Week 239

This week, like most recent ones before it, was most­ly about AJI. We wrapped up a sprint focused on get­ting the web­site in shape, reviewed it and planned a new one. The next sprint is all about “fix­ing bro­ken win­dows”. We also decid­ed to start think­ing about the sto­ry we would tell around the ser­vice. Final­ly, we reviewed Simon’s designs for the next major update of the app and web­site. The feed­back boiled down to “less Adolf Hitler, more Dalai Lama”. AJI is about resis­tance, but the peace­ful kind. Its “look” should reflect that. I expect we’ll need anoth­er sprint or two to get to a point where we are ready to invite friends to give AJI a spin and tell us what they think.

Besides this, the arti­cle about gam­i­fi­ca­tion by Kel­li van der Waals was pub­lished in Dutch week­ly Vrij Ned­er­land. We’re pleased with the result. It’s a com­pre­hen­sive review of the phe­nom­e­non and not blind to its prob­lem­at­ic aspects. It also fea­tures an inter­est­ing case study of a gam­i­fi­ca­tion project for a steel fac­to­ry, by Dutch applied games stu­dio RANJ.

Alper fin­ished edit­ing the footage we shot dur­ing the Play­ing with Rules work­shop at Lift in Gene­va. The video gives an impres­sion of the games made by the par­tic­i­pants. They were asked to adapt Parcheesi so that it would say some­thing about a social issue of their choos­ing. As always, it’s inter­est­ing to see what issues are picked by par­tic­i­pants, and the design choic­es they make along the way.

Con­ver­sa­tions. Tak­ing time for these is impor­tant and social media ban­ter is no sub­sti­tute. On Tues­day I was vis­it­ed by Sam in the stu­dio. We caught up over cof­fee and he sub­se­quent­ly spent the day using our spare desk. Our con­ver­sa­tions helped me reflect on some of our recent work and the direc­tion we might take next. And on Fri­day I had a nice chat with Tom over Skype. His work con­tin­ues to be an inspi­ra­tion to the stu­dio so I always enjoy get­ting a sneak peek of what he’s up to next. It’s also super help­ful to share what we’ve done and get his feed­back on things.

Mean­while, plan­ning on future work con­tin­ues. This includes a col­lab­o­ra­tion with a friend in NYC for which we had anoth­er call to pin down the direc­tion of the project, with the inten­tion of apply­ing for a grant in the US. We were also approached to be part of an ambi­tious project relat­ed to cli­mate change. It would be a great chance to use games to com­mu­ni­cate about a many-sided issue, which I think they are great at. And final­ly, we’re work­ing out the details of our con­tri­bu­tion to the CIID sum­mer school, which will be a great chance for us to work with the very tal­ent­ed stu­dents and fac­ul­ty of the insti­tute as well as sam­ple the many great things Copen­hagen has to offer.

Over the week­end, I con­tin­ued to prac­tice my Netrun­ner skills in a set of friend­ly match­es with my wife (god bless her for indulging me). It turns out I am ter­ri­ble at bluff­ing to my spouse. Alper, mean­while, con­tin­ued his Tough Mud­der train­ing at the local boul­der­ing space.