How Gamers Could Save the (Real) World 145
Nerval's Lobster writes "Three years ago, game designer and author Jane McGonigal argued that saving the human race is going to require a major time investment—in playing video games. 'If we want to solve problems like hunger, poverty, climate change, global conflict, obesity, I believe that we need to aspire to play games online for at least 21 billion hours a week [up from 3 billion today], by the end of the next decade,' she said in a TED talk. Her message was not ignored—and it has indirectly contributed to the formation of something called the Internet Response League (IRL). The small group has a big goal: to harness gamers' time and use it to save lives after disasters, natural or otherwise. The idea is to insert micro-tasks into games, specifically asking gamers to tag photos of disaster areas. With the IRL plugin, each image would be shown to at least three people, who tag the photo as showing no damage, mild damage, or severe damage. The Internet Response League has been in talks with a couple of indie developers, including one that's developing a new MMO. Mosur said they've tried to get in touch with World of Warcraft maker Blizzard, but haven't had any luck yet. Blizzard did not return a request for comment from Slashdot."
Blizzard (Score:5, Funny)
Blizzard:
"A severe snowstorm with high winds and low visibility."
It is hard to "tag" in those conditions...
In the real world... (Score:5, Funny)
How are gamer hours going to translate/transform into real world physical effort?
I think the vast majority of those 21 billion hours per week would be much better spent getting up off of arses and actually doing something.
Overheard in Utopia (Score:5, Funny)
"Hey, there's a big disaster happening. Meh."
"Dude, sent the paramedics to Canada. For the lulz."
"The graphics suck. Everything sucks."
Greetings. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Gamification must die (Score:5, Funny)
Agreed but if I understand correctly this is workification of games.