Thing 12 : Angry Birds, Wordfeud and disturbing the Quiet carriage.

Social Gamers & Siblings by Shawn Drelinger via CC license on Flickr

We love games, we really  do, games were mobile long before the invention of the telephone.

 In the past we had decks of cards, travel chess, dice, and things that only need a social aspect and some imagination, it was only a matter of time before they became a part of our mobile connected lifestyle.

Why do we play? If you watch a good animal documentary there’s something about games when we are young and learning all our life lessons by beating the snot out of our siblings, so there’s probably something in that, after all who am I to argue with David Attenborough?

The reality is we now play so many games that there is a social label for us; Gamers.

Sure, there’s lots of research on the pros and cons of gaming, some say that a puzzle a day keeps the doctor away and others say we need to keep an eye out for kids in trenchcoats.

Regardless of which way you lean in the debate, games aren’t going away. It’s part of who we are. Games are Fun, games can be Social, games can be improve your brain, games can have you wearing a diaper at 3am with a horned helmet and a red bull addiction.

It’s big business, are we going to be part of it libraries?

We are, after all, shifting our focus in so many libraries from knowledge repository to community space, do we need to look at gaming as part of a community need?

Looking at the public use computers in my public library, there’s a lot of people using the facilities to write a resume but there are lots connecting to each other through games.

Anyway nuff said, as Duke Nukem said “Come get some”.

DISCOVER

• Many people use their mobile devices to play games, for example:
  • Angry Birds – mad Finnish guys figure out how to make touch screens fun, comes in several flavours including star wars angry birds
  • Candy Crush or Triple Town– simple, addictive, a little social.
  • Try a Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO), like Pocket Legends.
  • Try Wordfeud
• Gamification (“the use of game thinking and game mechanics in a non-game context in order to engage users and solve problems”) and libraries, for example Librarygame

EXPLORE

• Games come in many flavours, there is a type for everyone, have a look at something with playability, try top free games on your device or something from this list.
• Interactive gamification workshop at Next Library 2013 .
• Find more links on our Pinterest board .

THINKING POINTS – I stole these from Kathryn Barwick‘s post here

• Kids and mobile games – what’s popular? How can you find out? Could you integrate some of these games into your library’s programs for children?
• If you could develop a game for mobile devices, what would it be? We’ve already encountered several apps that can be used to gamify aspects of your library service (eg. SCVNGR, geocaching)
• National Parks New South Wales, Australia, has developed an iPad app as part of their Wilderquest program for children – could your library develop an app?
• Could you use games in programs at your library?  eg. designing games using Game Salad

EXTRA CHALLENGE

• Tell us your favourite game in a comment on our FB page!
• If you want to go for gold, challenge one other person – maybe a colleague or family member – to play that same game…

From Abigail and Kate: This excellent introduction post was written by Aaron Trenorden – thank you 😉 Next week is our catch-up week and marks the half-way point of the course. Thanks so much for your continued enthusiasm, questions, and ideas; it’s fantastic learning with all of you!