Actually met one of my heroes today. Scot Kim, who has been setting puzzles for as long as I've enjoyed doing them. Scott and his wife Amy Jo gave a talk at GDC mobile and I just had to go up and say hello at the end. (if you ever read this blog Scott, I was the scary tall one who shook you by the hand and told you to buy a copy of Apples to Apples - as should everyone).

They gave a talk called "Putting the Fun into Functional". It was about how gameplay elements can crop up in the most unexpected places. Is ebay a game? If you map the behaviours and achievements of ebay members you can make a very good case for this. "Players" earn ratings, the "level up" to get stars, request and supply feedback etc etc. Is MySpace a game? If the aims are to collect feedback and high ratings, yes. Are we going to see "gameishness" appear in serious software? Oh yes.

It was one of those presentations that change the way that you think about doing things. I'm going to look at things I do in the future and see if I can add the kind of encouraging features that were described to drive interest in the task. You can find a more detailed review of the talk here. You might even find the slides on here.All great stuff.