Newsletter 1/13/2023: Gamified Career Paths
From the Desk of Dennis:
Rain rain go away, I was supposed to go skiing yesterday. Post-marathon Dennis is in severe need of a winter sport, but I’ll be damned if I’m going running this winter after running 26.2 in the coldest marathon since the 1990’s. Any recommendations on quality mountains in PA for experienced skiiers?
TGIF,
Dennis A. Wilson
This Week in Marketing and Technology:
PsychologyToday, “Can Video Gaming Help a Child with ADHD Get a Future Job?”
“The use of a variety of stimuli including video, sounds, words, and actions along with a design that uses trial and error or guided discovery also captures and maintains attention in children with ADHD.”
ADHD or no, I think that video games are some of the most underrated professional training tools we have at our disposal. There is a self-referential element to the content of many games, that at least clues in players to the underlying computer science beneath. As Marketing becomes more and more of a psuedo-tech job, I’ve found all of the technical knowledge I’ve accrued as a gamer has helped push me ahead of my colleagues when it comes to career growth.
SearchEngineLand, “AI Content: Is it Helpful or Spam?”
“Automating content creation is not an ideal use case. AI tools do not have the firsthand experience Google requires and is expected by readers. They merely rewrite existing knowledge using their "own" words.”
This is the Turing test of our times - does your neural network-powered content generation system have the attention to detail to know when it’s treading into uncanny valley territory? Can it QA it’s own work? The majority of AI-produced content I’ve seen straight up sucks and feels about as authentic as a business offer in an overseas spam email; wake me up in another five years when the machines have started their own Upworthy and I’ll be impressed by their content repackaging skills.
Wired, “The Overwatch League Ruled Esports. Then Everything Went Wrong”
“No more potent symbol of the league’s ambition existed than the plans for a Philadelphia Fusion stadium: a $50 million, 65,000-square-foot, 3,500-seat arena, projected to turn Philadelphia into an ‘esports town.’”
I’m still waiting! I want to grease the poles for a clutch 1v4. I want to walk into the Sugarhouse Casino and win fat stacks of CS:GO skins because I made a proxy bet about the Fusion running an off-meta comp. I want to be a fat old eSports uncle who can whine to his nephews and nieces about how nobody runs GOATS anymore. But if Philly, and the country, were really ready for an NFL-sized eSport, you wouldn’t have to Google all this jargon… :(
