LP Recharge Review: Linkin Park’s Social Good Game

Linkin Park is clearly not afraid of new marketing strategies as evidenced by their new LP RECHARGE game, which is a free-to-play action game designed to raise attention to environmental issues and is set to the tune of Linkin Park’s new remix album, aptly named, Recharge.

Given that Recharge isn’t exactly a new album and is rather a compilation of remixes of songs (like Reanimation) off their last album Living Things, it looks like Linkin Park’s game was created to drive a little more interest in the album and their cause.

Developed in partnership with Kuuluu Interactive Entertainment, LP RECHARGE takes place in a not too distant future in which humans have consumed nearly all natural resources on the planet and the last remaining resources are being seized by killer robots.

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tim kring

Redefining Story for Transmedia in the Gamification Era

It used to be enough just to give consumers 22 minutes of quality content, once a week, year after year, to be successful. Today, media consumption has dramatically changed. Where TV used to be the distraction, now viewers use second and third screens – a distraction from the distraction. This change, both demographic and technological, forces us to reimagine the nature of storytelling and narrative in an unprecedented way.

Viewers today want to lean forward (and you need them to), become part of the action, engage with characters and each other in new and exciting ways, and shape the outcome. But how do we do this without ceding total control to the audience and reducing the main reason they “pay” to be with us in the first place?

Join Tim Kring, Transmedia expert and creator of the blockbuster TV programs Heroes and Touch, as he shares his insights about how to tell stories in this new lean-forward era that consumers are willing to pay for with time and money.

Watch Tim’s full GSummit SF 2013 video below and be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get the latest videos from GSummit SF 2013 as they’re released. You can also download a copy of this presentation by downloading it here.

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kenya

Global Challenge: RFP on Using Gamification to Counter Violent Extremism in Kenya

We recently received an interesting email that requested our helping in finding possible gamification applications for countering violent extremism (CVE) under the Kenya Transition Initiative, a program dedicated to stabilizing Kenya’s political unrest and violence.

The RFP comes directly from the US Agency for International Development and seeks to empower youths before they are pulled into a culture of extremism.

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half the sky

Half the Sky: Lessons from Games for Change on Social Good Games

How much impact can a social good game possibly have? According to Games for Change president, Asi Burak, the results may surprise you.

Half the Sky is a movement based on the award winning and bestselling book that is poised to take the world of social movements by storm. Working with the authors and international celebrities, the Games for Change organization, led by Asi Burak and Michelle Byrd, has built a coalition aimed at using gamification to empower women and girls. From his years of experience in the field, Asi will share how to build broad support for large-scale gamified projects, and what every organization needs to know as it embarks on this transformative path.

Watch Asi’s full GSummit SF 2013 talk below and learn what it takes to make a game with social impact.

Also, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get the latest videos from GSummit SF 2013 as they’re released. You can also download a copy of this presentation by downloading it here.

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gamification partnerships

Gamification Partnerships: Distinguishing Between Game Changers versus Press Releaseware

In the development of any nascent technology market there is a stage when partnership announcements start to increase and gamification is no different. For prospects and customers of gamification vendors it is important to take into consideration these partnerships when evaluating vendors for short lists and selection. However, not all partnerships are created equal so enterprise and public sector organizations need to carefully weigh partnerships as part of their evaluation criteria. To complicate matters, gamification startups often do a poor job communicating what the partnership really means and the value it delivers to customers. As a consequence, managers have to develop the skills to dig into the details of partnership announcements in order to make informed decisions about the relevance and value of the partnership for their organizations.

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compost

Betting in Classrooms to Promote Composting

Last week we held another gsummitX gamification meetup at AOL HQ with a number of new attendees ready to learn and gamify. We were greeted with a great talk from Gilt Groupe Program Manager Jeff Bobula, who walked us through Gilt’s approach to gamified loyalty with their flash-sale site, and a quick demo for our gamified Twitter conference app, Livecube (formerly known as Memecube).

But the big crux of the night was rooted in our gamestorming session to try and solve another problem for Social Good: “How can we get more people to compost?”

