Human Futures No. 1 December 2016 | Page 38

Sea Hero Quest was funded by Deutsche Telekom and developed by Glitchers , in partnership with Alzheimer ’ s Research UK , University College London and University of East Anglia . “ The game has been downloaded over 2 million times and players have generated more than 6,000 years of dementia research data just by playing ” ( Sea Hero Quest , 2016 ). In Sea Hero Quest , players help scientists fight dementia just by playing .
Bringing Books up to Speed Smorball is an altruistic game in which players help save scanned books from digital oblivion .
The second example , Smorball , won the Best Serious Game award in 2015 . Smorball is an altruistic game in which players help save scanned books from digital oblivion . Smorball . . . asks players to correctly type the words they see on the screen – punctuation and all . The more words they type correctly , the quicker opposing teams are defeated , and the closer the Eugene Melonballers get to the Dalahäst Trophy . . . . Smorball tackles a major challenge for digital libraries : full-text searching of digitized material is significantly hampered by poor output from Optical Character Recognition ( OCR ) software . When first scanned , the pages of digitized books and journals are merely image files , making the pages unsearchable and virtually unusable . Smorball presents players with phrases from scanned pages from cultural heritage institutions . After much verification , the words players type are sent to the libraries that store the corresponding pages , allowing those pages to be searched and data mined and ultimately making historic literature more usable for institutions , scholars , educators , and the public . ( Smorball , 2016 ).
Smorball was created via partnerships between “ the Institute of Museum and Library Services , Biodiversity Heritage Library , Missouri Botanical Garden , Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University , The New York Botanical Garden , and Cornell
University Library ” ( Smorball , 2016 ). Many altruistic games intersect with e-philanthropy , and while there are many examples , I ’ d like to highlight one that WFSF supports : Cyberhero League . Cyberhero League ( 2016 ) is a 21st century interactive “ scout-like adventure ” that enables youth to tackle global challenges through completing digital apprenticeships with participating NGOs . Designed to support and empower a new generation of civic activists , the locative gameplay is similar to Pokémon , however by visiting museums , parks , World Heritage Sites , and participating in community events , players earn contributions to NGO partners . As a direct outgrowth of research in digital altruism and the Cyberhero archetype , we are proudly “ partnering for the goals ” with the United Nations , as well as 15 inaugural NGOs . The game ’ s first beta test took place this year at the Tribeca Family Festival in conjunction with Games for Change . You can read more about the Cyberhero Archetype in an article in Psychology Today ( 2016 ).
Finally , two additional areas of altruistic gaming worthy of mention include marathon gaming and gamer mobilization . Extra Life ( 2016 ) is an example of the former , an initiative that “ unites thousands of players around the world in a 24 hour gaming marathon to support Children ’ s Miracle Network Hospitals .” Extra Life began in 2008 and has raised more than $ 22 million for Children ’ s Miracle Network Hospitals .
Gamer mobilization refers to gamers united for a common purpose . AbleGamers is a nonprofit organization that “ empowers children , adults and veterans with disabilities through the power of video games .” They have the largest community for gamers with disabilities in the world “ and in 2016 raised over $ 300,000 .”
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