Help a factory full of sock puppets make a difference. Socks Incorporated is a fictional world that combines craft making, digital storytelling, and make-believe to create a casual family-friendly game. The [...]

Help a factory full of sock puppets make a difference.

Socks Incorporated is a fictional world that combines craft making, digital storytelling, and make-believe to create a casual family-friendly game. The game’s online platform is a portal into a world filled with sock puppets who all work in a factory – the Socks Incorporated factory. Each department in the Socks, Inc. factory contains its own adventurous plot. Players learn of these stories through a series of short videos. Each of these videos ends with a mission, or a call to action for the player, to create a piece of storytelling multimedia content with their puppet. When they upload their video or image, they unlock what happens next in that story and, eventually, in the main story.

Socks Incorporated and Gameful are challenging YOU to design a new department that offers a direct positive impact to its players. This is a link to the Socks, Inc. designer deck, which is given to all potential department designers. It describes the story world to the uninitiated and defines what a department is and how to make one. Want to check out some of the other departments? Go here and try playing one!

Your challenge response should include:
• The name of your department
• It’s intended positive impact
• An outline and treatment of the story progression across 6 short videos
• A description of the corresponding 5 missions
• A pilot of your first video clip and mission

Submissions will be judged on how the game design matches the described positive impact that the department should have. You can use humor, adventure, aesthetics or other characteristics you believe will make that impact, but be sure to articulate it in your challenge response.

Rules:
• ALL genres are eligible, as long as it follows the guidelines.
• Original and PG content only, please.
• All games MUST be playable. Give us a way to download or view your pilot online.
• All team members must be Gameful members!

Rewards:
• 1 HD Video Camera for the favorite department design chosen by this challenge’s Gameful Fairy, Jim Babb (@jimbabb) and Awkward Hug (@awkward_hug). The winner will also have the option to create the department they have designed with a $250 budget (plenty of cheddar to make sock puppets with).
• 1 HD Video Camera for the favorite department design chosen by our own Gameful community.
• Official Socks, Inc. Merit Badge and Map of Socksburg for all Gameful members that complete the challenge.

To Play:
1. Join the Socks Inc. challenge group.
2. Discuss what you’re up to. TIP: Gameful members can help each other develop stories and design missions that are relevant and fun!
3. When you’re ready, but BEFORE September 23, 2011, start a new forum topic for YOUR entry. (The forum topic is the easiest way for judges and contestants to see all entries in one place.) Describe what you’ve created. Include a link to your pilot, or a way to download it.
4. When you’re ready to officially submit your game, fill out this form.
5. Await game-tastic feedback from your fellow Gameful monsters.
6. Winners will be announced by October 23, 2011.