Imagine if the tens of millions who give time and money to tending their Farmville game were instead working for social change. A team of Hollywood’s elite talent has been working with an army of advisors for six years to create a game building infrastructure that will make it so.
Armchair Revolutionary is a social gaming and strategic crowdsourcing concept that’s based on real life social needs. The games are designed to connect the real-time Web to real-time social change.
Sponsor
Social Change Innovators is a non-profit that wholly-owns Armchair Revolutionary LLC. ArmRev projects are funded by $0.99 gifts by its users. These funds are donated to charities and in some cases are invested in for-profit startups in exchange for an equity position. Profits from these investments are then reinvested into other social change projects on the ArmRev site. The gifting concept is true to the recent sea change in online gaming, which is driven by virtual currency.
In a few years ArmRev will scale up to 250 games annually. These games aim to use augmented reality and Internet of Things in a way that’s more fun, more popular and more real than Farmville could ever be. The first three games to be introduced are: Make Waves, End of Darkness and Hack Your Body. Hack Your Body includes quizzes about genetic research, as well as software tools to track your body’s health. End of Darkness also has quizzes and learning activities, but this program is unique in that it funds for-profit franchises who will sell low cost solar kits to poor people in India, eventually around the world. Make Waves is a simulation game that’s augmented with data from real world sensors. It’s similar to an adopt-a-rainforest campaigns where you adopt a specific patch of the planet, but what’s unique about this game is that the player will be connected to real-time ocean sensors.
Each ArmRev user has their own social change dashboard which is modeled after a personal stock market portfolio dashboard. ArmRev’s game projects are produced by the Play4Change Lab, which is a: “…collaboration between USC’s Game Institute and The Hollywood Hill. The lab specializes in games that integrate new technologies such as sensor networks, augmented reality, simulation, and virtual goods.”
To set up your ArmRev Profile go here.
To submit your photos and art to benefit social good go here.
