I’ve made no secret that the thoughts I expressed on the SXSW Game Interface Lessons panel were strongly influenced by Dan Cook’s work on the subject.  Well, a lot of folks have done a lot of talking.  Websites like LinkedIn and Facebook have borrowed a lot of the easy incentives from video games, from progress bars to “completing the set” to leveling up.  But the tougher question for a while has been: how do you teach a deep, complicated application using these techniques?  Forget random endorphin bursts– how do you get some real work done using games?

Dan Cook writes that he and the folks at Office Labs have taken a big step: Ribbon Hero!  If you have Office 2007 or later, you can download it right now, and learn how to use the controversial new “ribbon” interface element.  I don’t own a copy, so I’m stuck reading CNet’s coverage– but if you do give it a shot, please let me know what you learn (and maybe invite me over).

Without having seen the add-on, I think that an experimental, Office Labs add-on is the right place for this work.  There’s a long way from “we think we could use progressive learning techniques in video games” to “we’ve discovered what really works”.  I’m very excited to see this work kick off, and hope to see further developments before long.

EDIT: OMG, it has Facebook integration.  If you are my FB friend, PLEASE spam me with your Ribbon Hero updates.  I promise I won’t ignore you like I do Mafia players.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at 12:13 am and is filed under Game Dev. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.