DICE 2010 - Design Outside the Box

An interesting speech about media convergence and a future where games have conquered reality. From facebook to getting achievements for brushing your teeth, and how game mechanics can leverage psychology to encourage watching ads in a surreal painting of the future.

“That’s what technologies do : they diverge, they diverge, they diverge. […] More and more technology is diverging, and you might say :

“Wait Wait Wait, wait a minute, that’s not true! I have an IPhone and it’s convergence all over the place : It’s a phone! It’s a camera! It’s got zillions of tiny apps! It’s a game thing.”

And I’ll say, ok, you got me. You got me, but it’s only because of the pocket exception.

Pockets turn the law of divergence inside out. […] And this is not the first time, remember the swiss army knife? All the IPhone is, is a modern digital swiss army knife. And a swiss army knife is really useful in your pocket, look at all that stuff converge in there!

But if I got you one for your kitchen, you’d think that was the stupidest thing. Ever.

And this is why everyone hates the IPad”

Jesse Schell