by The Mayor
May 20, 2011 at 8:50 pm in post by The Mayor
We’re extending the voting for Challenge #3 a few days as some participants still haven’t voted. We’ve also created a poll here to make it easier for you to vote! We’ll still be announcing the winner this Sunday, May 22nd.
Click here to view the submissions.
Apr 28, 2011 at 8:42 pm in post by A Terrible Idea
Challenge Track : The White Collar Gauntlet
Introduction : Working in an office can be boring. Even if you like your job and your coworkers, some days it’s like treading water in a lukewarm pool of oatmeal. Too many days in a row like that can make the environment a little impersonal. By injecting a little kindness into your own day, you can improve the mood of everyone around you.
Outcome : After completing the final act in this challenge track, the player will become more actively involved in improving the mood of his fellow commuters and coworkers. Same-day completion of Acts 1-10 grants the player membership in the Order of the Green Star.
Act 1 : Yield. Pick an opportunity to yield to a fellow commuter or coworker. Let in that car trying to merge over. Let someone else go through that door first.
Act 2 : Hold the door. You know how you walk into the office at around the same time that several other people are also coming to work? Spend a minute or two holding the door open for people as they come to work.
Act 3 : Give up some space. Did you find a great parking space in the garage? Leave it for the next guy. Got a good seat on the bus? Stand up and let someone else have it.
Act 4 : Bring Treats. You know how awesome it is when you walk into the coffee room and there’s donuts there? Be the guy who brings them. Or bagels. Or fruit. Or pizza.
Act 5 : Do a little something for the other guys. Someone who works near you gets overlooked on a regular basis. It might be the security guys. Maybe the reception crew. Or some janitorial staff. Those people do important work too. Go out of your way to do something nice for these people. Make a point of saying thank you, acknowledge their work, or bring someone coffee. Or pair this with Act 4, and bring in an extra box of donuts just for the people who never get any.
Act 6 : Take the dirty job. In every office, on every team, within every group, there is a job that someone doesn’t want to do. Take that job on. Even if it’s not in your job description, volunteer for it.
Act 7 : Stay late so someone else can leave early. Do you have a coworker who is stuck in the office because something needs finished? Finish it up for them so they can leave early. Is it something you can’t do on your own? Help them get it wrapped up.
Act 8 : Help someone else succeed. Work environments can get a little cutthroat sometimes. Don’t let it happen to yours. Find a co-worker who is working on a project, and go out of your way to help them knock it out of the park. And let them have the credit for it.
Playtest : I only got to do the first couple acts in this track. The first one, for me, was actually really interesting.
I have a pretty harsh commute sometimes. I cross a toll bridge where there is a lot of merging and very little yielding. In particular, if a semi needs to get over, they can have a really hard time. Nobody wants to yield, because everyone is in the same boat : we all want to get to work.
But on the other hand, everyone is in the same boat! We ALL want to get to work. Stopping to give a semi an easy merge made me feel better than I’d expected it would.
PERMA
Apr 27, 2011 at 6:48 pm in post by A Terrible Idea
Challenge Track : Sparing The Dime
Introduction : Money. They say that Money doesn’t buy you happiness. And that’s true. But that doesn’t mean you can’t use it to buy just a little happiness for someone else. Even a quarter can buy more than a smile, you just need to spend it at just the right time. In this track, you’re going to give away money. And you’re going to love it.
Outcome : Upon completing the final challenge, the player will become a more generous person by using their own money to brighten the days of strangers.
Act 2 : Buy a stranger coffee. Next time you’re buying a cup of coffee, slip the barrista a couple extra dollars and say “Use this to pay for the coffee of the next person who walks through the door. Keep the rest for a tip.”
Act 3 : Pay a stranger’s toll. When you cross a toll bridge, drive on a toll road, ride something with a fare like a bus or a train, pay for the guy behind you.
Act 4 : Buy a stranger’s lunch. If you’re in line waiting to pay for your lunch, pick up the tab for the person behind you.
Act 5 : Cover a stranger’s shortfall. Have you ever been in line at the grocery store, and seen the person in front of you realize that they’re a couple bucks over what they can spend? Next time that happens, offer to pick up their shortfall.
Act 6 : Buy a stranger’s ticket. Going to the movies? A concert? a sporting event? If you’re in line, pick up a ticket for the show and give it to the person behind you.
