Photo by Dimitri Houtteman on Unsplash

Our feline friends feature prominently in this episode, with stories of game design and games inspired by and for cats.  Check out the show, and the links below for the cute cats, and an AR cat hide and seek game for those that are staying at home.

The team talks through several stories about virtual worlds and games as social platforms, bringing people together, and continuing on the themes expressed in last week’s episode.  There is a funny exchange on fast fashion being a driver for digital goods, and augmented reality is held up as a social distancing solution for retail to help people envision products in their own environment.  

Going back to the future, Andy shares a 2007 blog post on “ambient intimacy” reacting to Michael M’s comments on loose-tight relationships — an intriguing read, and a link to Leisa Reichelt’s post is included in the show notes below.

For those that want to envision the future today, Jane McGonigal gave a presentation on how to do this by playing her game of writing 100 facts about a topic.  Then, you rewrite these facts as the opposite and looking for signals of change that would indicate these opposite facts could be true in the future.  Given that only a few months ago, most everyone would agree that an opposite fact of “all schools are closed and students learn via distance education only” would have seemed to be an implausible reality, yet here we are.

Some intriguing ideas out of Silicon Valley are discussed, such as how Zoom is using AI to identify and stop griefing and a Figma representation called “Stay At Home Valley” is a crowdsourced virtual view of the participants favorite establishments in the Valley.

We continue to hope that everyone is staying safe, healthy and well.  The team is looking forward to reassembling again for another episode next week! 

Selected Links

TechCrunch article: We need more video games that are social platforms first, games second — https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/02/virtual-worlds-video-games-coronavirus-social-networks-fortnite-animal-crossing/ 

Leisa Reichelt’s blog post on Ambient Intimacy — http://www.disambiguity.com/ambient-intimacy/ 

Youth Online — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10180827-youth-online 

Convergence Culture — https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38860.Convergence_Culture 

Wired article: Zoom Not Cutting It for You? Try Exploring a Virtual World — https://www.wired.com/story/zoom-not-cutting-it-virtual-world-online-town/ 

Stay At Home Valley on Figma — https://www.figma.com/file/VIyGjdIshMAtIKYdUM214Z/Stay-At-Home-Valley?node-id=34%3A70

Silicon Valley TV show — https://www.hbo.com/silicon-valley/