October 2008
Beginner
240 pages
5h 2m
English
Games can cause people to do amazing things, purely for the sake of fun. Consider the following four statistics: In 2007, the combined GDP of virtual worlds exceeded the GDP of several countries, including Syria, Lebanon, Latvia, and Sri Lanka.1 In a single MMOG called Eve Online, players have formed 34,658 virtual companies, more than the number of food, manufacturing, textile, and office supply companies in the United States combined.2 In less than three years, a game designed to make it fun to caption images (an important task that computers cannot easily do on their own) attracted over 22,000 players who have labeled 10 million images, with many players contributing over 40 hours a week of their time. ...
Read now
Unlock full access