Act 7 : Give a stranger a present. Find someone’s amazon wishlist. Subscribe to a local Freecycle list. Look for a local shelter that provides gifts to the needy. Find some way to connect with someone who needs or wants something, and buy it for them.
Act 8 : Give away $100. Get $100 in various cashey denominations. Grab a partner, and go to a busy (but safe) part of town. Then give it away. You can give it all to one person, or give it out a dollar or two at a time. Look for people who seem like they need a pick-me-up. Giving away twenty 5 dollar bills would be a great way to do this.
Playtest : I love feeding expired meters, but by far the best one was buying coffee for a stranger. The barrista didn’t quite know what to make of it, but she obliged. I hadn’t intended it to happen this way, but I was still waiting for my coffee when the next person came in. He came up and thanked me, and talked for a bit about how his father used to do things like that. It decidedly brightened his day, and mine as well.
A note about this track : I’m going to suggest that if you follow this track, be conscious of the perception of your gift. Most people will instinctively look for the catch, and this unfortunately goes double if you’re buying something for a member of the opposite sex. And when it comes to giving away money in Act 8, be sensible and safe.
PERMA
by Hanna Brady
Apr 27, 2011 at 6:10 am in post by Hanna Brady
Again, no smart phone, so I’m doing this the old fashioned way with a blog. ^_^
This track will increase the player’s willingness to be whimsical, to talk to others about spreading happiness and their awareness of the limitations we as humans place on ourselves when it comes to positive random play.
The Track:
A quick note on this one:
You might need to get permission from whatever city you are working in to chalk. My university had a set of chalking rules in place, but you should check into it before you get into the more epic challenges.
Title: First Act: Chalking
Description: I chalked “Smile!” on the ground. It worked for me. ^_^
Media:
Difficulty: 1
Duration: less than a minute
This first act is pretty simple and requires no follow-up. I think part of the impact from this sort of thing comes after it is read. You remember at home that someone wrote “smile” on the ground. Maybe it works then. Maybe you wonder why the anonymous chalker did it.
I am going to tangent real quick and say that TRAPS is Twenty Random Acts of Positivity Somewhere, and boils down to writing twenty of these chalkings around one geographical area. Each chalking is a “trap” for negative emotions meant to leave accidental players a little lighter.
You can read a little more about it on my gameful blogpost:
http://gameful.org/hanna/first-run-of-traps/
And I am working on a blog for the game:
http://www.trapsthegame.blogspot.com/
Under “List of Traps” is a list of potential chalkings that might be useful for anyone who wants to try this.
by Hanna Brady
Apr 27, 2011 at 5:14 am in post by Hanna Brady
This track will make players more aware of the global community outside of mainstream media. It will also empower them with their ability to contribute to positive change.
A quick note: Unfortunately, I do not have a smart phone, so I can’t try out the app or submit properly. I wanted to submit a few ideas anyway. Thanks for the opportunity. This was a great challenge to ponder these last few weeks.
The Track:
First Act:
- Learn about a country.
What I would submit on the app:
Title: First Act: Peru
Description: Spent some time on Global Voices and Wikipedia learning about Peru.
Difficulty: 1
Duration: about 30 minutes
I think of myself as a decently aware citizen of the world, and part of that is knowing I have huge blind spots. The more you know, the more you realize you don’t know.
An hour ago the things I knew about Peru were these: they speak Spanish mostly, border Ecuador, and at some point I remember there being some controversy over broadcasting radio in the native Peruvian language. I would assume they like soccer.
That’s it really. I didn’t know that they were in the middle of an election, that the digital community is afraid their options for president will lead them towards a Chavez-like regime, that the majority of the population is not a part of digital culture, or that there is a large Peruvian immigrant population in Japan dealing with the aftermath of the tsunami. One of the presidential candidates has a Japanese name. Those two countries are not a connection I would have made.
Like I said, this mini dive into learning about Peru has only reminded me how little I know. And the truth is that staying well informed on politics around the world would be a full time job. But just that tiny spark of knowledge increased my empathy for another culture. Small, yes, but significant.
This sort of act of kindness does not have the immediate external effect of a smile or a helping hand, but it is a first brick for our foundation of global empathy. And that will change the world. This is a selfish act of kindness. It makes me a better person.
by The Mayor
Apr 21, 2011 at 10:39 pm in post by The Mayor
For example, there was a time not too long ago when everyone left their trash in the movie theaters. Our culture shifted somehow and in time now most of us have cut that reflex. With AOK, we hope to track, illuminate and so “gamefully” nudge these paradigm shifts of behavior into becoming more mindful.
