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Posted via APrePosterous

"GAMEFUL, a Secret HQ for Worldchanging Game Developers" by Jane McGonigal, a project on Kickstarter

About this project

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 we want to create 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.

WHY NOW?

Here's a TED Talk that explains exactly how games can make a better world.

I’m Jane McGonigal, and I gave that TED Talk in February 2010. And now, as a result, I get about 50-100 emails every week from really interesting people who are: passionate about positive impact games and looking for potential collaborators; launching a start-up, and looking for employees or co-founders; seeking advice or mentors; looking for co-authors for papers, or co-panelists for conferences; need someone they can interview for a book, or a news, magazine, TV or radio story; and most importantly, looking for a world-changing game they can play TODAY.

I want to put all these people in touch with each other, so we can all make and play more good games together. That’s why I’m starting Gameful (with my three awesome co-founders Nathan Verrill, Matthew Jensen, and Kiyash Monsef).

So if YOU’VE got a reality-changing, life-changing, or world-changing game -- or even just an idea for one -- we want to make it easy for you to get what you need:

- collaborators
- ideas
- funding
- partners
- mentors
- allies to cheer you on
- playtesters
- publicity
and of course,
- gamers who want to play your awesome, innovative, world-changing games.

HOW WILL IT WORK?

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.

It will be a free resource -- a place for you to:

- Set up a profile sharing your expertise, skills, abilities, and interests
- Search the network for collaborators and talent
- Spread the word about your new projects
- Meet journalists who want to write about interesting games or research like yours
- Find new and cutting-edge game projects to inspire you
- Join a Gameful book club and discuss big ideas
- Join a Gameful game club and play big ideas!
- Brainstorm and submit conference panels or sessions together
- Plan Gameful meet-ups at conferences and festivals
- Nominate your own work, or work you love, for the annual Gameful Awards (in the categories of Reality-Changing, Life-Changing, and World-Changing)

OUR PLAN

We’ve already assembled our core team of developers and designers to make this project happen and we’re aiming to launch at 10:28:10 AM on 10/28/10 (October 28, 2010). We’ve already designed the site; all we need is to raise enough operating costs to make sure that we can afford to code and launch the site, round up some awesome interns, and make a great experience for everyone who joins.

FAQ

Q: Where does the name “gameful” come from?

A: Gameful means to have the spirit, or mindset, of a gamer: someone who is optimistic, curious, motivated, and always up for a tough challenge. It’s like the word “playful” -- but gamier. :)

Q:What is Gameful?

A: Gameful is an online Secret HQ for gamers and game developers who want to help change the world and make our real lives better. Think of it as a cross between a professional network and a creative brainstorming space. The goal is to make it easy for anyone making or playing world-changing games to find collaborators, mentors, jobs, ideas, and funding. And of course, to discover fun new games to play.

Q: Is it really a "secret" HQ?

A: Well, think of all the people out there who have no idea that this kind of world-changing work is happening all around them. We're secret like that -- hiding in plain sight, saving the world, one game at a time.

Q: Who can join?

A: Anyone who is awesome enough to want to make or play games specifically designed to a have a positive impact on the real world, or on our real lives: game designers and developers, game writers and artists, programmers and producers, project managers and marketing experts, reporters and critics, students and researchers, players and playtesters.

Even if you’ve never made a game before, you’re welcome to join Gameful -- you’ll surely find people who would love your help with their games... or who would be interested in helping you make YOUR idea a reality!

Q: What kind of games count as ‘gameful’?

As long as the project has a stated goal of making our real lives, or the real world, better -- and not just to entertain us -- then ANY kind of game counts: computer games, videogames, mobile games and alternate reality games; commercial games and indie games; serious games and art games; board games and iPad games; crowdsourcing and innovation games; street games and new sports; education games and activist games; health games and productivity games; and just about any other kind of game you might think of!

Q: Why are you raising funds?

A: The founders of Gameful have volunteered their time and services to create this new network. But we also want to be able to pay basic costs (like server hosting and community management) through membership fees. And we would like to be able to pay awesome students to be interns for the site.

