The BigDoor Blog | Gaming

We just heard that our upstairs neighbors in the Techstars program are teaming up with Microsoft to offer a Kinect Accelerator program for ten firms early next year. The three month Kinect Accelerator program will provide $20,000 seed money as well as an Xbox development kit, the Windows Kinect SDK, entrepreneur mentor-ship, technical training and support to all ten companies. The participants, like past participants in Techstars, will work towards a demo day, which will allow them to pitch to investors, venture capitalists, Microsoft professionals and industry professionals.

In an introduction to the program, Microsoft wrote, “Microsoft is supporting entrepreneurs, engineers and innovators like you to bring to life a wide range of business ideas that leverage the limitless possibilities Kinect enables.” It’s awesome to see the success of Techstars team up with a company like Microsoft to further expand and enable the tech community here in Seattle. We can’t wait to see what participants in this program come up with!

If you are interested in applying for this program, you can find more information on Microsoft’s webpage for the program here.

The 7th Annual Games for Health Conference will be in Boston, MA, May 17-19. The event will bring together a variety of researchers, game developers, and health professionals to review, brainstorm, and collaborate on how videogames, and videogame technologies are finding new roles in health & healthcare.

There are major tracks on exergaming, sensorimotor rehab, nutrition games, medical training, gamification and cognitive & emotional health. The opening keynote is Dr. Martin Seligman, widely known as the father of positive psychology. He will deliver a speech titled “Positive Psychology, Positive Computing, Positive Videogames.” The second keynote will be Dr. Roni Zeiger, chief health strategist for Google. Dr. Zeiger is a practicing physician who helps direct Google’s health oriented projects such as health search, Google Body, Google Flu Trends, and Google Health. Our very own Tommy Lee will be speaking on a panel on Thursday, May 19th discussing Gamification and Healthcare.

Read more about Games for Health here and if you’re in Boston and will be attending the event let us know!

We wanted to let everyone know about this amazingly cool experiment Brad Feld is currently testing on his site. For those of you who don’t already know Brad, he’s the managing director at Foundry Group who invests in software and Internet companies (including Zynga). He was recently named the
“Most Respected Venture Capitalist”and he’s also one of our investors. For the next 30 days Brad will use the BigDoor MiniBar on his site to offer 30 minutes of his time as a reward for anyone who wants to exchange 10,000 Feld Gelt for the opportunity to speak with him. With the help of BigDoor’s MiniBar (white-labeled on Brad’s site), users have five easy options to earn Feld Gelt, including Check-in when visiting Brad’s site; Adding a comment to any blog post on the site; Sharing or Tweeting posts; ‘Like’ any post from the MiniBar and most importantly, the best way to earn Feld Gelt is when users click on links you have shared or Like links in your Facebook feed. Users can get started working their way up the Leaderboard for a chance at 30 minutes with Brad!

Update: Brad’s deal was so popular that it took about eight minutes to sell out! Brad mentioned there might be a new deal and we’ll update with any new details!

As the 83rd annual Academy Awards rolls around this Sunday and as Hollywood readies itself for the show we started thinking about how the awards are really just one big game. The “game” itself involves a group of influencers (the Academy) and the players (the actors, actresses, directors, etc.). The players work to achieve recognition from the influencers. Initially these achievements come through their performances but smart players know that in order to move up the leaderboard they must also work to sway the influencers through calculated marketing, advertising, and publicity efforts made prior to the big game. The game is then extended further as predictions are made on who might win! We’ll be watching it all unfold on Sunday and are anxious to see which actors, actresses, directors and more will be crowned with the ultimate prize of a golden statuette.

Our next installment of our developer profiles features Harley Holt.

Developer profile #3: Harley

What do you do for BigDoor? I’m a programmer and I bring a touch of class to the BigDoor dev team.

What do you like most about BigDoor? The dev team is awesome and Gamification is pretty sweet.

What do you like most about Ping Pong? I would say the exhilaration and the strategy. I really didn’t play much ping pong before BigDoor but now I play whenever I can.

iPhone or Android? Neither.

Favorite Jimmy Johns sandwich? #4 with cheese.

Dog or Cat? Dog.

Last movie? The Fifth Element.

What was the earliest game you played? Bard’s Tale on Apple II; I also played Number Munchers as a kid but that’s only half a game. http://www.gamegibs.com/?number-munchers.

What is your favorite game? Chrono Trigger for Super Nintendo – best RPGs ever made.

Game you’re currently playing? Dead Rising II and Mount & Blade.

Other fun facts: I just started fencing and on a scale 1-10 I give it an awesome. I like it because there’s strategy involved and there’s lots of back and forth and jockeying for position.” Harley is healthy, he bicycles every day to work (did we mention Seattle is hilly?) and he’s planning on doing the Seattle To Portland bike race this summer.

