Fear of the Web

Okay, a couple of months out of date this but I was thinking about this remark that James Currier made a while ago in reference to the expanding casual games market:

"My money is on the web people to take the lion’s share of the gaming world by 2013 because I think it’s easier for us to learn the philosophies of game creation than it is for the gamers to learn the philosophies that make you successful on the web"

I appreciate that Currier is talking about the casual games web business, but something that's caught my eye in terms of casual gaming recently is the Nike+ website - the website for people who run with the Nike+ system.

If you don't know it, the Nike+ system is fairly smart in itself. Users purchase the Nike gizmo, stick it in their running shoe, hook it up to their iPod/Phone and do a run to their favourite music. Via technology that may as well be magic, the info about this run (speed, distance, er, other stuff) is logged on your iPod and you can use it to, you know, work out whether or not you're actually getting better at this running shit or not. Smart enough, but the website however, takes this to a whole new level.

Users (is this the point where I start to use the word 'gamer' instead of 'user'?) can join running clubs (clans) and compete either solo as a club against other Nike+ users. You get trophies for completing certain challenges (quests), you can create private and public challenges for people to enter (epic quests) and you can also compete in special group events organised by Nike. So that's what: progression, challenges, quests, high scores, clans, user generated content (buzz words!) - top it off with a blog per user and some forums and all in all, it's a bastard cross between PE lessons and Xbox Live.

Looks like the web people have worked out game design principles pretty well...