Q: You've reached your initial goal of $2000! Should we keep supporting? What will do you with the additional funds? A: Yes! Please keep supporting. Gameful is strictly not-for-profit, and any surplus funds raised above our expected operating costs will be used to support members with programs like Awesome Money (no-strings-attached awards of up to $1000 for awe-inspiring game projects created by our members), Power-Ups (opportunities to earn VIP passes to the annual Game Developers Conference, for example, or awards to cover the cost of submitting your game to various game awards and festivals); and Dream Chat matchmaking (in which we provide members with the opportunity to have a mini-mentorships: a personal Skype video or phone call with one of their game development or other creative industry heroes). There's no limit to what we can do as our endowment grows for our not-for-profit group. So please keep kickstarting us even after we meet our initial goal. You'll get awesome rewards AND 100% of your funds will go directly to these special programs.

Q: I'm getting the Mega Brain Meld! How do I tell you who to sign the book to?

A: When we close the round of fundraising, we'll send you a note and get your details.

Q: Who created this project?

A: A handful of game developers dedicated to positive impact games, including Jane McGonigal, the author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World; Nathan Verrill and Matthew Jensen, co-founders of Natron Baxter “Fun is not the enemy of work” Applied Gaming; and Kiyash Monsef, award-winning producer of EVOKE.

Project location: San Francisco, CA

via kickstarter.com

About Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a new way to fund creative ideas and ambitious endeavors.

We believe that...

• A good idea, communicated well, can spread fast and wide.

• A large group of people can be a tremendous source of money and encouragement.

Kickstarter is powered by a unique all-or-nothing funding method where projects must be fully-funded or no money changes hands.

via kickstarter.com

Posted via Technary-speak

Melinda French Gates: What nonprofits can learn from Coca-Cola

At TEDxChange, Melinda Gates makes a provocative case for nonprofits taking a cue from corporations such as Coca-Cola, whose plugged-in, global network of marketers and distributors ensures that every remote village wants -- and can get -- a Coke. Why shouldn't this work for condoms, sanitation, vaccinations too?

These are the three key "mantras" that they (nonprofits) could learn from the fizz juggernaut, says Melinda.

1. Feeding your data back into the system and acting on it.
2. Localized marketing
3. Making local entrepreneurs stakeholders.

via ted.com

"We make a fundamental mistake if we think that if people need something, we don't have to make them want that." -- Melinda French Gates

Posted via Technary-speak

Recycle This!

An interesting green website. There should be more like this, hopefully on a more global scale. I can see a collaborative, wisdom-of-crowds platform like the excellent stackoverflow serving as an ideal platform for this kind of application.

Recyclethis is a pretty cool website from the UK that posts  every Monday, Wednesday and Friday with tips on how to reuse, recycle or re-purpose just about anything.

As they put it:

More than three years on, we’ve covered over 600 items and had over 8500 suggestions of ways to reuse, repurpose or recycle things that would otherwise go in the bin. We’ve covered items from around the home, office and garden, things for particularly hobbies or sports, and random bits of technology that have broken or are just out of date.

Check it out!

via my Tumblog rabbit-hole.

Posted via Technary-speak

Cisco's New Router: Trouble for Hollywood (via TIME)

An interesting read about why exciting technological developments like Cisco's new super-router and Google's plans to test ultra-high-speed broadband networks aren't exactly good news for the MPAA and the RIAA.

