3pointD.com

Cool British journo-researcher Aleks Krotoski has a couple of really good interviews up on the Guardian Gamesblog with veteran games designer Mark Eyles, who’s now in academia. In part one of their interview, Eyles talks about “ambient gaming,” and describes the thinking behind his game, Ambient Quest. (In part two, he talks about academia.) Ambient Quest is PC-only and requires a game-master, of all things, so I haven’t checked it out yet (and I actually have a hard time understanding how it works based on the description on its Web site), but the idea is cool — although it strikes me that it’s hardly as ambient as Justin Hall’s Passively Multiplayer Online Game, where I’ve become a level 77 Seer by dint of doing almost exactly nothing. Regardless, the ideas that Eyles is exploring are fascinating (read his paper on ambient RPGs), and dovetail with thoughts that have appeared on 3pointD and elsewhere in the guise of things like lifelogging and ideas about bringing game-like feedback mechanisms into the workplace (a la Seriosity). The interview raises some interesting questions — Where is the line between gaming and recording behavior? Does PMOG qualify as a game just because it lays the trappings of games atop a record of the things I do every day anyway? — and is well worth the read. And if you can figure out how to play the damn thing, let me know.