Tag: serious games (Page 2 of 3)

Saving the World, One EVOKE at a Time

February 15, 2010 / Celina Beach

evoke Wouldn’t it be great if, during times of crisis, there was a way to access a network of experts ready and able to help avert the crisis? Starting March 3rd, the Evoke Network goes live and available for all your crisis-averting needs!

EVOKEÂ was developed by the World Bank Institute, the educational branch of the World Bank Group, and directed by Jane McGonigal, the creative mind behind Superstruct and World Without Oil (among many others) and most recently an invited speaker at TED2010. TheÂ alternate reality game’s mission is to help the world help itself, by empowering young people to tackle the world’s toughest problems. In the first episode, the year is 2020 and Japan is facing a nation-wide famine. The Governor of Tokyo sends an “EVOKE” to the mysterious Alchemy, who then activates the Evoke Network by contacting individuals with the necessary skills and ideas needed to help Tokyo avert her food crisis, and teach her people how to avoid it in the future.

During the 10 week course of the game, players will be presented with 10 different challenges involving topics like hunger, poverty, and education – one challenge per week. Players who participate in all 10 challenges will be honored as a “Certified World Bank Institute Social Innovator â€“ Class of 2010.” On top of that, the top 10 Social Innovators will alsoÂ have the opportunity to be mentored by noted social innovators and business leaders, along withÂ scholarships to the EVOKE Summit in Washington, DC to share their innovative ideas with the world.

The goal of the game? Fun of course! But the main goal is to teach the young people of the world skills such as networking, resourcefulness, creativity, and vision; empowering them to start solving the world’s problems. Teach the people, save the world!

EVOKE launches on March 3rd and is accepting membership reservations now, and discussion is brewing over in Unfiction. Also, the first graphic novel episode can be read in its entirety on the EVOKE homepage, including links to articles for additional information on the topics discussed in the episode and a videoÂ trailer with clues about the nature of the EVOKE Network.

Traces of Hope: British Red Cross Launches ARG for Civilians and Conflict Month

September 29, 2008 / Michael Andersen

Traces of Hope logo Registration opened today for Traces of Hope, an alternate reality game sponsored by the British Red Cross. According to a press release we received last week, the game is “an experience in which on-screen characters reach out into the players’ real world.” The story will revolve around Joseph, a Ugandan teenager searching for his mother during a time of civil war. The experience will combine “storytelling, detective work, technology and treasure-hunt style gameplay in a compelling 21st century narrative, as players seek to reunite Joseph with his mother.” As Joseph arrives at the IDP camp, the game will focus on how the Red Cross’ tracing and messaging service offers the “last traces of hope” for displaced civilians searching for their families.

According to Dorothea Arndt, the New Media Manager at the British Red Cross, this game will provide an experience “where players will feel they are really interacting with Joseph’s world – by communicating directly with Joseph, players find themselves caught up in a hunt across the internet to reunite him with his mother.” And while the game will be interesting and enjoyable, there is a serious side to the narrative, as the action parallels the real life struggles of thousands of people around the world who suffer from the perils and hardships of conflict. Of course, in these real world situations, just as in the game, the Red Cross is there to provide aid for those in need.

The ARG was developed by Enable Interactive and partners with other organizations, including Penguin Books and Reuters AlertNet, to create a world that is “as realistic and authentic as possible.” In the press release, Matt Connolly of Enable details some of the aspects of the experience: “In developing the game we’ve gone to a lot of trouble to place clues, teasers and solutions around the internet, so the boundaries between the game-world and the real world become very blurred. Players will be going to real websites and drawing on genuine lifesaving information to help Joseph on his journey.” He goes on to add, “ARGs are at the cutting edge so it’s fantastic to be working on such an innovative project alongside the Red Cross and to be spreading a very positive message as well as making a great game.”

Readers of this blog may have noticed an influx of Serious Games recently, starting with the award-winning World Without Oil, Indiana University’s Skeleton Chase, Operation: Sleeper Cell for Cancer Research UK, and the Institute for the Future’s Superstruct Game. Whether the goal of the campaign is encouraging charitable donations, raising awareness about issues, conducting research, or harnessing the power of collective intelligence to resolve current and future problems, the ability of alternate reality games to encourage immersion and engagement allows development teams to channel “play” for good. Since all of the currently running games are focusing on different goals, it will be enlightening to compare player responses to the different campaigns.

