Monthly Archives: November 2006

Using Games to Tap Collective Intelligence (Part 2)

Posted on November 8, 2006 by David J Edery| 1 Comment

It’s taken a while, but I want to return to my article on using games to tap the wisdom of crowds. First and foremost, I’d like to bring attention to the writings of Raph Koster. Raph informed me that he’s been thinking about this idea as well for quite some time now. However, Raph one-upped me: he found someone who actually tested the theory! From Raph’s blog:

What [Byron Reeves] showed was a mockup of a Star Wars Galaxies medical screen, displaying real medical imagery. Players were challenged to advance as doctors by diagnosing the cancers displayed, in an effort to capture the wisdom of crowds. The result? A typical gamer was found to be able to diagnose accurately at 60% of the rate of a trained pathologist. Pile 30 gamers on top of one another, and the averaged result is equivalent to that of a pathologist — with a total investment of around 60-100 hours per player.

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Posted in Serious Games

Via Publishing 2.0, news of digg.com-related controversy. The popular news site, in an effort to stifle abuse, now attempts to neutralize “voting blocks”, which has apparently decreased the influence of some of the site’s more popular users. Something worth following … Continue reading →

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Posted on November 6, 2006 by David J Edery

EA posted a surprise quarterly net profit, sending its shares up 8%. Revenue rose 16 percent to $784M, beating the average estimate of $676M. Via Joystiq, a microtransaction chart that shows how much various next-gen games would cost if you … Continue reading →

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Posted on November 3, 2006 by David J Edery

Grokking Corporate Culture

Posted on November 1, 2006 by David J Edery| Leave a comment

My friend Ben Mattes, a very talented producer for Ubisoft, made a great comment on my previous blog article which I’d like to unceremoniously lift out of context:

When I worked at Gameloft I invested significant energy into creative motivational ‘events’. When I left, the guy who replaced me continued this tradition and came up with (what I thought was) a great idea to help beat the heat in the summer. Instead of a traditional 5-7 with beer and chips, he brought in an ice-cream ‘team’ from the local ‘Ben And Jerry’s’ to serve cones and sundaes to the team after an important meeting. I liked the idea and tried it with my team shortly after starting at Ubisoft.

At the time no one said anything negative. They all had slightly bemused smiles on their faces and got in line to dutifully collect their ice-cream. Some even went back for seconds.

Months later, though, I learned that I had made an awful impression with this act. The team immediately questioned whether I “belonged” if I would favor ice-cream over beer (the stable for such events).

To this day whenever I bring the team together for beers the ice-cream fiasco comes up (all in good fun, I hope).

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Posted in Business (in general), Design / Production