地理定位服务公司SCVNGR首席执行官Seth Priebatsch，在日前出席了2011年SXSW大会，这名年仅22岁的发言人身着牛仔裤，桔黄色的polo上衣，头顶一个太阳镜，活脱脱一个《使命召唤》玩家的打扮。但Priebatsch这次却不是为玩游戏而来，而是呼吁大家采取行动改变世界。

SXSW所有与会者都想知道科技行业的下一个重大事件是什么，Priebatsch对此问题的答案是：游戏层。他认为在人们将所有个人联系进行数字化处理，并上传到网络的过程中，游戏层已成为过去十年中社交层的天然接班人。

SCVNGR's Priebatsch

Priebatsch的看法是，游戏层的影响力会比社交层更大，“因为它与我们的个人动机更有关联，游戏层有可能产生比我们的社交动机大10倍的影响力。”

除此之外，游戏层的范围更为广泛，社交层已经拥有自己的舞台，如果你想创建一个社交层，就可以在Facebook上实现这种操作。

那么究竟何谓游戏层？它就是指将游戏机制融入我们生活各个领域的一种应用，指导我们教育孩子、吸引顾客等日常活动。例如，GroupOn通过基本的游戏机制，让潜在消费者转化为真正的顾客，又通过这些极具价值的顾客带来了更多消费者。

Priebatsch还通过教育体系惩罚落后学生，而非激励他们获得成功的例子进行解释，“这是一种游戏机制，本来你希望他们都能成功，但他们还是难免失败的结局。”游戏邦认为，与其让学生们落后于一定的成功标准，为什么不让所有人都从同一起跑线上开始，让他们不断积累分值呢？是不是可以让他们通过补考以获得足够的分数来“晋级”？

这种灵活的机制对游戏玩家来说再熟悉不过了，但Priebatsch指出在现实世界中这种情况也非常普遍。就拿美联储的经济刺激计划来说，“量化宽松政策好比是一种‘为应对经济破产而全力开动印钞机’的做法，银行在提供贷款，而消费者却不肯花钱。”如果美联储能改变游戏规则，我们的教育体系为何不可？

游戏邦获悉，Priebatsch也对全球变暖的问题发表了看法，“如果我说可以通过一个游戏解决全球变暖的问题，那就是在打虚假广告”，他用略带悲观的情绪表示，“有些问题确实超出了人们的解决能力”，但同时也指出，将不可能改变的事情转化为极端困难的事情，也是一种巨大的成功，“游戏层的时代正在来来临，它是一种非常有趣的现象。”（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，转载请注明来源：游戏邦）

SCVNGR’s Priebatsch: Want to Win More? Change the Rules

SXSW keynoter Seth Priebatsch, CEO of SCVNGR, says “The Game Layer” can fix schools, retain customers, and stop global warming.

AUSTIN – You can tell that Seth Priebatsch, the 22-year-old CEO of the location-based service SCVNGR, is a gamer as soon as he walks on stage. In jeans, a bright orange polo, and matching sunglasses on the top of his head, he looks like he just walked straight out of an all night “Call of Duty” session at the frat house. But Priebatsch wasn’t playing around when he took the stage at  SXSW 2011, he was trying to change the world.

Everyone at SXSW wants to know what the next big thing is and Priebatsch thinks he has the answer: the game layer. He says the game layer is the natural successor to the social layer that has been built in the last 10 years, as we have taken all of our personal connections, digitized them, and put them online.

The game layer, according to Priebatsch, will be even bigger. “Because it interacts with our individual motivations, the game layer has the potential to have 10 times the impact of our social motivations.”

Plus, the game layer is wide open, where as the social layer already has a dominant platform. When you want to build on the social layer, you do it with Facebook.

So what exactly is the game layer? It is the application of gaming mechanics into nearly every facet of our lives, from how we educate our children to how businesses attract and retain customers.

GroupOn, for example, succeeds because it utilizes basic game mechanics to convert potential customers into shoppers who have a vested interest in converting more shoppers.

One of Priebatsch’s examples is the educational system, which is designed to penalize students for failure, instead of purely incentivizing them to succeed. “It’s a game mechanic, and it’s letting people lose in a game you don’t want them to lose.” Instead of failing students for falling below a certain percentile, why not start everyone at zero and let them accumulate points? If they have to take a test twice to accumulate enough points to “level-up,” so be it.

This kind of flexibility comes naturally to gamers, but Priebatsch points out that this happens in the real world all the time. Take a look at what the Fed is doing now to stimulate the economy.

“Quantitative easing is just a fancy way of saying ‘print trillions of dollars because the game is broken,’” Priebatsch says. “Banks are lending and consumers aren’t spending.” If the Fed can change the rules of the game, why can’t our schools?

What about global warming? “I said I would solve global warming with a game, that may have been false advertising,” Priebatsch said. Adding in a rare moment of pessimism. “Some problems are too big  for anyone to solve.”

But that pessimism didn’t last long. “Moving something that is impossible to something that is just very difficult is a really big win.”

“The game layer is coming, and it is going to be fun.” （source:pcmag）