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Project Horseshoe 2008
| The Third Annual Game Design
Think Tank Project Horseshoe 2008 |
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Group Report: Project Unity |
| Participants: A.K.A. "The Island of Misfit Toys" | |
Dr. Cat, Dragon's Eye Productions |
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Problem The immense motivational power of virtual currencies, game and game-like systems to influence human behavior has not been harnessed to work on real world problems so much as it's been used to create a Chinese industry focused on ensuring that American doctors and lawyers can have a steady supply of imaginary magic weapons, armor, and level 70 minotaur shamans. That's the problem from the computer-game-centric perspective. The real group of problems here is that the human race still has war, famine, disease, poverty, problems in distribution of resources, knowledge, and technology, etc. Solution Project Unity will be primarily a message forum, with rating & reputation systems, a virtual currency, and dressable avatars & "home" scenes that can be decorated, with clothing and furniture items that can be purchased with the virtual currency. Translating messages into other languages will be a primary way to earn the currency. There will also be currencies to represent various forms of resources and manpower, escrow agents to help people safely make deals involving them, and there will be lists of proposed projects, wants, and needs. Members of the system will earn currency and other rewards for helping hook up offered resources with proposed projects that need them in order to make the projects actually happen. Action Items Cat: Put up a website before next year's Horseshoe with a description of Project Unity and its goals, with no contact info or reply options whatsoever, suitable for use with the Code of Blabbing. Get its own domain for it, and post occasional additional stuff approximately whenever. Cat: Play Club Penguin Cat: Check out Akoha (thanks Olivier!) Cat: Read lost of web pages about existing charities and learn more about that. Cat: Read more about the developing world & their needs and problems. Cat: Get rich in 2009 so it's easier to devote time and energy to this stuff. (Already underway!) The Raw Notes Centaur theory Red Cross is doing serious games already. Alternate reality game! Community moderation for bad translations Support Political movements (anti-war, etc.) Facebook groups Wikipedia Make close ties to all existing charities. Set up charity targets (with verified reputations) that you can donate your attention currency to if you don't want it (or do want THEM to have it). "Big Ticket Donation" (like NPR) - make sure donations over X size get extra attention/eyeballs/etc. Project Unity: Design issues * The Tower of Babble - pay attention currency for translations (bonus for speed? for popularity of message before, after? USER RATINGS FOR TRANSLATION QUALITY) * What is the name of the currency? * What is the list of iconic resources and what are their symbols? * What do I do with the "inventor" or (Victor's term) "innovator"? * What's a "project goal definition" structured like? * What's the reward structure for getting a project completed? For each type of participant? * What kind of titles and awards do we give out? * What are our region definitions and sub-regions for specifying where a resource resides? - incentive to NOT go "continent, then country, then..." would be that we encourage people to not segregate their thinking about their fellow man along those lines, maybe. (Though there's less thinking "a person from Italy helped with my project so I like Italians, too?) * How do we describe what regions a transportation resource could go between, and what types and amounts of stuff it could carry? (Use the other symbols/units of the other types?) - Specify "range category". Short distance transportation is only within one local region. Long distance specifies a group of 2 or more potential endpoint destinations. (Have medium? Probably not) * How does trading work? * How does specifying you have an asset (other than attention currency) work? Simple declaration? * How does "deal matchmaking" work? * What do we pay attention currency for, and what do we call it? * What other rewards structures do we want to have? * In addition to message boards, what other communications tools to we want to provide? (email, blogs, friend lists, etc.) * Do we want to put a virtual world in (presumably using my engine, tank you!) * How do we allocate real-time chat environments for different language groups so people hook up with people they can talk to? * Should we let people customize their top page(s) view, or a "my unity" page? How? * Can Project Unity help spur major infrastructure development? (A power grid of phone/cellphone coverage for a huge area that doesn't have it?) Or is this too large and we should focus on smaller projects? * What will people do in the world, and do we need to know? * What's the impact on the economy of people who don't care about the attention currency (short answer - mostly good). * How do we want servers positioned & distributed between different countries? - Who cares, that's technology, I am a GAME DESIGNER! * What kinds of "post-linguistic, post-conversational" 'pokes' do we support, if any? (Surely some!) Third party apps in facebook? - virtual business cards, autograph books, contact manager? * How does the uploading of photos fit in? What about other media and generic file sending? (What about viruses? Allow exes? OMG!) Mashups? (MySpace?) Wikis? Web page within 1 year. Read-only plz. Playpump. Rocket Furnace ******** Thanks to everybody who contributed thoughts, ideas, questions, and suggestions this weekend. (Especially Jenny!) section 11 |
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