games and crowds: now, near, next

Games+CrowdsNow. Near. Next.

Ben  Sawyer  Digitalmill,  Inc.  

bsawyer@dmill.com @bensawyer

About Me

What  I’m  Playing

John Hopkins Hospital patient enjoying active videogame play

June 18-20, 2014 - Boston, MA

Value?

Productivity

Value Maximized?

Productivity

Education

Sympathy

Value Maximized?

Productivity

Education

Sympathy

Community

Skill

Language & Models

Games with a Purpose Citizen Science Wisdom of

CrowdsCollective

Intelligence

Human Computation Crowdsourcing Crowdfunding Game-based

Crowdsourcing

Distributed Thinking

Participatory Sensing

Multiplayer Games Social Games

Citizen Science

NIH NSFGame

DevelopersEveryday

people

Crowdsourced Clinical Trials

Gathering data for science

!Analyzing data

for science

Multiplayer science games Birdcount

Gamification Gamut

GameApp

Wisdom or Intelligence?

Wisdom of Crowds

Collective Intelligence

Collective Wisdom of Crowd Intellgience

“Crowdsourcing”

Human Computation

HC with games

Citizen Science

“Good” HC Games

Drilling down…

Internet Masses

Language?• Games with a purpose

• game-based [crowdsourcing | human computation]

• Citizen science needs one definition across agencies and fields

• gamification != games

• wisdom of crowds != collective intelligence

• crowdsourcing != crowdfunding

• Game-based crowdsourcing FOR citizen science

Are games at the heart of crowdsourcing?

Engagement Behavior

Learning Performance

Motivation & Interface

SolutionRules & Systems

Interface

Player(s)

Game

ProblemRules & Processes

Interface

Player(s)

Crowdsourcing

YES!

Gamification?• “Game Layer” vs. Game

• Additive to game vs. additive to exercise

• Silo’d gamification

• Process of play vs. task rewarding

• Intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation

Work to Date…

50+ projects, health heavy, university majority, many CS experiments

AI CollectionPuzzle/Challenge/Work!

Wisdom of Crowds!(shared work)!

Puzzle/Challenge/Work!Collective Intelligence!

(individual efforts)

Ideation, and Data Collection

Summary

Players performance is used to source new

forms of AI

Users share work and build upon the

collective effort of others

Individuals solve puzzles on their own and little is shared between players

Players produce new data from-scratch often

ideas, new forms of rhetoric or

geographically located data

Example Restaurant Game Tag Challenge Fraxinus World Without Oil

Uniqueness

Player is focused on game objective and computer observes

their performance vs. other humans or

computer opponents and learns from it.

Players work together and share work

toward optimized results they develop by observing each

other

Players work independently of each other but the system

combines their collective work into higher-end results

Players produce original work and often judge each

others (or are subject to independent human judges) work in order to play and arbitrate

the game

Core Uses

Core User Performance Summary Example

Creating DataGame incentivizes players to collect or generate new

data from sratchPhotocity

Transforming Data

Game presents data for player to sort, match, identify or otherwise

transformPhylo

Augmenting DataPlayer analyzes and

annotates it with additional data and meta-data

Metadata Games

User Performance

CROWD MODEL VARIANT I VARIANT II VARIANT III Notes

Processing Human-in-Loop Human+Computer Participatory for Engagement

In human-in-loop processing, the human is necessary to computation for specialized capabilities, for

machine donated resources crowdsourcing is used to gain access to CPUs, power, and storage necessary to crunch the large amount of data. Participatory for engagement means that humans are helping process data but not because the computer isn’t capable but

because there is a need to engage people in the process for alternative outcomes.

Observable Gameplay Semantics & Natural Language Processing Social Graph

Observable crowdsourcing means that the players actions are observed and sourced as data toward a higher-end outcome (e.g. AI opponents, language

parsers). Gameplay is useful especially for AI, Semantics and Natural Language Processing gains

from human interactions (e.g. see Restaurant Game). Finally observing social graphs can help gain

additional crowdsourced data.

PhysicalEnvironmental/

Geolocation Data Capture

Capture Physiological Data

Capture Transactional Data

Physical crowd models distinguish themselves by capturing data that requires humans to produce or capture. Environmental and geolocation data can

involve photos, flora/fauna samples, 1st person observations, periodic mobile sensor readings, etc. Physiological data is self-report, or sensor captured

biometrics and emotional health reports. Transactional data while possibly captured through computer networks still requires a real-world human

decision to initiate the underlying transaction.

Crowd Models

Type User Performance Crowd Model

Puzzle/Challenge/Work Processing Data Processing

Ideation / Data Collection Creating Data Physical

AI Collection Augmenting Data Observable

Crowd Models

Type Player Performance Crowd Model

Puzzle/Challenge/Work Transforming Data Processing

Ideation / Data Collection Creating Data Physical

AI Collection Augmenting Data Observable

Examples!Puzzle/Challenge/Work→Augmenting Data→Processing

AI Collection→Creating Data→Physical Ideation/Data Collection→Transforming Data→Observable

Roleplaying Player takes on a specific role within a game world which contributes to data capture & generation Restaurant Game

Ideation Ideas are generated and posted by players and captured for later analysis World Without Oil

Strategy & Puzzles

Player performs in the game as designed which enables capture of gameplay for generating better

AI for future playersProject Augur

Arcade & Physical Play Hand-eye coordination ???

Sensory Acuity Often visual or audio based, player essentially is using their sensory capabilities to perform a task MalariaSpot

Assembly Player is “building” some structure ???

Game Genres & Activities

Out & About

Photos/Video

Biometrics

Physical tasks

Mapping/Check-ins

Out & About

Coordinated Event Markup Language Groundcrew / Joe Edelmen (http://nxhx.org)

Talent Development

Attract people to a problem space

Cross-train their unique skills to other vertical

Motivate them to participate, and excel

Recruit

People Sourcing

Interesting…• Humans as mobile sensors & cheaper robots

• Rhetorical systems, games that organize human communication toward ideas, policies, and social change (McGonigal)

• Lowering costs for production, and common problem sets

• Identifying means to share communities

• Cross training as crowdsourcing need…

Human JoysticksT U R N I N G R E A L - W O R L D H U M A N A C T I V I T Y & D E C I S I O N S I N T O I N P U T S T H A T D R I V E G A M E S Y O U P L A Y A S Y O U G O A B O U T Y O U R D A Y Y O U R A C T I O N S A R E T H E J O Y S T I C K

Readying for Wearables

Value Maximized?

Productivity

Education

Sympathy

Community

Skill

Education & Skill• How do we situate the player - what is their epistemic

frame? (Schaefer)

• Do we connect the actions in the game not just to the story of science but the process as well?

• Do we purposely build games that can be done without humans but use HC patterns to create new forms of participatory science?

• Can we identify skills that might transfer to other elements of life & economic activity?

Needs

• improving audience interaction & adherence

• discovery : beyond science geeks & especially students

• better games and interfaces

Better games?• Better games come from better projects with

experienced talent not from better templates!

• How can we bring together games industry with science? This includes indies, top uni programs, jams, etc.

• Are there engines and services we can define and optimize?

• Process of play, interface, learning & immersion not just productivity

Recommendations• Improve standard language

• Goal must be better game experiences!

• Identify common tools (especially game ones)

• Better include learning specialists

• Improve game-industry collaboration

• Identify means for problem holders to more easily engage

Games+CrowdsNow. Near. Next.

Ben  Sawyer  Digitalmill,  Inc.  

bsawyer@dmill.com @bensawyer