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How to Gamify Dating
We often talk of the classic player motivations and putting them into good use not only within console and mobile games, but also within our daily lives, our work routines and our retail habits, but what of our love lives. Let’s try and spice up our romance with a touch of gamification.
Here are my top tips of how to gamify your dating, keeping it interesting, adventurous and err possibly addictive:
1. Achievement is the number 1 key rule to playing a game so why not set yourself a point system for your dates. You can receive points for different criteria:
- How many dates you get in a month
- Quality of dates – i.e. Does the guy pay? Does he refrain from picking his nose through dinner? Is the conversation stilting and potential mind numbingly boring?
- Your competency of holding down a good date – Do you manage to refrain from boring him with ex anecdotes or your beauty routine? Do you get inappropriately wasted and throw up on his shoes?
2. And whilst we are on points why not get a leaderboard going for some good old fashioned ranking. You can rank yourself against your friends. Do you have more quality dates than they do or are you lagging behind? Remember though, there is no motivation to be had from being so far down your leaderboard with just 5 points if the point average of your mates is 5000. So, make your point allocation realistic so that it’s just that one little push to a guy without a criminal record that will bring you into league with the rest of the competitors.
3. Status can be a great motivator – How about making badges for you and your friends to indicate where you are in your dating league? You can have” the relationship-maintainer”, “the quality-one-nighter”, “the queen-date-small-talker”. … The list is endless.
4. Exploration is the next biggy and I suggest you do this in 2 ways – the obvious – how are things “moving along” with your date(s), if ya know what I mean? But also how to move your dating life into new territory. Make it more techy for example – spend some more time twittering and facebooking about your love life – We all know men love it when the details of their personal lives are hung out online. Or how about trying a new form of dating: online dating, dating for swingers, spankers or sadomasochists – take your pick – if it’s going to win you bonus points and up your leaderboard ranking it has to be worth it right?
5. In this all important era of social media we cannot forget the significance of socializing. The date itself can be considered socializing if you are lucky, but let’s make sure you keep it TRULY social. Be sure to twitter about your dates throughout your dates. Take regular instagram photos on your dates and upload them immediately to Facebook with meaningful and witty captions – That way you can be sure your player community (i.e. female friends) know exactly how you are getting on and that you are on your way to some serious points and prizes.
6. Let’s take competition that step further – It’s all about killer instinct. If a competitor is close behind you in the rankings you have to do what it takes to get that boost. There needs to be some rules here to prevent all out cat fighting, hair pulling, man stealing chaos. Within the spirit of the game try some fun tactics to catch that bonus date. Distract your competitor with a girls’ night out, a weepy movie or a makeover, this gives you your chance to spend that time cramming in some serious big point dates. It is, after all, all about winning…
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Tagged competition, dating, finding a man, gamers, gamification, gamify, women
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Performing Poet Sarah Kay. Inspiring Talk by an inspiring woman!
Sarah Kay is an inspiring performing poet and the founder of the project V.O.I.C.E. teaching poetry and self-expression at schools across the USA.
Watch Sarah Kay’s talk on TED.com:
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Mary Sue – The New Site for She-Nerds
Gary Stu: Mary, can you spot those demons glaring at us from under the trees?
Mary Sue: Totally, Gary. I have noticed them ever since we walked into the forest.
Gary Stu: Don’t worry, I have the ultimate ultra-light gimmick: the demon-vanisher!
Mary Sue: Wow Gary, that’s mega fantastic! Together with my feline martial arts whim skills we’ll vanish those beasts without them even noticing.
Gary Stu: Oh, Mary… you’re unbelievable!
Mary Sue: I know, so are you!
Mary Sue / Gary Stu: Bla bla bla! Yadda yadda yadda!
This is not mere writing logorrhea of a wannabe suethor. A quick summary of the recent Mary Sue production of Abrahams Media Network, a so-called website for she-nerdies: girls don’t want lousy parts in lousy stories, nor lousy partners in lousy contexts.
It’s all about women with a tinge of intelligence who don’t fall in the demographics of those who sneak peek into fashion magazines during breaks, but prefer to read succulent articles about the latest SDK package employed by Android or how JC Penney hit bottom in Google search.
What demographics are you in?
