IRL Armor

[Peter Mosur]

Our newest post over at Internet-Response-League.com will be talking about the possibility of creating unique IRL armor. Here is the place to discuss this idea!

Just a quick recap: one of the core concepts behind the Internet Response League is rewarding players with in-game items for participating in disaster relief efforts. While we hope that individual game companies will reward players, we want there to be rewards directly from IRL which could be redeemed in any participating game platform. The idea is to create an "IRL Score", which will count the amount of pictures that a user has tagged. This score would also be used to obtain different IRL-themed rewards, ranging from things like banners, emblems, and player titles, all the way up to unique armor sets for the most dedicated players. The idea is to reward a top percentage of players with the highest life-time tags in order to create a sort of respected elite group of humanitarian gamers. Like mentioned before however, there will be different tiers of rewards, so even the beginner humanitarian gamer will receive just reward. We believe that this concept could potentially cement IRL in the gaming world in the long-term.

The purpose of this discussion is two-fold. First of all, what do you guys think of this idea? Is it too risky and will it scare gamers away? Or do you think it can be successful in achieving fame in a similar fashion as Bono's Project Red campaign? Secondly, we would like to engage any potential graphic designers out there to think about the concept of creating IRL-themed armors and other items that will retain consistency from game to game. Do you think that would that be a feasible goal? 

As always, we look forward to any question, comments, or ideas! Thanks!

[mad_cat]

Scoring points on number of pictures you rate.  [sarcasm]That won't be exploited.[/sarcasm]  I can easily hit 1 star each time and get through all the pictures just to get the bonus armour.  I want to see rewards to players that donate their time, but at the same time, we need to be a little smart in how to reward players that do the work and don't reward players for taking advantage of our cause.  Even if the item has no bonus to stats, it is still something that can be stolen from us (stolen in the sense they didn't do anything to get it).  My guess would be that it is not so simple to rate/tag the picture on one variable but on several variables, so that when a player wanting to cheat the system realizes they have to do 5 clicks each time, will be deterred.  However, I am certain with macro's, players will still figure out how to cheat, but that will be a smaller percentage.  We may be able to look to see if the player is tagging all the photos to be the same tags and disqualify him.

I think you should release website kits to download and put banners on their guild pages.  Perhaps work with Enjin in setting something up special with IRL.  We probably want to make our own Enjin page for IRL as well and start building support there.  I did check and Internet Response League name is available and Internet-Response-League.enjin.com is also available.  I am the Guild leader for my Guild for The Old Republic and I've done a lot on the website itself.  So I can help with that as well if we were to go that direction.

[Peter Mosur]

Hey mad_cat,

Thanks again for the input!

Exploitation could very well be a problem, but we plan to take steps to avoid it! First off, we will require each picture to be tagged by roughly 5 or 10+ people so as to be certain that the data is accurate. That way, we will easily be able to identify spammers, macro-users, and other exploiters by comparing their answers to the other tags. With enough mismatched answers, we would be able to ban that user. What do you think of this idea?

As for working with Enjin, this definitely sounds like a good idea. Website kits that allow different guild pages to alert their members about disasters makes much sense! Maybe the guild's IRL efforts could be linked directly with the game that they play, so that the guild receives in-game benefits from the IRL work its members do. Definitely can do much here! Our first priority for the time being however is to finish the plugin (which we are very close in doing). Once we do that though, we will contact Enjin and see if we can implement IRL! I'm not sure if making an IRL specific Enjin site would be necessary, since we're not much of a guild and that's what the site is all about from what I gather, but I might be wrong in that regard. What do you think?

[mad_cat]

I'm starting to speak to my guild on some of this and they are giving me some ideas.

Identifying Spammers and macro-users won't be easy and we would have to look at a lot of pictures to identify them.  I think that is a good idea, but using the simple 1 - 5 star system, we would have to look at people who put 1 star for everything as well as those who do 3 stars, 4 stars, and 5 stars.  We have to look at all users exploiting the system, and not just the ones who don't match the results we are looking for.  To that extent, we should be look at least 20 photos to try to detect a pattern, and perhaps put a few control photos in there that are not disaster, and people would obviously rate as a certain way to exploit the spammers.

Far be it for me to tell you what your priorities should be and I would agree the plugin to be very important.  To that effect, I realize that we are not a Guild and Enjin is for guilds, but the reason I recommended Enjin, so it could be a communication tool.  Having just a google group won't be enough to get our message out, we will likely need several websites such as Enjin to create a community.  It is easier to join a Enjin group than a Google group as people don't need to leave Enjin (which interconnects all pages) to look at IRL.  Having a google group is still important, where we can take ideas from all these sites and put them here to look at what people have given us.  We can probably talk to Enjin first and make sure they are good with us making a Guild page for our group to help reach out to gamers.  While we will get a few people to find this group and join, to really get a community, we need to reach out for them to join us.

