Category Archives: casual games

Could game play at work actually improve engagement?

By Jens | Published: September 2, 2009
“Button” is a nice example of how games can be used to mentally stimulate people in order to keep them engaged in their mundane jobs. The game is as simple as it gets: there is a button on the screen and when it lights you push it. Explains Techcrunch: Blank Software will choose random times to light [...]
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Congratulations to the CNW Group Scrabble Team!

By Parker Mason | Published: June 13, 2009
Every year, CNW Group and a number of “top corporations from Bay Street’s financial, legal, technology and accounting sectors” competed in a Scrabble competition for a chance to win the TMX Cup. The competition is in support of Frontier College, an organization with the goal of helping people improve their literacy skills. I was pleased to [...]
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Game Developers are Just Like Musicians

By Jens | Published: May 29, 2009
Right now, everyone’s attention is focused mainly on music piracy. That’s because people have figured out how to get music for free (or download it easily for a small price) for a long time. This is due to the fact that the average size of a song is only a few MBs, and an album [...]
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Virtual Stakeout: Catching Mexicans From the Comfort of Your Home

By Jens | Published: January 7, 2009
A new $2-million citizen surveillance system installed along the Tex-Mex border has everything one can ask for: CCTV cameras, the internet, people sitting at home and catching Mexicans. That’s right, Virtual Stakeout’s webcams can be viewed online by anyone, turning alert viewers into “Virtual Deputies”. As Kotaku rightfully points out, this project indeed sounds like [...]
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Men are from Planet Xbox Women are from Planet Wii: How the Genders Play Differently

By Jens | Published: November 25, 2008
Parker directed my attention towards this short yet insightful post by Jenni Mac about how videogames appeal more and more to a female demographic: [W]atching the report it was clear that this involvement is actually because of two very different reasons. Men enjoy the activity, the skill, and the challenge. Although some women do enjoy these [...]
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Casual Gaming vs Innovation

By Jens | Published: June 8, 2007
If you had a look at the Japanese sales charts lately you could get the impression that hardcore gaming is coming to an end in the land of the rising sun. Nintendo rules with an iron fist and it seems that it can only be a matter of months until the whole country owns a [...]
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