Code, Software and Serious Games

My efforts to put these GDC things under a cut just seem to break HTML on the board, so I'm just going to post them straight up, and my apologies if it gets too spammy.

IBM's Bluegrass tool was developed to deal with the social drawbacks of having teams of programmers who work in different facilities in different parts of the world. The program creates a pseudo-social environment, you might say, where employees (through their avatars) can travel around and meet each other in a virtual world that's specifically designed to appear welcoming: it's a sunny, open meadow. The employees all have avatars to represent themselves, and these avatars can 'speak' in word bubbles typed out by the user.

Each avatar in Bluegrass travels around with information about the employee who uses it, such as their company contact info, past projects they've worked on, and what they're doing right now. Mousing over the avatar will cause this information to appear; right-clicking on this information turns it into a game, such as a jigsaw (of their employee photo ID) or crossword (of their personal information), which all nearby users can see and interact with. This creates a kind of dinner party mood, with everyone pitching in to offer random comments or help with the puzzle. In the process, they learn about the person who's been clicked on.

Users can move from the meadow into different environments. The one we were shown in the demonstration was a boardroom - of sorts. In this boardroom, you can create tangible speech bubbles that can actually be picked up by anyone and moved around the room. Since the room is divided into 'Yes,' 'No,' and 'Maybe' sections, you can imagine it makes the decision-making process much more clear.

• programmers, at work, put their heads down and work on code, but occasionally stop to get food, etc., so they see people from their team and other teams
  
• now many teams are scattered over different areas, don't get to see each other
  
• IBM created Bluegrass, giving every worker an avatar and bringing them together in a virtual world that looks like an outside park
  
• live RSS feed tells user what others are working on, where they are going
  
• mouse-over people's avatars produces a picture of them
  
• first theme, therefore, is visualization
  
• top-down 3rd person view chosen over first-person because it creates a common perspective, more useful in brainstorming sessions
  
• can type up a suggestion as a tangible chat bubble, e.g. "make sure network cable is plugged in;' there's a boardroom screen where you can move these chat bubbles around into no/maybe/yes categories
  
• replicates the experiences of a boardroom from afar
  
• note: the IBM guys are actually connected to this program right now, and can't help but goof around with it during the talk
  
• features for socialization are next!
  
• each avatar emits little bubbles with personal information about the player, e.g. their profile from IBM's internal 'Blue Book' with contact information, list of projects worked on in the past ... can be potential ice breakers
  
• any object, including this contact information, can be right-clicked and transformed into a game (e.g. jigsaw puzzle) that different players can work on together
  
• on-screen quotes from IBMers: 'haha I got the first piece!' 'w00t!' 'grrr.' Goofs.
  
• players create their own games, esp. when empowered by avatars, e.g. two of the programmers racing each other to the top of the hill during code breaks