Posts Tagged ‘“games with a purpose”’

As a planet, we spend 3 billion hours a week playing computer and videogames. That’s a LOT of time — enough to change our lives, and probably save the world (the real world) while we’re at it.

That’s why Gameful have created a “secret HQ” for people who are making games that are making us:

• happier
• smarter
• stronger
• healthier
• more collaborative
• more creative
• better connected to our friends and family
• and better at WHATEVER we love to do when we’re not playing games

Here are some games that are already doing just that: EVOKE, Fold It!, The Epic Win App, Flower, Code of Everand, SuperBetter, The MP Expenses Game, Budgetball, the Pokéwalker, Quest to Learn, Little Big Planet: Gamechangers, World Without Oil, Seek ‘n Spell, Goal Mafia,and Conspiracy for Good.

What all of these projects have in common: they’re dedicated to making some kind of a real positive impact on gamers’ lives and the world around them.

Gameful is an online “Secret HQ” where you can connect with other people who believe in the power of games to make us better and change the world.

You can find all the information at http://gameful.org

EteRNA is a new online game developed by Carnegie Mellon University and Stanford University researchers. Unless many video games that provide realistic graphics and game play, but have no connection with reality, this game helps providing real-life scientific results in the biochemistry domain. “EteRNA harnesses game play to uncover principles for designing molecules of RNA, which biologists believe may be the key regulator of everything that happens in living cells.”

Players are not only scored and ranked based on how much they play; they are scored by nature, depending on how well their virtual designs can be rendered as real, physical molecules. An additional incentive for users to participate in the game – beside the one of being able to contribute to real scientific research – is provided by the integration of the game with Facebook. Players can there talk about the game, post their accomplishments and compete with each other.

Read more about it at: http://www.cmu.edu/news/archive/2011/January/jan11_eterna.shtml

‘Who Knows?‘ (clic on the Facebook logo inside the application to play) is a simple Q&A game in the style of ‘Who wants to be a Millionaire’. The questions are automatically generated from DBpedia content.

The purpose is the evaluation of some heuristics that are used to determine a ranking of facts within a knowledge base such as e.g. DBpedia.

You can find the whole blog entry at http://moresemantic.blogspot.com/2010/11/who-knows-semantic-web-game.html

0Boxer is a service that turns Gmail into a game in which you are rewarded for performing specific actions: archiving emails, replying emails, etc. The objective is to compete with friends to get the most organized Inbox.

Future updates are going to introduce badges so that users will get badges depending on their use of Google’s email client.

Definitely a nice way of encouraging users to put good email management habits into practice

Game Mechanics – there are many ways to do it wrong. Adding points and achievements to your site doesn’t have to be a grind. IActionable makes it easy to get your reputation system up to speed quickly and easily.

Game Mechanics are a means of rewarding users. They aren’t a great fit for everyone. Here are some of the characteristics the people behind IActionable have found that are a natural fit for accelerated growth through game mechanics:

• You have a community or are social where users are aware of each other.
• There are many ways a user can interact with your application or with each other.
• Ideally your users visit repeatedly; generally once a week or more.

Here are some of the basic building blocks they work with:

• Points: Do something good, get a few points. Do something great – get a lot of points. Do something bad? Lose points. It’s a concept we are all familiar with. Provide users with immediate feedback by adjusting their points – but be careful – it’s a powerful tool and you can easily find your users doing exactly what you reward them for. When used properly points can provide context within a site so user’s can quickly identify members who have been around for a while and are experienced members of the community.
• Achievements: Achievements are milestones or goals that, once accomplished, rewards users visibly, letting them and everyone else that they’ve “unlocked” that achievement. While points are great for smaller tasks, achievements are good for grander accomplishments and are seen as a source of pride for users. They usually appear in a list of “locked” and “unlocked” achievements. This provides an easy way for users to see what they can do to unlock more achievements and helps educate them about the possibilities your application offers.

All these capabilities are exposed by means of a REST API.

You can find all the information at the IActionable website at http://iactionable.com/.