An idea that one of my members gave to me, which is either here or there but definitely worth discussing, is donations.  That in order to participate, a person would have to donate money to the effort.  Say minimum is $1 or $5.  And all money goes to the specific relief fund.  Once they do this, they then can participate.  This helps prevent people from spamming us, as they would have to pay money just to participate, and we can still offer rewards and perhaps even a lottery for specialty items.  We could probably setup a paypal sort of system.  We would definitely need a License agreement, and it should state in there, if we find that you are spamming, we will block you and won't refund your donation (legalese it up).  While helping direct where relief should be given or help works, money is very important.  We do need to make it a small amount required, so even a 13yo who wants to help, can easily convince a parent to give them access to their paypal or credit card.

[Peter Mosur]

Control photos is a great idea! Definitely a good way to catch spammers.

As for the Enjin, it definitely won't hurt. I decided to go ahead and create the Enjin site at internet-response-league.enjin.com. It's gonna take me a bit to figure out how to configure it to look like we want it to, but in the meantime you can send people over I suppose! Also if you have any suggestions for running the site, let me know! Plus any other social sites like enjin that you know of would be good for us too!

As for the donation idea, it definitely makes sense from a spammer point of view. However one of the big concepts of the IRL is that is quick and easy for people to hop on and tag some pictures. If you throw a mandatory donation into the mix, you get an entirely different concept. We doubt that the spammer problem will be that bad, but its definitely an idea!

[mad_cat]

For Enjin, it will be a lot of trial an error, but if you can give me admin access, I can start putting things together.  I have worked with enjin a lot and know how to do things, even indirect ways of accomplishing our goals.  I think one thing we need is a video of Jane Mcdougall, perhaps on the front page or on an about page.  I can start putting some structure to the site and you can tell me if you desire an element to be somewhere else or you want to see a certain thing on there that isn't there.  Once we have more structure to the site, then I can start trying to encourage people to support it.

[mad_cat]

I will note I am not a graphic artist, and any art we need, I won't be able to do...unless we want stick figures.

[Peter Mosur]

Sure thing, you are the Enjin expert here after all. Will do so later this evening since it's blocked at my work. The Jane McGonigal video is a great idea. Also about the Graphic design, don't worry. We actually have a friend who has been doing that sort of work for us. Just let me know what kind/size banners we need and I will obtain them for us!

Thanks!

[mad_cat]

I'm hardly an expert, but I have a lot of free time on my hands.  If anyone has any ideas of what elements should be on the site or any information we should convey, let me know.

[mad_cat]

I'm sure it is obvious as I am the only other member, but my name on Enjin is Griseus.

[Peter Mosur]

We'll figure it out together! I just made you an admin. Let's see what we can do.

[mad_cat]

I've done some updates, but so far I think the logo up top is too big.  I took the one from this website, mostly as a placeholder.  I need a logo that is about half that size.

[mad_cat]

I have the start of a page for us.  Still a work in progress, but I could use some feedback.  I do have a welcome message, I just threw together a few things, borrowing from the website.  Please let me know what you think.

[mad_cat]

You'll notice a graphic of a muscular female butt.  I just picked the first theme that looked good, but mostly to be a place holder to show you what an end product could look like.  I think it looks a bit fitting, but I can change that to whatever we decide.  I don't know what we should put there, but it is always better to have a full image rather than a repeating one.  The theme (including pic) is from a Free MMO Firefall.

[Peter Mosur]

Hey, browsed through the themes and picked a standard non game-specific red one. I think it looks good, how about you?

[mad_cat]

It's nice.

[Patrick Meier (iRevolution)]

Hi All,

Regarding spam filters, control photos, etc, a related project I'm working on with QCRI is reCAPTCHA plugin for disaster response:

http://iRevolution.net/2013/06/17/recaptcha-for-disaster-response

The QCRI developer who developed the IRL plugin is also working with me on the reCAPTCHA plugin. In any case, there are a number of quality control mechanisms we can use to address spam.

Cheers,

Patrick

----
Patrick P. Meier (PhD)
http://www.iRevolution.net

On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 7:01 AM, mad_cat <vot...@gmail.com> wrote:

It's nice.

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[mad_cat]

And here I thought I was being innovative in my idea.  That systems to be an interesting idea, but also seems to involve a lot of typing as well.  Given that many people seem to be mouse dependent (that they use the most the majority of the time on the computer) that might make for an uncomfortable experience for that.  Or it might no difference at all with anyone.  I tend to be a keyboard dependent person, so I don't think I would have much issue with that system.  Although, if we took the reCAPTCHA system and expanded it for IRL, so that the entire JS is just a reCAPTCHA itself...that could present some interesting innovations.  That instead of typing, you are asked a list of questions and you select with your mouse.

It's nice.

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[Patrick Meier (iRevolution)]

Thanks mad_cat, sorry I just realized I gave you the wrong link:

http://iRevolution.net/2013/07/29/spam-filter-for-disaster-response

The plugin is live here:

http://recaptcha.qcri.org

You'll see that it is point and click based. But we could also number the pictures and thus allow users to interact via keyboard only. I'll let my developer to add that functionality next week.

Thanks again,

Patrick

----
Patrick P. Meier (PhD)
http://www.iRevolution.net

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[mad_cat]

Let me ask this, is this reCAPCHA just for accessing the area of the video game to help IRL, such as, I must pass this login in order to participate, or is the JS plugin a design of this reCAPCHA?  That the whole program is testing user responses with this interface?

I saw the video, very nice.  I hope one day I can do something like that.

It's nice.

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