Getting Playful

Playful is a conference about games, and playfulness.

Another Friday, another conference. This time it was Playful 2010. Not as good as dConstruct but a fun day nonetheless.

I didn’t take many notes, but the general theme seemed to be “stop putting points and prizes on things, because that doesn’t make them a game, and it doesn’t make them fun”. This was perhaps seen as an about turn.

Richard Hogg and Sebastian Deterding were my favourite speakers. Richard did a great skit on being a contrarian and how you can “Escape from the crushing inevitability of liking something that’s good”. Sebastian was the dry German who pointed out that just because you’ve nicked badges from foursquare doesn’t make badges good or appropriate for your thing.

In between these things, some important 4square rules were sorted out: REALLY DON’T auto-tweet your location all the time. Especially if you’re a drive-by checkin merchant.