A game by any other name is still just a game but Empire Avenue (EAv) is a little different. However before I can explain why EAv is different I think you may need to understand why it is the same. You sign up with your social media account like Twitter or Facebook via the OAuth pin exchange meme you already know. And then set up you player profile. The difference is that you player profile is really you not a pseudonym like you would use for say Mafia Wars. From there you start poking around and buying stock in your social media friends.
Their stock price is determined by a whole host of things think of this as doing jobs in Mafia Wars but you are linking your other social media accounts and blogs to EAv. In addition you join communities of interest and discuss topic with other users. So this is a social media game that help you earn fake money that you can then spend on buying things. Like any other game if you want to be the Master Boss of NYC you have to work at it. Unlike other game especially Mafia Wars there’s no real guidance or direction and that is because this is a real time social application.
So what truly make EAv different is that it take my concept of Social Capital and places it into a real world almost tangible element. The interesting part of the game is that by honestly playing you can develop a better understanding of how and why social media should be used. You gain a greater control of your social media portrait.
Now you are saying “Mike stop that! Stop with the making up of social media buzzwords.” Well let me back up my buzz building vocabulary with this. Empire Avenue is both a game and a game changer. It turns out, and I will whole heartily admit I did not understand EAv at first, that it is actually a tool. Unfortunately the team at Empire Avenue have not done a very good job of explaining how to use it. Honestly just about anyone can used a hammer drill ones you read the directions and know where to point it. But if there aren’t any directions to read well you are an accident waiting to happen.
So about this Social Media Portrait I mentioned previously. Well that is the culmination of all of your social media efforts. Think of it like an old school over head projector slide presentation. You have you twitter slide. Then you lay the facebook transparency on top of that. Perhaps you drop the LinkedIn sheet over that one and pretty soon you start to see a messy composite of mixed profiles and status streams projected on the wall. Ad on top of that you Youtube, flick and various other profiles as well as any blogs you happen to be involved with and well now you have a truly unreadable pile of wonderful information.
That my friend is your ‘Social Media Portrait.’ In fact right now you are probably imagining something that would look like if Dali and Picasso had a child with Van Gogh as the god parent either that or a finger painting by a 3 year old. The funny thing is that Empire Avenue has managed to cobble all of this information and tie it together into some seemingly meaningless game that actually makes sense but only if you take a few steps back from the wall and stop looking at those trees. It’s a forest view with the ability to zoom in on a birch tree if you need to.
The value of EAv is that is shows you where you a focusing your time in one neat little summary page. It exposes your social media shortcomings and funnily enough encourages you to work on overcoming them. Please do not think for a second that I am suddenly enamored with Empire Avenue. Actually you couldn’t be more wrong the game as it is has some real short comings but not that I see the potential utilitarian functionality hidden under the gamy wrapper I am open to giving it another go.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Mikel King has been a leader in the Information Technology Services field for over 20 years. He is currently the CEO of Olivent Technologies, a professional creative services partnership in NY. Additionally he is currently serving as the Secretary of the BSD Certification group as well as a Senior Editor for the BSD News Network and JAFDIP.
Related articles
- Empire Avenue Shareholder Update (chris.pirillo.com)
- Are you an early adopter or easily distracted? [René Power] (ecademy.com)
- What I just learned on Empire Avenue [Solveigh Calderin] (ecademy.com)
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