Arcade Berg aka. "Learning Game Design with Arcade Berg"

Highscore Hurts

I guess I'd have a roll of 15 in Strength or something in D&D and the Default Body in a character maker tool.

Not extraordinary in any way regarding my pshysique and I rarely (read: never) work out. If I did, how would I get the time to blog?

But the thing is, there's this iPhone App; "100 Pushups" that's an application you run every second day and it tells you how many push-ups to do (at least) for you to be able to 100 of them within six weeks. (There's also another version that's "200 Situps".)

Basically, it does:

The brilliant thing here is, it works! Well, I don't know if I'll be able to do 100 when it's all over, but it actually makes me wanna try and keep on doing it because of one simple thing:

The graphs.

It shows me how many I've been able to do each time and if I do well, it increases ever so slowly. It's a highscore table, damn it!

They've created a real world meta game for me to play. I want to really push it to be able to get the real high scores.

There's just one tiny problem. I haven't been able to try it more than once, because after my first day I got muscle inflammation because of over exertion. FAIL! And now I have to wait for it to go away before I can continue.

Let's just say that less than 100 was too much for my superior nerd-body.

So really, all we (I?) need to change my way of doing things is a highscore table? Looks like it.

This case is really a lot like what Carnegie Mellon University Professor, Jesse Schell talks about at DICE at one point. How "games" are reaching into the real world.

http://g4tv.com/videos/44277/DICE-2010-Design-Outside-the-Box-Presentation (26/2/2010)

It's a great vid and I highly recommend it. He talks about several interesting things, some of which I'll discuss later here on my site as well. But in it, he talks about how Fords 's new hybrid cars have a field with leaves in the dashboard. Depending on how environmental friendly you drive, the leaves increase, increasing your "highscore".

It's absolutely fantastic! A simple display with some vegetation on it change how people drive!

Problem is... I wouldn't be looking at the speed, I would look at my highscore.

Pwetty! ^_^

It, in turn is just like "The Fun Theory", where they make people take the stairs instead of escalator and throw things in the trash instead of on the ground, by making it fun. It was initiated by Volkswagen.

Amazing power is to be had if making things fun.