Joe Lamantia summarizes his talk at the Italian IA summit.
He worked as a consultant for the website of the PS3 game Killzone 2. And he discovered how much games and social media have in common.

From the functional to the psychological, it seems there really is an ‘architecture of fun’ for both games and social experiences. It is just another example of how architecture of any (and all) kinds is an enormous influencing factor on peoples’ experiences.

Some of the insigths on the slideshow come directly from Nicole Lazzaro’s job at Xeodesign, and are extremely useful when connected with concepts like flow and the magic circle.

I’m waiting to embed the talk here, since Joe promised a complete slidecast.

The talk Tom gave at Gamecity ’08 is now available online. The topic “If Gamers Ran The World” fits perfectly with the theme of this blog and it’s with great pleasure that I quote from his own post:

They’re 45 in 2018 when they stand for office – that means they were born in 1973. They would have been four when Taito released Space Invaders came out; seven when Pac Man came out. In 1985, when they were 12, Nintendo would launch the NES in the west. At 18, just as they would have been heading to University, the first NHL game came out for the Genesis/Megadrive and might consumed many a night in the dorm. At 22, the Playstation was launched. At 26, they could have bought a PS2 at launch, ; 22 when the Playstation came out; 26 when they bought a launch PS2. At 31, they might have taken up World of Warcraft with their friends.

They would have been a gamer all their lives. Not someone who once played videogames, trotting out the same anecdote about “playing Asteroids once” in interviews; someone for whom games were another part of their lives, a primary, important medium. Someone who understood games.

And if that was the case, what might they have learned?

Oh by the way, the talk is currently unavailable as it’s on the front page of digg.