Life Beyond Facebook
Carnegie-Mellon professor and game developer, Jesse Schell, offers an extremely insightful and thoughtful perspective on how Facebook and “reality-based” social platforms are going to affect our lives as consumers and marketers.
His conclusion, everything we do will be part of a game wherein we earn points toward rewards (social, virtual and real). Brush your teeth? +10 points! Walk to work? +100! Someone link syncs with your Tattoogle AdSense tattoo? +500!
He believes “…It’s possible that they’ll inspire us to be better people — if the game systems are designed right.”
Do you find yourself — consciously or unconsciously — altering your behavior based on virtual rewards?
Thanks to James Vreeland for the link.
Sam Cannon
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Sam…I was just thinking about this today. I have been altering my behavior based on meaningless virtual rewards, and I usually consider myself impervious to this stuff.
I am addicted to the FourSquare app, which I have on my iphone. What a total waste of time and yet I was inexplicably happy this morning when I finally became the mayor of something! And, as you know, we are looking at implementing various kinds of social currency to try to encourage certain behaviors at work.
Is it just a trend? Or is it indicative of some social force (war, economy) encouraging escapist regressive behavior in adults?
I say it’s probably a combination of things. But it’s not going anywhere anytime soon.
BTW, do i get points for responding to your post?
…tracy