我好奇故我在

電玩是怎樣革新每日的生活？
How Game Design Can Revolutionize Everyday Life

這一篇報導挺有意思的，將我們每個人都知道的東西化成行銷新手法現在有一群設計者，想要將電玩的行為要素，應用於我們其他的生活領域。文中提及幾個有趣實際運用，摘要寫一下：

玩線上遊戲的人，對於「賺點數」這個概念想必不陌生。Reeves切入人人煩惱企業email過多此點，建立一個系統叫Attent。運作方是就是每個員工每週給一個固定的虛擬硬幣，當你寄信出去時，非常希望對方看時，就可以附上一個額度的虛擬硬幣，然後對方的收信匣會隨著虛擬硬幣值的大小作排列，錢越多的虛擬硬幣會排在最前面。另一方面也造成善循環，收信人也愈容易閱讀到信。

So Reeves' firm, Seriosity, built a system — dubbed "Attent" — that does this. Every employee is given virtual tokens — say, 100 a week, — that they can attach to e-mail they write. If you really want someone to read a message now, you attach a lot of tokens, and the message pops up higher in your correspondent's Outlook inbox. Reeves figured this would encourage people to send less e-mail: Those who are parsimonious would wind up with lots of tokens, which means when they really have something to say, they can load it up with tokens and make sure it'll get through. Sure enough, that's what happened. When a work group at IBM tried out Attent, messages with 20 tokens attached were 52 percent more likely to be quickly opened than normal. E-mail overload ceased to be a problem.

文中也提到另一個使用「點數」激勵行為的例子。
一個在social-networking的應用機制foursquare，主要是手機機制，可以追蹤你去過哪些公眾場所，並且回報給你的朋友。原本用意是鼓勵人多多走動，所以設計者Crowley加上了game-like元素，也就是你可賺到點數或獎章，並且有週排行。另外此機制另一個好處是可以回報你附近有哪些朋友也剛好在那邊。

This spring, Dennis Crowley — a New York software entrepreneur — released "foursquare," a "location based" social-networking application that tracks any public place you visit (like a bar, restaurant or coffeehouse) and reports it to you friends. Crowley wanted to encourage people to go out a lot, so he added game-like elements: You get "points" for visiting multiple spots in one evening, for example, and badges for roaming far from home. Travel a lot and you'll be at the top of the weekly leaderboard, with hipster bragging rights. It worked — almost too well. Some people got so obsessed with racking up points that they began checking in dozens of times a day, frantically marking even a brief visit to Starbucks.

另一個例子Nike Plus與iPod的結合，定位Your Personal Workout Assistant，這是可以衡量你走路或跑步步數的機制，然後當你運動時，資料會傳到iPod。(看了Nike官網，原來是有一個小小方塊，置入鞋底中央以及iPod尾端。)根據每個人的運動目標不一樣，Nike 設計不同的game-like系統。使用者上官網定下自己的計畫，也會在ipod更新。當運動時，隨著個人的情況，ipod給予相對應的鼓舞回饋，譬如跑步打破自己的紀錄， iPod 會放阿姆斯壯登月球影片恭喜你。


眾人也可上Nike官網，跟別人作運動挑戰，也就是運用遊戲裡排行榜概念，當你想要保持名列前茅時，就會繼續努力。

Physical exercise is a leading example. One of Nike's latest successes has been the Nike Plus — a pedometer that measures your footsteps as you walk and run, and reports them to your Apple iPod. Nike uses that information to build various game-like systems. If you break your distance record, for example, your iPod will play an audio clip of Lance Armstrong congratulating you — much as a videogame will offer a badge or "rare" reward for achieving a new personal best. Nike Plus users can also go online to a website where they can challenge friends — or even strangers around the world — to distance or speed competitions.

"It's exactly like a leaderboard in a game, where you want to have the bragging right of being on top, so you work harder at getting better," says Steffen Walz, a game theorist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.