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Armchair Revolutionary: banking on mini game mechanics
Posted by Hsing Wei on 04-14-10Combining notions of crowd sourcing, social gaming, micro-finance, and the iTunes market, Armchair Revolutionary has received a good deal of coverage since its Beta launch. With a goal of supporting “worldchanging” science and technology ventures in getting off the ground, the web-based platform combines several marketplace models into one. Built around a series of eight simple social activism tasks—gifting, VoIP phone calling, e-mailing, uploading, downloading, voting, forms, and quizzes—Armchair Revolutionary lowers the cost of mass participation via micro-tasks and 99 cent micro-donations while highlighting the rewards of engagement with competitive game elements.
The creators hope the social game system’s constantly evolving series of tasks and point system will keep altruistic users hooked in search of the rewards that come with greater participation. Each ArmRev user has a social change dashboard to view his/her progress—level, points, community ranking, and series of available tasks. At early levels, the tasks are pretty quick and simple to complete. As users score enough points and level up, bigger and more interesting tasks are unlocked. Points can also be used to purchase virtual goods, like artwork to customize pages. All transactions are conducted in a virtual currency called Kredz (1 Kredz = 33 cents), developed to facilitate not just gifting to innovators but a virtual goods economy that could support the organization’s costs and keep it self-sustaining.
Currently Armchair Revolutionary’s tasks are oriented around three feature projects: “Make Waves”, a video game that provides users with real-life social activism tools while they manage part of a virtual ocean; “Hack Your Body,” a three-part effort about the “fast approaching genomics revolution” that includes a documentary, the Personal Genome Project, and the development of commercial software for people to analyze their own DNA; and lastly “End of Darkness” the first publicly financed clean energy company that will provide low-cost solar power kits to the world’s poor. While user micro-investments are a big part of the model, tasks provide other ways for members to help out. For example, members can use a built-in messaging system to compose and send e-mails to influential executives advocating for an important innovation, like some new biodegradable material to the head of a big manufacturer. Ultimately, Armchair Revolutionary’s ambitious goal is to engage large number of users,10 million with a minimum of 5% participating on any given day, with manageable tasks and chances to make a difference.
More on the platform here
And more on the 99 cent model here