Tuesday, Mar. 16, 2010

Cisco's New Router: Trouble for Hollywood

By Erik Heinrich

Cisco's CRS-3 router made a bit of a splash when it was announced on March 9, but the power of this new device hasn't yet sunk in. Consider: The CRS-3, a network routing system, is able to stream every film ever made, from Hollywood to Bombay, in under four minutes. That's right — the whole universe of films digested in less time than it takes to boil an egg. That may sound like good news for consumers, but it could be the business equivalent of an earthquake for the likes of Universal Studios and Paramount Pictures.
Most people are familiar with routers, or desktop boxes used to provide connectivity between PCs, laptops and printers in a home or small office. These are tiny geckos compared with the T. rexes used by telcos such as Verizon and AT&T to distribute data among computer networks and provide Internet connectivity to millions of homes and wireless subscribers.
As it turns out, these megarouters sitting inside data centers of major telcos and cablecos are among the biggest bottlenecks of the Internet, because as bandwidth speed to end users has shot up in recent years, router technology has not kept up, resulting in traffic jams that can slow or freeze downloads.
Cisco's superrouter is expected to turn what is now the equivalent of a country road into an eight-lane superhighway for Internet data traffic, including 3-D video, university lectures and feature films such as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Twilight Saga: New Moon. "Video is the big driver behind all this," says analyst Akshay Sharma of technology-research company Gartner Inc., noting that voice and texting will soon be overtaken by richer multimedia content and applications.
While it's already possible to stream a feature film in real time, in the best-case scenario it takes about two hours to download to a personal film archive, at home or on a mobile device, for repeat viewing. With the predictable slowdowns and interruptions now so common, the process can eat up four hours or more of computer time — to say nothing of time lost managing the process.
But routers are not the only cause of bottlenecks, and Cisco is not alone in working to maximize the Internet's full potential. Google is also concerned about the speed limitations imposed by wires that run to the home. Last month, Google, best known for its search engine, announced plans to test ultra-high-speed broadband networks that would deliver Internet content to residential subscribers at speeds of 1 gigabit per second — 100 times as fast as the top speed available today. This would allow consumers to complete a PC download of a Hollywood blockbuster like Avatar in about 72 seconds.
"If Google has real success with this trial, it will percolate, and people will need to copy it," says Sharma, who is based in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. However, such a quantum leap in bandwidth would need the support of Cisco-style routers in the background to deliver on its promise beyond the pilot stage.
The ability to download albums and films in a matter of seconds is a harbinger of deep trouble for the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which would prefer to turn the clock back, way back.
Consider that the MPAA, whose members include Disney and Universal, attacked the VCR in congressional hearings in the 1980s with a Darth Vader–like zeal, predicting box-office receipts would collapse if consumers were allowed to freely share and copy VHS tapes of Hollywood movies. A decade later, the MPAA fought to block the DVD revolution, mainly because digital media could be copied and distributed even more easily than videocassettes.
Today the film and recording industries maintain an iron grip over distribution of their intellectual property through megaplexes and national retailers such as Best Buy, Tower Records and Walmart. These bricks-and-mortar distribution channels take a share of the profit, but they provide a steady and predictable stream of revenue.
By contrast, studios and music labels have experienced limited success and even less profitability in the few instances when they have grudgingly embraced the Internet bogeyman. The prospect of tying their future success to online distribution scares them because it means they will need to develop new distribution and pricing models. (For example, Netflix can stream an unlimited number of Hollywood films for a monthly subscription fee, but this does not include new releases.) They will also need to figure out how to stop people from setting up clone video and music stores with pirated content.
The MPAA declined to comment specifically on the Cisco breakthrough but said it supports technological innovation. Meanwhile, both the MPAA and the RIAA continue to fight emerging technologies like peer-to-peer file sharing with costly court battles rather than figuring out how to appeal to the next generation of movie enthusiasts and still make a buck. These younger consumers prefer to shop for movies online, watch them at their leisure on mobile devices and desktops and share them with friends. The studios and music labels have to figure out how to fit into that lifestyle, or else risk becoming obsolete.
The hard fact is that the latest developments at Cisco, Google and elsewhere may do more than kill the DVD and CD and further upset entertainment-business models that have changed little since the Mesozoic Era. With superfast streaming and downloading, indie filmmakers will soon be able to effectively distribute feature films online and promote them using social media such as Facebook and Twitter.
The upshot is that the high castle walls built over the past 100 years by the film industry to establish privilege and protect monopolistic profits may soon come tumbling down, just as they have for the music industry. In keeping with the old storyline, the nimble David looks set to vanquish the myopic and overconfident Goliath.

via time.com

Makes me wonder how long it will take these "myopic Goliaths" to realize that copious consumption of rich media via the Internet by the tech savvy generation is a reality that they must digest and change their existing business models in tune with the times or else become extinct.

Posted via Technary