I’m reminded of a video from Estonia, a small European country with beautiful forests except that for decades they were dumping grounds for people’s trash. Thousands of acres. With leadership and the power of the internet, 50,000 volunteers cleaned up in 5 hours what would’ve taken the government months to clean. That was one VERY BIG Act of Kindness (AOK) – but there are millions of ways that similar behavior can be replicated even on an individual level in fractions of the time that they spent.
And it need not be so “cause” related either – kindness comes in many forms and sometimes it’s just about having fun, celebrating life and the people and things in it by choosing to do something selflessly cool – so we’ve identified six different potential recipients of AOKs: People, Animals, The Planet, Organizations, Places and Objects (aka monuments/artifacts). No AOK Act or Observation is too small and we have ways that players can self-measure how difficult and how time consuming each one was.
Those were just a few of the thoughts Ira Liss speaks about when describing what inspired their new game for good, AOK. As you may see on the site, they’ve partnered with us to offer you Challenge #3: Missions of Kindness. We’ve included the rest of our discussion below.
We’re excited about launching our product with the Gameful community because Gameful members recognize social change is most effectively delivered by people who feel like they’re not doing it arduously, but for fun. Right now there’s only a minority of people plugged into the concept of games for good, so we at AOK are thrilled to work with the thought leaders of the movement and to make it a more prevalent and embraced approach to learning and social innovation.
Where did the inspiration for the idea come from?
Lynn (who’s our Chief Operating Officer) and I got the idea for AOK from another project we’re running called The Golden Opportunity which explores the question of how people might behave with found money IF they knew they were being watched. Users received branded tools like a Flip Cam and a cash card loaded with $250, and were invited to a digital community that received the video.
They were told they could do whatever they wanted as long as they recorded their actions on the site. We were blown away with how much mindful and even philanthropic content came back and so we sought to find a way to scale the concept even further. But it wasn’t until we met with Adrian Grenier’s producing partner on SHFT, Peter Glatzer, who relayed an idea that Adrian had around an acts of kindness picture-sharing community, and reflecting on the popularity of Foursquare and Farmville, that a light bulb went off for us to flesh out the solution as a game. TGO still serves as community for micro-activists enjoying our new “Film it Forward” concept, geared more towards organizations looking incentivize certain positive actions, where the Flip camera gets passed from user to user, inciting a ripple effect of action.
The same investor who had invested in our previous project invested in this project, AOK. From that point in time we talked to smart people and built the team up from scratch.
How long did that take?
We launched TGO in April 2010 and met Peter Glatzer in late August. Most of the game mechanics design (as opposed to creative design) occurred between November and February and we’ve been building it ever since.
We had a work session between Christmas and New Year’s while most people in America were still in their Pjs, huddled around fireplaces. We brainstormed on what AOK could be and it was an incredibly energizing session where philosophy met psychology and business.
What was the biggest learning lesson on the project?
Our goal was to increase mindfulness for acts of kindness, bringing awareness of what was happening in that moment itself.
In terms of building out a game like this, we had ambitious goals to think it was all possible – to launch a mobile app and website at same time, April 28th – but we realized that we were building a niche version of Facebook on the web side, as the lead developers have been calling it lately, and that is a bigger undertaking than we anticipated.
We had to make use of our current strength so we made a recent decision where instead of launching both the mobile app and website at the same time, we’ve decided to take a novel approach, sinking all the time and effort into the mobile game, have the mobile experience be end to end complete and with each mobile registrant recording AOK’s on the mobile side that data is feeding to our web side simultaneously – that way when we do release web a few weeks later, it will already (hopefully!) be a vibrant community.
As a treat for our wonderful Gameful users, and what other alpha testers won’t have access to, is visibility to all those AOKs actions posting to website. They’ll also have full access to its functionality and so we hope to hear all of their candid and constructive feedback so we can adjust real time.
We recognized an opportunity in what appeared to be a challenge. It sounds cliché, but – lemonade from lemons – we realized we couldn’t get too attached to any one process or idea in the development. Technology often drives go-to-market strategy and in at least our case it revealed a better one than we could have thought of in the initial plan.
What were some interesting choices you had to make in getting the game design just right?
One interesting aspect was trying to get the incentives right. For example, we didn’t want to encourage spam-like behavior. We tried to get the incentives to be encouraging enough to make you want to share but not so encouraging so that you’ll pull out your black book and the telephone book (do they still exist?) and send to everyone with an email address.
