“Een spel spelen is een vrijwillige poging om overbodige hindernissen te overwinnen”. Met deze definitie begint ‘Beter dan echt’ van Jane McGonical. Het zet meteen de toon voor een mooie, diepe en brede analyse van games. Want waarom investeren we toch zo enorm veel tijd en geld in spelen? Waarom vinden we het zo leuk?

McGonical legt uit wat de kenmerken zijn van games en waarom ze zorgen voor een geluksgevoel, en laat zien waar deze elementen opduiken. Uiteraard in ’echte games’: Waarom spelen we World of Warcraft en Wordfeud? Maar ze laat ook zien dat de elementen terugkomen in de echte wereld zoals in Nike+: Door het online sociale spel-element doe je tijdens het sporten beter je best. En dezelfde kenmerken komen terug in het succesvolle project van the Guardian waarin Britten de gescande bonnetjes van hun MP’s konden bekijken en aangeven welke nader onderzoek verdiende. Het succes van deze site (liefst 56% van de bezoekers van de site deed daadwerkelijk mee!) zat in een aantal subtiel ingebrachte game elementen. Dankzij het framework van McGonical herken je ze. En zie je hoe de echte wereld beter kan worden door games.

Today is the sad day that Steve Jobs died. I want to share a personal story about how his words, simple as they are, have motivated me recently.

I’ve watched his Stanford speech, which I will embed below, several times in the past year. But like most people who watch this, I merely loved it, and didn’t act on it. Until this summer. When I was on holiday, I made a note in my iPhone, which is paraphrasing Steve, I think from the D8 interview.

Going to work should be motivated by a will to do something amazing, to build great products.

According to the Condorcet theorem, bigger crowds do better. If each individual independently decides with the same probability, the collective reaches ’the right’ decision fast. If the individuals can connect, the collective behavior can become very rich and complex. See Linux, wikipedia.

But on social networks, there is no collective ‘goal’ besides connecting, recreation. Still, the chatter can predict the box office receipts. And Google search terms shows where people have flu, better than any medical database. It is also shown that happiness and loneliness is contagious; if many people in your network are lonely, you feel more lonely too.

I’ve been playing with Google+ for a few days now, and find myself thinking: Is this going to be the platform? Are people going to flock to this social network, replacing Facebook and maybe Twitter?

While I was on my bike, riding in the dutch mountains (aka headwind), I thought of a way to look at this, by comparing this to other succesful sites and why they became succesful. I think the reason for the success of many online services is: they make things easier. Easier to communicate, to express yourself, to find things. Let’s look at a few carefully picked examples ;–)

Step 1: Getting acquanted

KLM started with social media to support existing channels. Try things out, like Twitter, Facebook, YouTube. Get started first.

Step 2: seizing the opportunity.

The ash cloud was a good opportunity to get started with Twitter and Facebook. Call centre and web site were both overloaded. Had a 24/7 shift system, 4 people on Twitter, 4 on Facebook, 4 rebookers per shift. Management was very involved, encouraged initiatives. Very empowering. Klm added a ‘rebook’ tab on their Facebook profile, which helped in getting the right information from the travelers.

KLM discourages personal reactions by individual staff members. The company often can not do anything with it, and it can give a negative backlash on Klm. See recent incident with Thomas Acda