Game designer Chris Wimer has been announced as a speaker for Icarus Interstellar’s 2013 Starship Congress, with the following talk: “Using Game Mechanics to Increase Funding and Improve Public Knowledge”.
Chris Wimer is a Game Designer and the Director of the Game Design and Development Program at Washington Engineering Institute as well as the Lead Digital Interface Designer on eatART’s project: Prosthesis. At WEI Chris is developing the school’s new program with a heavy emphasis on independence and self-reliance. The program aims to provide students with the skills and knowledge necessary to create games on, but not limited to, an independent level with minimal post educational financial investment. Drawing from his experience in game design, Chris is working to develop a “Free to Learn” system which, through familiar game mechanics, can be widely affordable to students yet still remain profitable for schools.
At eatART Chris is helping to design and develop the digital interface for Prosthesis, a 5m tall, 3000kg, four-legged wearable walking machine, powered by a cutting edge, modular, expandable hybrid-electric power plant. The purpose of Prosthesis is to explore what it means to be human by creating a challenging, completely unprecedented, interactive human-machine experience that can re-unite humans and machines in the age-old pursuit of physical mastery.”
Following is the abstract for Chris’ talk Using Game Mechanics to Increase Funding and Improve Public Knowledge:
This paper is about using game mechanics to promote, market, crowd-fund and crowd-source for Interstellar projects. Games employ various “game mechanics,” that encourage players to repeat actions, recruit other players, and spend money. Learning from games and applying these techniques to other projects is sometimes called Gamification or Human-Focused Design, since it places high emphasis on the human(s) in the process (as opposed to Function-Focused Design). Gamification is defined as the concept of using game design elements in non-game applications to make them more fun and engaging. Since the term gained popularity in 2010, over 350 companies have launched major gamification projects and over 70% of Forbes Global 2000 [3] companies plan to use gamification for the purposes of marketing and customer retention [1]. These include companies like Nike, Starbucks, eBay, LinkedIn and many others. While a general understanding and use of game mechanics can increase sales and engagement, a solid, in-depth understanding can increase the enjoyment and well-being of the participants as well. This is captured in Yukai Chou’s “Octalysis” framework [2] in which he describes eight “core drives”, Meaning, Accomplishment, Empowerment, Ownership, Social Pressure, Scarcity, Unpredictability, and Avoidance. The first three are considered positive motivators, while the last three are considered negative motivators. All eight can create a captivating experience. How you choose to engage your player/customer can make a big difference. Creating a meaningful experience or allowing the player to share in the project’s development and achievements offers a healthy and engaging experience, while using loss aversion or similar techniques can actually create addicting, but harmful experiences. Foldit [3] is a great example of a crowd-sourcing game about folding proteins. Researchers are able to analyze the highest scoring solutions and determine whether or not there is a native structural configuration that can be applied to the relevant proteins. Scientists can then use such solutions to solve “real-world” problems, by targeting and eradicating diseases, and creating biological innovations. Perhaps there is a similar approach to be taken when looking for new energy sources, structural shapes, or anything else that might benefit from having vast human computing power applied to it. Kickstarter is another great tool, and as of this paper Icarus Interstellar is hours away from successfully completely theirs. To increase the longevity of this approach to crowd-funding, memberships could be available that would track a person’s donations over time, allowing them to level up and earn multiple rewards. This would be similar to the “classes” (titles) that are already available for donating at IcarusInterstellar.org, with the addition of rewards. Mars One [4] is another great example as it is very similar to Icarus Interstellar. Within two week of allowing people to apply to take part in the journey to Mars, they collected 80,000 applications and somewhere between $400,000 and $6,000,000 in application fees (fees ranged from $5 to $75). People are eager and willing to share this undertaking and journey to the stars, we just need to open the doors.
[1] Van Grove, Jennifer (28 July 2011) “Gamification: How Competition Is Reinventing Business, Marketing & Everyday Life”
[2] Yukai Chou, Octalysis http://www.yukaichou.com/gamification-examples/octalysis-complete-gamification-framework/
[3] Foldit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foldit
[4] Mars One http://applicants.mars-one.com