An interesting feature we included was Confessions. Maybe you didn’t complete an AOK one day – you saw a piece of trash and for whatever reason (too rushed, bad neighborhood, whatever) didn’t pick it up. Or maybe you believe that putting weights away at the gym is counter-productive for the next person who’ll be using them, but you’re not sure. Or maybe you tried to do an AOK for someone and it went horribly wrong – a misunderstanding or misperception of your intentions. So you’re reflecting on the moment later and maybe feel guilty or just not sure what the right thing to do was – at Confession submitting your thoughts is as another way to contribute to the community, to earn from the experience and reconfirm that, indeed, no one is perfect. It’s OK to not always be AOK. We’re not rewarding points for posting individual Confessions but it’s a cool place to work out your own relationship with the game. Kind of like Postsecret.com but for Acts of Kindness.
Ultimately we’re hoping to take the points accrued through Acts and Observations (and in version 2.0 Social Hero Journeys, where players level up through several different tracks of increasingly challenging AOKs, like starting with picking up a piece of trash and 6-7 steps later the “epic win” of organizing a community-wide clean up of a local park) and in the short term and beyond, these points will convert into “Cause Currency” to donate to charities and causes beyond your AOK action. We’re also in talks with branded partners to both increase the amount of rewarded Cause Currency as well as SWAG and discounts.
Any last things you’d like the Gameful community to know?
We hope people will start with micro-actions and eventually get to the point where they’re organizing others to take actions with AOK, generating a new social network that address the activists in us —whereas Facebook captures your social life, and LinkedIn your business contacts, if we’re right and if AOK is fun and rewarding, it can be a place where you connect with people who want to impact the world the same way you do.
One sound bite that I tinkered into being (other than our overall tag line “A new kinda kind”) is around our Cause Currency concept- whereas it was once said “act locally, think globally”, with AOK it can become “act locally, impact globally”.
Thanks for the chance to chat Ira!
In addition to the great interview here they also shared some of the creative assets used in the production of the game to give the community a chance to see some before and after parts of the process, although often wireframes can change more than they did this time. We hope that as game designers its helpful to see some of these building blocks and hear about their process.
Take a look and if you have any questions, thoughts or comments submit them below. Hope you all enjoy the mobile app!
by The Mayor
Apr 7, 2011 at 5:43 pm in post by The Mayor
Opportunities for kindness surround us every day, but knowing they’re there is half the battle. That’s where being mindful comes in. We need you to increase mindfulness among your fellow citizens, and yourself, by creating a series of kindness challenges. If you want to make the world a better place by playing a game, accept this challenge and get started!
First things first: what does kindness mean to you? Maybe it’s being a good neighbor, respecting the environment, doing something that triggers contagious happiness, or supporting local businesses. Think about your interests and how you might make them more meaningful.
Begin designing your challenge track with the simplest of acts (for example, smile and say hello to a stranger). Then, increase the difficulty—and the rewards—with each act that follows. Whether you end up with four or ten acts, we’ll hook you up if you take the players from zero to hero; a few bucks for your favorite charity, some monster treats, or a showcase for your work on AOK.tv (more on that below).
So, the rules:
How to Play:
Some notes:
Rewards:
…Let the games begin!
If you have any questions, post them on AOK’s getsatisfaction page!
AOK.tv is an online social game for social good, from the founders of TGO.tv and SHFT.com, launching on 4/28/11 (that’s ‘pay it forward’ day if you’re scoring at home).
“A social game for social good…” rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it? But what kind of “game” is this and how does it work? The structure of the game builds a community meant to share and inspire acts of kindness, both “acted” and “observed,” while offering a forum for those missed opportunities, confessions, and anonymous mentions that, before, only lived inside a person’s head. All of these human moments have a new home at AOK.tv.
The AOK game is played by “social heroes,” everyday people who know that how you ACT and SHARE those actions, big or small, has a social impact. Even when nobody seems to be watching, the “social world” most definitely is; we’re connected in ways never thought imaginable, and the “social hero” knows she’s creating her own epicenter.
A social hero looks around and knows that her choices, however minor, can improve her, and others’, surroundings. She aspires and seeks to inspire others to be more mindful simply by practicing acts of kindness. AOK is, “a social game for social good—a social revolution—where life isn’t just OK, it’s AOK!”
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Challenge #8: Making the Invisible Visible