You can see a teaser video for the campaign on Vimeo.

Operation Sleeper Cell: Making the World a Lovelier Place

September 23, 2008 / Michael Andersen

A few months ago, Adrian Hon gathered together a collection of ARG developers with the battle cry, Let’s Change the Game. In collaboration with Cancer Research UK, aspiring game developers were challenged to create an alternate reality game to serve as a fundraiser for a worthy cause: the fight to cure cancer. The winning team would receive Â£1300 ($2600USD) seed money to develop a campaign that would be promoted through the Cancer Research UK website, 600 plus stores, mailings to over 20 million people, TV ads, a dedicated island on Second Life, and hundreds of live events and races across the country.

On January 31, the judge’s panel selected the pitch for “Operation Sleeper Cell” by the development team Law 37. The game officially launched earlier today via an email from Agent Herring. The game, heralded as “the world’s first massively multiplayer game designed to raise money for charity”, is currently centered around two websites: the Operation Sleeper Cell homepage and the We Are Not the Agency page. The goal of the game is to activate sleeper cells represented as squares on a grid in an effort to thwart the nefarious plans of E.V.I.L. through acts of kindness, puzzle solving, and “spreading loveliness”.

If any of this seems a trifle confusing, the development team set up a Guide to Playing. Operation Sleeper Cell raises money by having individuals and teams purchase virtual currency bonds (BND) that can be spent activating squares on the Grid that will enable missions, live events, story fragments, or special operations. Once a mission is unlocked, everyone is free to play. Sponsors can also purchase advertising ‘cells’ for the game’s front page.

With a staff of over twenty volunteers, Operation: Sleeper Cell aims to spend the next ten weeks raising funds for Cancer Research through a lighthearted, comedy spy game that takes place over websites, blogs, Twitter, and real life. The game’s budget is limited to Â£1000 (~$2,000USD), with the staff relying on in-kind donations for any additional expenses. Let’s Change the Game founder Adrian Hon commented on the game, saying that “along with raising money for the vital cause of cancer research, Operation: Sleeper Cell shows that games can be a real force for good in the world. Games are often seen as childish distractions or used as scapegoats – what Law 37 have achieved, unpaid, with Operation: Sleeper Cell is a powerful rebuttal to that.”

Click Here for the thread at Unfiction.
Click Here to purchase BNDs or sponsor the campaign.
Click Here to learn more about Cancer Research UK.

Indiana University Combats the Freshman Fifteen with “Skeleton Chase”

September 7, 2008 / Michael Andersen

Indiana University logo In late May, Indiana University announced that it received a $185,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to explore how interactive digital games can be designed to improve players’ health. Sometime early in the semester, a group of 90 students in the freshman living and learning center at IU will begin to play an alternate reality game named Skeleton Chase, designed by Lee Sheldon. Jeanne Johnston from the school’s Department of Kinesiology and Anne Massey from the Kelley School of Business will be conducting the research for the project.

Sheldon was understandably reticent regarding details of the upcoming game’s plot. However, he did note that it is a “story of mystery, suspense, conspiracies, corporate greed, demented professors, unnatural creatures… You know: the usual.” The story will play out over fictional and real web pages, videos, email, phone calls, text messages, and live events involving actors and lots of physical props. Sheldon promises that by the end of the game, the students “will know just about every corner of this sprawling campus from familiar landmarks to little-known nooks and crannies.”

The research team will collect data on players using FitLinxx ActiPeds, small pedometers that automatically transmit data to a receiver located at the entrance of the students’ shared dorm. Jennifer Boen at the News-Sentinel notes in her article on the project that the high tech monitors will allow the design team to decipher which components are the most motivating and enjoyable, so the results of this study will be of particular interest to game designers looking to increase engagement among players.

