Man, it’s like even my social games are telling me to get back to work.
Write Flavor Text On Computer
Posted in Gaming Culture, New York City
Tagged facebook games, games, New York City, problems only I have, sims social
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Anti-Social Networking
My new piece on Dialect is my second discussion of G+ and Facebook.
Google’s circles, I’m constantly told, allow you to share content with different groups. You can skip the updates who bore you! You can make an unread circle of people you’d feel guilty unfriending, and they’ll never know that they’re in the Guilt Circle!
But… Facebook’s already offered filters with the same functionality for posting and reading. Facebook users can already take people off their feed and still maintain Facebook friendship with them. And, just like in the Google+ Guilt Circle, they’ll never know about it, so your uncle’s political links can go totally unread without any unfriending awkwardness at Thanksgiving dinner. Facebook users can already lock what you post to select groups of friends, allowing you to post your snarky work-hating updates on a colleague-free list, or protect your epic bar photos from your mom. So that’s hardly innovative for G+.
I simply don’t see any functionality praised in a Google circle that isn’t already offered by other social networks. Lest I come off like a Facebook fangirl, I’ll point out that proto-blogsite LiveJournal offered filtered lists 10 years ago.
Via Anti-Social Networking / Meg Stivison / Dialect Magazine
Posted in My Other Writing, New York City
Tagged Dialect Magazine, Facebook, G+, Google, Google plus, my other writing, New York City
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G Train
I didn’t make this, I just wish I did. (Thanks for showing me this, Bethie!)
Harold and Star Trek
Harold and I are walking down the street when he spots a Star Trek book on a bottom shelf of a crowded bookshelf, in the window of a closed store. He was talking, but he cuts off midsentence to drop to his knees and peer through the window.
“I can’t make out the full title,” he says. This is probably because the store is closed, and it’s dark, and also the bookshelf in question is halfway behind another piece of furniture.
“Don’t worry, it’s clearly a Chinese knockoff,” I said.
“Really? How can you tell?”
“There’s simply no other explanation for Star Trek paraphenalia you don’t already own.”
Industry
Today I got a LinkedIn request from a professional contact that began “Hi Meg, we played Kinect wearing wigs at E3…”.
This industry is pretty freaking awesome.
Posted in Los Angeles, New York City
Tagged e3, Los Angeles, New York City, not a f*cking waitress anymore
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Chinese Bingo: Using Games for Cross-Cultural Education
So, I was recently invited to speak at the Serious Play Conference out in Redmond, where I totally tricked everyone into thinking I knew stuff about China and gameplay.
It was pretty nerve-wracking, I spoke on the third day on the conference, and I spend the previous two days worrying about it. When I was listening to sessions, I was worried that I wasn’t spending enough time preparing my talk, or when I left and worked on my talk, I worried that I was missing interesting sessions. There really were some fantastic speakers doing great projects at the intersection of gameplay, technology and education, and I was kind of stunned to be included on that list.
I wonder how long it’ll be before I stop thinking that I’m really not a waitress anymore.
Posted in Seattle
Tagged China, gameplay, games, pretending to be an adult, Redmond, Seattle, Serious Play, Serious Play Conference
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Some Indecipherable Code
Today I sent my dad a quest flowchart I’ve been working on, because it was a perfect mix of snarky dialogue, programming logic, hours spent playing Monkey Island, and some of my other random interests. My dad wrote back with a text-based adventure about quest design. It begins:
>LOOK
>THERE IS A DIPLOMA HERE
>PICK UP DIPLOMA
>IT APPEARS TO DO NOTHING
>LOOK
>THERE IS AN ENGLISH-MANDARIN DICTIONARY HERE
>PICK UP DICTIONARY
>IT IS WRITTEN IN SOME INDECIPHERABLE CODE
It goes on from there, with the player narrowly avoiding the possible pitfalls of slimey guys and waitressing, and it ends with THERE ARE BIG PILES OF GOLD HERE.
I think in normal families, fathers just tell their daughters they’re proud of them.
ChinesePod, OpenStudy and Education
I’ve got a new piece over on Dialect Magazine, talking about ChinesePod, OpenStudy, education for its own sake, and the most annoying website add-on I’ve seen since autoloading music (No, it’s not ChinesePod or OpenStudy).
Tech-enabled students set their own educational pace, jumping to the lectures that most interest them, without sitting through 100-level prereqs first, and are able to focus on educational content, not passing exams.
With free access, freemium services, or modest pricing, these educational technologies are almost always available on your smartphone, on the way to work, to make self-guided education completely accessible. Learning Chinese, studying physics or just listening to a one-off lecture, is now totally within reach.
Via CyberCulture: OpenStudy | ChinesePod | TwoChop | Dialect Magazine
Posted in My Other Writing, New York City
Tagged chinesepod, my other writing, New York City, OpenStudy
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Overage, Anti-social, And Completely Owning It.
Caitlin, my college age co-worker, asked me about Tweetdeck, so I showed her some of the ways I sort incoming social information, and what I do with it. I stopped just short of admitting that sometimes, at work, I pretend to be Oracle in the clocktower.
“Whoa. I thought I’d be more tech savvy because I’m younger,” Caitlin said, “but you just do so much of this!”
(I am currently adding spends lots of time on the internet to my resume.)
