau]

Larry.

I saw this in the weekend paper, and loved its basic idea. Check out this app, too. 

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/06/augmented-reality-game-brings-a-story-of-jewish-labor-organizers-back-to-life/276574/

Incidentally, I love the idea of games, but am trying to figure it out conceptually from the Omeka backend. Would this be a plug-in? And, precisely how might it work... 

M 

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[Erin Bell]

We have indeed discussed this kind of thing in the past (e.g. allowing users to earn "badges" for visiting a location, completing a tour, or answering trivia).

A couple years back, there was quite a lot of buzz in the tech press about "gamification," but it seems to have died down a bit lately. For a fun reading of the possibilities, check out "Reality is Broken" by Jane McGonigal.

It continues to be an intriguing idea for Curatescape projects, albeit one that comes with a lot of complications. For example, such a change would require a whole new interface, user authentication, a profile system with a social networking layer, and a whole host of other changes touching not just the iOS and Android apps, but also the front-end website design, and the Omeka backend. It's also not clear how well historical essays or other typical/existing Curatescape content would lend itself to gaming paradigms.

Game-based features probably won't be coming to Curatescape any time soon, but it's an idea we revisit pretty frequently when evaluating and planning development tasks so you never know.

[Larry Cebula]

I may try something with SCVNGR next fall, a historical trivia hunt around Spokane Falls or something.

Larry Cebula
Associate Professor of History, Eastern Washington University
Assistant Digital Archivist, Washington State Archives
Tel: 509.847.5232
Blog: NorthwestHistory.blogspot.com
Take a History Tour with your smartphone with Spokane Historical.