A few months ago there were a bunch of predictions for 2011. We were psyched to see so many claiming gamification as the next big thing! Gamify the Super Bowl – hell yes!

So the big game is on Sunday and we thought we’d share some of the companies that are using game techniques to increase user engagement. Most of these campaigns are around the all-mighty Super Bowl ad but they are all creative, actually pretty cool and more importantly fun! A rundown:

In December Mercedes started a Tweet Race. The seven week contest used Twitter to encourage players to qualify for a trip to the Super Bowl and a chance to win a Mercedes. The campaign was designed to create momentum for the carmaker’s first ever Super Bowl ad.

Audi got in the game taking on the hashtag #Progressls to air at the end of their 60-second TV spot. The hashtag is part of the company’s new brand positioning “Luxury has progressed.” The company also said they will be launching a Facebook program in which fans can play along and tag items shown in the Super Bowl ad.

Rovio’s Angry Birds franchise partnered with 20th Century Fox on their new movie “Rio” and announced that their Super Bowl ad would include a special, embedded code that viewers can unlock to achieve a special level in the popular game.

Finally, Groupon, the daily deal site, is being mum about their ad but WSJ’s Tricia Duryee points out, “Whatever Groupon does, expect it to have a viral component that extends the momentum after the 30 seconds is up,” which we see as some gamification.

Big brands like Audi, Mercedes, 20th Century Fox show it’s not hard to be creative and adding game elements to your media campaigns can be fun.

Time to Level Up folks!

We thought we’d start a series of posts highlighting our incredibly hard-working developers! Our first profile is Lee McFadden. We hope you enjoy meeting our team of gamification experts!

Developer profile #1: Lee McFadden

What do you do for BigDoor? I’m a software engineer but since we’re a startup I wear multiple hats, there’s a lot of cross-discipline stuff we do. So I work mainly in Python and JavaScript front end code and designing the back end systems.

What do you like most about BigDoor? I like the atmosphere. This is a team I genuinely like working with; I’m surrounded by cool and smart people – which is rare to get that combo. Everyone pulls their weight in technical ability. I hang out with any of these guys outside of work.

What do you like most about Ping Pong? Ping Pong is a complete diversion from coding – you’re using a different part of your brain. When you get tunnel vision after you’ve been in the zone coding, ping pong is the ideal bridge. It’s like a sorbet – it cleanses the palate and lets your brain recharge

iPhone or Android? Android – HTC Evo. I got tired of Apple dictating how to use a device. My life is on Google so Google integration is essential. My favorite app is Swype.

Favorite Jimmy Johns sandwich? My favorite is #15 but the one I eat the most is #4 because I try to be healthy.

Dog or Cat? Cat. I have two.

Last movie? Tron – I had the original on VHS as a kid – the remake was awesome.

What was the earliest game you played? I had an Atari 2800 and played Choplifter.

What is your favorite game? I like the Mass Effect series 1 & 2.

Game you’re currently playing? Assassins Creed of Brotherhood.

Other fun facts, Lee is originally from the UK and moved to the U.S. in September 2009. He met his wife through a World of Warcraft gaming guild. His favorite place to visit is San Francisco and he likes Chicken Pad Thai.

Earlier this week during our weekly demo a conversation came up about intuitiveness and play, specifically how much CityVille nails it on every level. For those who don’t already know, CityVille is the hugely popular game that allows users to build their own custom city. The game launched a little over a month and just announced more than 100 million active users.

The game is simple, intuitive and encourages people to share and build their city so effortlessly that it’s addictive. Zynga’s CTO recently said, “The company’s ‘secret sauce’ lies in taking mechanics and themes from the gaming industry and making them simple, social and easy to learn.”

The BigDoor team began talking about how much we admire CityVille’s incredibly fun and easy game mechanics and how we’d like to emulate those same mechanics across the BigDoor API. We’re constantly iterating on our platform; we have weekly sprints in which we prioritize feedback from our partners and make upgrades to our tool set.

We can truly aspire to create something as great as CityVille. Their  numbers are astounding and really show the opportunity that lies in truly great game mechanics and social gaming! So the team was challenged with two things: continue working to create an intuitive, fun and simple user experience for the BigDoor API, and get to Level 10 in CityVille.

The challenge has been thrown down, now what Level are you?

Today Eric Eldon from VentureBeat posted a presentation given by Zynga’s CEO Mark Pincus at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Fran.

We’ve all known that Zynga is on a rocket ship, but it is cool to see their growth mapped on a chart. Fueled by well integrated virtual currency and offer platforms, their growth is nothing short of phenomenal.

What virtual currency, quality games and Facebook have done for Zynga.

View the full Zynga presentation here.