Change The Game - Design an ARG to help fight cancer, have millions of people play it
I thought about titling this post "Don't you hate cancer", but decided to go the classy route and shove it somewhere in the body of the post. Like right at the top....
Adrian Hon, my external thesis adviser and ARG designer extraordinaire, is hosting a contest to design an ARG that will raise money for a cancer research charity in the UK. The winning entry gets money to put the game on, as well as the entire media reach of the Cancer Research UK organization - which means about 20 million people will be exposed to your game.
You can read more about it here : www.letschangethegame.org
The first item ( a 500 word submission, describing the game) is due by November 16th. Subsequent rounds (requiring more work) follow after that.
The final selection is in January, and then the winning team has around half a year to build their game.
If anybody ever says to you "Games aren't important - it's not like they cure cancer or anything", this would be the thing to shut them up. From personal experience, building a game that does more than entertain is incredibly gratifying.
Comments
Beyond a game with a backstory of fighting cancer, a thorough design could encode real-world cancer-fighting into the mechanics. If millions do play an ARG to fight cancer and the ARG encodes problems of an actual cancer, then there's a good chance the players will find a cure.
Posted by: Ethan Kennerly | October 7, 2007 11:21 PM