Aleks Krotoski gave a talk at d-Construct this year called 'Playing the Web: how gaming makes the internet (and the world) a better place'. This is my summary of what she said and the bits of her talk that I liked the best.

Aleks talked about the shared goals of the web and games industry, how we could learn from each other, but how we don't seem to talk much to each other. The games industry needs to learn to build better community and could learn a lot from what the web has accomplished. We need to learn to achieve the 'stickiness' that the games industry has acheived. I'm not completely sure what stickiness means, but I think it's about producing an engaging experience that brings people coming back for more.

One way to make the web more engaging would be to make it more playful. Games keep you playing by making you work towards a goal; dangling carrots and letting you acheive smaller goals along the way. They reward you with points and other incentives for doing well, and the good ones make you want to play longer and do better.

She also talked about how huge games had become and how some had been unsuccessful because people felt they were too big. People still want the freedom, so it's important to give the illusion of infitinte possibilites, but to funnel people towards a goal, while giving them the chance to explore around the edges.

I really like the idea of making websites more playful and fun. It's something that's too easy to forget. I'm also interested in how web sites use incentives to keep users coming back and encouraging them to use a site more.