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Gilt’s New Loyalty Program Provides Exclusive Access to Customers

The gamification community in NYC came together last night for our first GSummitX event fully focused on loyalty marketing. To start things off, Gilt Groupe’s Jeff Bobula (Program Manager) delivered an educating talk on Gilt’s new loyalty program, Gilt Insider. Then, we all engaged in our Play for a Cause to help solve NYC’s composting issue.

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The Psychology of Fun: Transform Awareness into Impact

Following up her main stage talk from GSummit 2012, Nicole Lazzaro took the main stage again at GSummit 2013 and gave us a new talk on how the emotional response from games can inspire people to take real actions for social impact.

We take a look at Nicole’s analysis on the psychology of fun and how her own game, Tilt World, was able to accomplish significant social impact by simply being fun.

Also, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get the latest videos from GSummit SF 2013 as they’re released. You can also download a copy of Nicole’s presentation by downloading it here.

If you have questions about this content or anything else related to gamification design, please join us tomorrow at 1PM ET as Nicole joins us as our live guest on the Gamification Revolution webshow.  RSVP and Sign-In to join the conversation!

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gsummit sf 2013 videos

GSummit SF 2013 Videos Are Coming Out to the Public!

If you joined us for GSummit SF 2013, then you’ve clearly seen how awesome our community is, amidst of sea of brilliant experts, food trucks, and a gamified conference experience. It is our job here at Gamification Co to proliferate the latest and greatest knowledge about the gamification industry, so we’re finally going to begin releasing all of our videos from GSummit SF 2013 over the next few weeks.

We’ll be posting each of the new releases on our blog but if you want to get each of them immediately, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to get each video as they come.

To kick off the first video we’re releasing, we want to share a story about engaging audiences with a real sense of purpose. Jeremy Heimans, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of…Purpose, shares his story about using narrative storytelling to transform engagement for corporations, non-profits and citizens with integrity and purpose.

Stay tuned as we release more videos every week! Also, if you’re interested in seeing a particular speaker on GSummit, sound off in the comments below!

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The Goldman Sachs NYC Scavenger Hunt for Charity

With the simple rules “do not tamper with the clues” and “no private motorized transport”, 20 Goldman Sachs employee teams armed with bubble gum cards, a seating chart for Kevin Bacon’s wedding, a plastic cube, and a three-stanza poem all competed to win the scavenger hunt Midnight Madness.

Originally founded in 1996 by Mat Laibowitz and his Columbia University friend Dan Michaelson, these teams of NYC based financiers and some of their friends took to the streets to decipher clues to win the hunt – all for charity. For almost two days, these contestants live in their own reality solving puzzles that would make even Sherlock Holmes or the most hardened gamer cringe.

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i-kifu

How Gamification is Finding Its Way into Japan’s NPO Sector with i-kifu

Since its first emergence of the word in 2010, the gamification movement has gained the attention of a wide range of audiences, reaching to all four corners the globe. From the corporate offices of America to the Streets of Hong Kong, gamification has made an impact in people’s daily life. Speaking of making an impact, non-profit organizations are realizing the potential gamification could be used as a tool for change and a organization called i-kifu based in Tokyo, Japan is aiming to do just that. Gamification Co had the opportunity to interview i-kifu founder, Nhat Vuong to talk about his web-based platform.

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How Aikido Taught me Games and Gamification will Change the World

The world is full of issues that we ought to solve. For decades, we have tried to fight hunger, eradicate polio as well as HIV/AIDS, protect the environment and our ecosystem – but somehow final victory always seems to get further and further away. Why is it that in 2013, with all the knowledge, technologies and resources that we possess, we are still struggling to create a better place for the whole world?

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Ventus Mobilizes Citizen Scientists to Fight Against Global Warming

When it comes to research, no other method matches the productivity output of motivated groups of people. Fold.it has seen great success with breakthrough findings in AIDS research with their crowdsourced puzzle game and recently, even the US Navy has started to crowdsource ideas to spur innovative solutions for their problems. It is no surprise then that a group of climate scientists at Arizona State University has taken to this tactic in an effort to catalog fossil fuel-burning power plants around the world, in order to get a better understanding of their emission output and its total effect on global warming. The result? A crowdsourced data collection game called Ventus.

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