[MaRu] Are you curious about the origin of images I put on my desktop wallpaper? This 2-hours (!) movie should help you understand what they are and where do they come from. Even if you're a biologist ;-) You can watch the trailer here: http://youtube.com
... "gamification is really a cover for cynically exploiting human psychology for profit"
--> "Why Are Half a Million People Poking This Giant Cube?"
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/curiosity/
I love the linked article provided by Johannes! It expresses very elegantly why I still fail to understand even extremely smart and busy people in my view apparently waiting their time in playing computer games - but I recognise that there is something in games that we apparently need / gives us something we cherish ....
"In fact, half a million players so far have registered to help destroy the 64 billion tiny blocks that compose that one gigantic cube, all working in tandem toward a singular goal: discovering the secret that Curiosity's creator says awaits one lucky player inside. That's right: After millions of man-hours of work, only one player will ever see the center of the cube.
Curiosity is the first release from 22Cans, an independent game studio founded earlier this year by Peter Molyneux, a longtime game designer known for ambitious projects like Populous, Black & White and Fable.
Players can carve important messages (or shameless self-promotion) onto the face of the cube as they whittle it to nothing. Image: Wired
Molyneux is equally famous for his tendency to overpromise and under-deliver on his games.
In 2008, he said that his upcoming game would be "such a significant scientific achievement that it will be on the cover of Wired." That game turned out to be Milo & Kate, a Kinect tech demo that went nowhere and was canceled. Following this, Molyneux left Microsoft to go indie and form 22Cans.
Not held back by the past, the Molyneux hype train is going full speed ahead with Curiosity, which the studio grandiosely promises will be merely the first of 22 similar "experiments."
Somehow, it is wildly popular. The biggest challenge facing players of Curiosity isn't how to blast through the 2,000 layers of the cube, but rather successfully connecting to 22Cans' servers. So many players are attempting to log in that the server cannot handle it.
Some players go for utter efficiency, tapping rapidly to rack up combo multipliers and get more