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• Level Up: Leveraging Skill and Engagement to Maximize Player Gameplay

  Published Nov 29, 2019

  # “Level Up”: Leveraging Skill and Engagement to Maximize Player Gameplay

  We find that high-, medium-, and low-engagement-state gamers respond differently to motivations, such as feelings of effectance and need for challenge. In the second stage, we use the results from the first stage to develop a matching algorithm that learns (infers) the gamer’s current engagement state “on the fly” and exploits that learning to match the gamer to a round to maximize game-play. Our algorithm increases gamer game-play volume and frequency by 4%–8% conservatively, leading to economically significant revenue gains for the company.

  As ever with this kind of mechanism, are we sure we want this to exist..? The potential is no doubt powerful. Imagine interactive TV shows that modulate what they’re presenting based on readings of the viewer… Hrm.

  • Highlights
  • Tech
  • Research
  • Design

• 2019 tech trends report

  Published Oct 2, 2019

  # 2019 Tech Trends Report – The Future Today Institute

  This report is intentionally broad and robust. We have included a list of adjacent uncertainties, a detailed analysis of 315 tech trends, a collection of weak signals for 2020, and more than four dozen scenarios describing plausible near futures.

  Impressive work. I particularly like the CIPHER heuristic they use in analysis signals: contradictions, infections, practices, hacks, extremes, rarities.

  • Futures
  • Highlights
  • Change
  • Tech

• Procrastination Station

  Published Aug 19, 2018

  # Procrastination Station

  

  Procrastination is itself a systems trap. That balancing loop sucks you in. You take on sneaky little actions as dopaminergic relief to the burden you’re escaping from, while the burden only grows heavier. (A form of Fixes that Fail.)

  • Systems
  • Sketching
  • Systemics
  • Productivity

• Leadership is

  Published Feb 7, 2017

  # Leadership is…

  

  Lessons learned from Memorial Student Leadership Conference (MSLC) 2017. These thoughts were spurred by Director of Student Life Dr. Jennie Massey’s opening remarks for the conference, and were reinforced by the keynote speaker, Mr. Seamus O’Regan, MP. 

  Jennie and Seamus both talked about the oft-haphazard decision making that led to their achievements. The truth about this reinforcing loop is that no matter where you are in the process, you can do something to make it to the next step. No, not every moment will be virtuous – the cycle is not _that_virtuous. It is a cycle nonetheless, and that’s the thing about cycles: they do not stop.

  • Systems Sketching
  • Systemics
  • Leadership

• Limits to (personal) growth

  Published Jan 30, 2017

  

  I’m my own worst enemy when it comes to reading articles. I have 211 in a to-do list as I write this, and the larger that grows the more untenable getting through it seems.

  In this case the limiter actually escalates, as in order to avoid doing the readings I know I should do, I go off and collect more. 😑

  • Systems Sketching
  • Systemics
  • Procrastination

• This is why I’m here.

  Published Jan 23, 2017

  

  Why sketch systems? Partially as a way to productively vent my sarcasm, and partially as a way to practice systems thinking.

  Also, maybe my handwriting will improve?

  • Systems Sketching
  • Systemics
  • Practice

• The snowfall looks so nice!

  Published Jan 16, 2017

  # Last night: “the snowfall looks so nice!”; this morning: “grumble.”

  

  Shovelling as a “fix that fails”: it enables us to keep living here, when here means moving solidified rain from one side of the driveway to the other a dozen times each Winter.

  We should just become snowbirds.

  • Systems Sketching
  • Systemics

• New year, new you

  Published Jan 3, 2017

  

  Could New Year’s resolutions be doomed to fail? Driven by New Year’s culture, we commit to actions, call them resolutions, and set off to become better people. This phenomena of setting New Year’s resolutions is reinforcing (R1).

  Yet, as we get further away from the culture of resolutions, our commitment – linked at heart to New Year’s culture – fades. This, coupled with how slow progress can be, leads to the gradual extinction of our promise to ourselves. (B1)

  Perhaps, then, resolutions made outside of and separate from the cultural phenomena are more likely to result in real changes, as their founding is based in intrinsic motivation as opposed to the extrinsic incentives of New Year’s culture.

  (The time since New Year’s sets a limit to growth on the new habit.)

  • Systems Sketching
  • Habits
  • Productivity
  • Systemics

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