Lee Sheldon is no stranger to web mysteries and alternate reality games. In 1983, Warner Books hired Sheldon to write two books in the style of Dennis Wheatley’s Crime Dossiers from the 1930s. Wheatley’s dossiers were fictional police dossiers to crimes presented in sequence, including physical evidence. The project fell through, but Sheldon bought back the rights and released The Light Files: Death in Broad Daylight as a “web mystery” in 1996. Veteran ARG players might also recognize him as the lead writer behind URU: Ages Beyond Myst, which captured the attention of many ARG enthusiasts before the multiplayer’s cancellation in 2004. He is currently a Creative Consultant for the SciFi Channel’s upcoming series Danger Game, about the secretive organization Modern Reality Adventures, which produces alternate reality experiences for the unwitting client. The students at Indiana University are undoubtedly in for a treat over the next few weeks as Sheldon works with the project team at Indiana University to deliver an unforgettable and healthy experience.

Recently, Jane McGonigal and AKQA had participants in The Lost Ring traversing major cities with the Trackstick II and competing in labyrinth runs. Hopefully, the results of Indiana University’s innovative project will help explain what makes us go out and play.

The game is set to run until November 12th.

ARGFest 2008 in Review: Serious and Independent Games (Move Over, MoveOn)

July 23, 2008 / Michael Andersen

ARGNet Writers pose at ARGFest 2008

This article is the second in a series, providing summaries of the panel presentations at ARGFest-o-Con 2008 in Boston.

The second panel discussion featured Ken Eklund of World Without Oil as moderator, Brian Clark (GMD Studios), Alice Leung (BBN Technologies), and Dave Szulborski. The panel discussed a little of everything, from projects born from passion to penny-pinching PMs and politics.

Dave Szulborski noted that independent games are the mainstay of the genre, and kept it alive when marketing executives were questioning its effectiveness. He noted that successful games of any type tend to inspire new developers to try their hand in development. Independent ARGs also encourage developers to innovate in new and surprising ways. As Brian Clark noted, “the riskiest things we do are those we do for ourselves,” and grassroots games are the ideal testing grounds for aspiring developers, as long as the project doesn’t serve as a resume of technical development skills that avoids the critical “fun” factor necessary for independent and serious games alike.

Superstruct: (Re)Building Our Future

July 13, 2008 / Brandie Minchew

Our world is in deep trouble, and as the danger mounts, the Institute for the Future‘s Ten-Year Forecast team and Dr. Jane McGonigal have a new mission for you! IFTF recently announced Superstruct, “the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game.” Scheduled to begin on September 22, 2008, Superstruct is expected to run for six weeks. The human race has only 23 years left, and it’s up to you to save us! The countdown begins in 2019.

Dr. McGonigal is no stranger to games that use future forecasting as a design element. She helped develop World Without Oil, a game that asked players to imagine and document their lives during an oil shock. Like World Without Oil, Superstruct will ask players to project themselves into the year 2019, at a time when a supercomputer simulation dubbed “GEAS” has predicted that the human race has a survival horizon of 23 years. GEAS, or the “Global Extinction Awareness System,” has pinpointed five “super-threats” that may bring about the collapse of human civilization as we know it. (Perhaps incidentally, a “geas” is also a vow or binding, often magical or supernatural, that is difficult or impossible to ignore or cast off.)

What does the name “Superstruct” mean, and what does it tell us about the goals of the game? According to the game’s FAQ, “superstructing” refers to the building of new structures on top of old structures. The problems uncovered in 2019 indicate that the existing structures – social, commercial, environmental, etc. – are not enough to support the survival of the human race. Superstruct asks players to work towards building new structures and finding new solutions to overcome the “super-threats” identified by the GEAS.

“This is a game of survival, and we need you to survive” states IFTF’s mission briefing. Rather than simply projecting or predicting the future, Superstruct aims to “invent the future” through player contributions, survival stories, strategies, and more. “Bring what you know and who you know,” IFTF’s Superstruct FAQ invites, “and we’ll all figure out how to make 2019 a world we want to live in.”

While we wait for September, IFTF has invited players to get a head start on the game by sending a description of their future selves and their lives in 2019 to [email protected]. Players’ responses will be posted on the Superstruct blog throughout the summer.