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The New Generation of Women Gamers
A recent Wii session and a particularly intense canoeing game got me thinking about the changing demographic of gaming. There is a new breed of female gamers, but is their playing technique different to the old school donkey kong consoler? It certainly seems so. Watch this video and then let’s discuss:
Wii, Kinect and phone apps have lovingly opened their arms to the non-spatially aware, i.e. women. And before you get upset I know there are women out there who can parallel park but I am generalising here for artistic license. These platforms mean we don’t need to master console controllers, with all their superfluous buttons and mastery of thumb movements, we can just wave our arms around, sway or jump around and we can win this way!
But what of the difference between men and women playing these new kind of games? Well, from my observations, and this video which of course speaks volumes, women play as if it is real life. We Wii canoe as if in a marsh, we play Wii tennis like Monica Seles and we catapult in Angry Birds with such fervour that god help the person next to us on the metro. Men on the other hand go for craft flicks of the wrist, nifty movements with no gumption apparently necessary. My scientific recordings though have shown our real life style of gaming actually works. We win more! And we look so cool doing it clearly!
The statistical research to prove the above has been carried out by erm, er …. I’ll get back to you on that one.
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Adapting the knowledge from work to real life when finding a man
This is a marvellous article written by a work colleague of mine at Golden Gekko. It takes the wisdom of project management for smart phone applications and places it neatly within our otherwise chaotic romantic huntings. Thank you Maria for this witty piece of inspiration, that makes the learnings of our work place EVEN more meaningful:
What to ask the man before getting into the relationship too deeply
By Maria Vilén
1. Has the concept been defined and expressed in the best manner? Note: Make sure it’s not false marketing and that you really fancy the concept in general.
2. Which features do you have and of what quality? – Note: Make sure the scope is correct and what are your expectations before signing the proposal. Do they fit with you own features? – Maybe they will even improve yours, if not tell him that it technically won’t work.
3. Do you have any extra/wow features? – Note: If he tells you yes he probably doesn’t have any, as you are the one to decide whether the feature gives you the wow effect or not, if he is aware of them he will probably use them on other devices during the entire time you are with him (to make sure they still work).
3. Have you set up your APIs correctly and are they fully functional? – Note: Make sure that the connection is working well without the server crashing and that the man can deliver without communication issues. It is also important that both the pull and the push notifications work between you and the man, not only one way around.
4. Has the design been fully adapted to your dimensions? – Note: The cloths need to be adjusted to his body and be of very good quality with a lot of taste, or else you will be annoyed during the entire process until the deadline has been reached.
4. Do you have experience of this before, to be able to deliver the material, as you want it? Note: If the man doesn’t have any experience of relationships you might want to lower the price and not give that much of yourself (physical and emotional). Please note that he might be delayed with deliveries even if he has experience.
5. Are you able to follow timings and answer questions when needed with a smile on your face? – Note: You don’t want to be stuck with this bloke that stands you up on a date or doesn’t answer your messages. – You are the device and without that there is no app!
6. Are you going to deliver the wire frames or will we draw them together? Note: If he will deliver WFs you will probably need to add something and change them a lot,. If he is willing to do it together you will probably not get it the way you want the future to be with him, so the best and easiest would be if you just do them yourself straight away, and therefore decide the relationships future.
7. Do you accept change request easily? – Note: Everyone has something you would like to change, if he loves you he will at least try, if not, you have to increase the price of the change request a lot and think if its worth it (new clothes etc.), stay during the whole process or put it on hold until he understands.
8. Can I get a sign-off? Note: If he never is able to reply and hand you the proper sign-off you deserve, you will never marry this man, so seek for new projects.
<strong>
Testing criteria</strong>
1. User click on main menu. Expected outcome: User gets an overview of the mans mind.
2. User click on back button. Expected outcome: User gets redirected to the best part in the relationship.
3. User click on upgrade button. Expected outcome: User gets redirected to install the pro version with better features, and the crappy old free version is directly erased from the device.
4. User click on refresh button. Expected outcome: A new fresh view of relationship turns up and you get reinloved (just invented that word).
5. User click on logout. Expected outcome: User leaves the application without any screaming, shouting or crying and automatically get suggestions of free available apps to pick from (with best quality of course).
Ok, there was nothing good on TV tonight… 
Maria