Also of interest: Online dating.

I’m very curious to follow the project and see how would Graham manage to collect his 1st (?) million.

Yes, you got it right - Bratz dolls are to rival Barbie Girls, Webkinz, and Ty Girlz out there in expanding world of online games with the their new Be-Bratz dolls and site. As reported, these Be-bratz dolls and onlien Be-Bratz games are aimed at girls age 6 and. The site offers 1) music, 2) games, 3) fashion (think likely online paper-doll play with the online dolls, outfits, hair and accessories) and last but not least 4)safe communication and interaction opportunities for girls. Pleas enote what Be-Bratz.com is currently in BETA.

MGA Entertainment sez “Be-Bratz.com is an immersive virtual world that extends the immensely popular Bratz brand into the online space through stimulating activities, a highly personalized ‘MyPage’, a customizable 3-D room, and fun, safe communication tools.

today’s young girls are eager to go online, so this connection between doll and web is a natural, esp. given the success of past toy/web initiatives.”

USB Key - your key to the world

As with Barbie Girls, Webkinz or Ty Girlz, the only way to access the web site for play is to buy one of the branded products. For access to Be-Bratz.com, you need a special “glam” necklace that comes packaged with one of three new Bratz fashion dolls. The necklace is a USB key that unlocks access to the Be-Bratz.com world. There will be three Be-Bratz.com dolls to choose for, and they come with a pet, real working mouse, mouse pad and the necklace with the USB key. Suggested retail for the Be-Bratz dolls are $29.99 each, and it is compatible with Windows® OS 2000/XP. Later this year, support will be added for MAC and Windows Vista.

New Content Will Be Added Monthly

Once on the site, you can create your own Bratz avatar, customize your own page, and then explore the virtual world including a salon, Game Zone and more. Since this site is in BETA, much like the Barbie Girls and Ty Girlz sites, the site will be added to and MGA Entertainment (the owners and creators of Bratz dolls) intend to add new content to the site each month. Additional Be-Bratz.com product will include speakers, mini-web cam, mini-keyboard and more, all in pink.

Definitely worth checking out.

Also: Neopets videos

Ujay writes “rich has become the de facto buzzword…”. I’ve actually been pleased to see that the use of that word seems to be on the decline recently. Compared to other experiences – like the example of a dinner with friends – even the richest experiences on the web still seem pretty impoverished.

Michael makes a great point in his comment here: thinking of “rich” as basically a synonym for “enhanced marketing” feels like a very limited definition of the idea. Ujay suggests on his blog that we “re-imagine the design as a speech to the user, convincing the user this product is best for meeting specific goals…” I do think that this rhetorical approach to certain interactions is appropriate, but truly “rich” online experiences do not do this. Who wants to “make speeches to users” anymore?

There are some truly rich experiences on the web that are totally different from the ones listed above. I’m thinking of alternate-reality games like those that sprang up around List (http://www.thelostexperience.com/) or the new Nine Inch Nails album (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Zero_(alternate_reality_game) ), or World Without Oil (http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/default.aspx).

Those experiences are actually rich and fit Ujay’s definition above really well: they appeal to reason and emotion, they involve mental effort, real human interaction, and (gasp!) offline activities. But the technology and design around these experiences are about as Web 1.0 as you can imagine, basic HTML, email lists, maybe some phone calls. Often the design around them is ugly and clunky. They rarely if ever include what Adobe/Macromedia has tried to claim as “rich media”: a lot of snazzy drop-down menus and drag-and-drop. “Rich” doesn’t mean being compelled to click on a zooming, fading UI widget.

Also: Neopets videos

Podscope published an interview with Jane McGonigal of “World Without Oil” - Can a game help us prepare for a major oil crisis? (May 21)

Gameswatch blog writes:

Just received a note from Jane McGonigal about her ARG World Without Oil, and it’s well worth re-iterating and checking out the work towards a solution on Unfiction.com, because it’s a pretty interesting project - it was mentioned in passing when GSW covered the SF Weekly article on Jane, but we didn’t really focus on it.

Jane explains that World Without Oil is “…funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and it’s the first alternate reality game to harness the collective intelligence of gamers to address a real world problem (oil dependence!)… In the first two weeks, we’ve had 1500 people from around the world (including soldiers in Iraq!) contribute original content to the game (videos, photos, web comics, blog posts, etc.) and over 35,000 people play.”

What I found particularly notable is that there’s an Unfiction messageboard thread which isn’t directly solving the problems of the ARG - but rather, talking about the issues of alternative power, with commentary like this: “Until we build more nuclear, hydroelectric, geothermal, solar, wind, wave, etc. power generation facilities, fuel-cells are not the answer to our problems.” So people are thinking about the problem - which is the entire point of this exercise.

Here’s an update on the folks who are trying to solve a faux oil shortage crisis in the nonprofit alternate reality game World Without Oil:

WORLD WITHOUT OIL: The Alternate Reality Event Is Creating A Rich, Sobering, Tangible Answer To A Timely Question: What Happens When Our Thirst for Oil Exceeds Supply

People around the world challenged to contribute viewpoints, demonstrate new
behaviors

The serious game for the public good
began April 30, ends June 1

Play it ­ before you live it
www.worldwithoutoil.org

(San Francisco‹May 16, 2007)‹In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, community cooperatives are being formed. In Philadelphia, workers share downtown apartments. In San Francisco and Chicago, abandoned cars block the streets. In Bristol, England, rationing has begun. In WORLD WITHOUT OIL, the first alternate reality game to enlist the Internet¹s collective intelligence and imagination to confront a real-world problem, the world is entering its 17th
week of an oil shock, with petroleum supply running five percent under demand, and the volunteers at the grassroots website www.worldwithoutoil.org struggle to keep track of what¹s going on.

Produced by the design team at Writerguy, WORLD WITHOUT OIL was created to
leverage the power of people connected by the Internet to imagine the actual events of an oil shortage, and then to find innovative solutions. Midway through its run, WORLD WITHOUT OIL has created a vivid and visceral picture of an oil shock by inviting anyone to contribute their views and adding them to the 1000-plus blog pages, images, phone calls and videos already linked to by www.worldwithoutoil.org.

Almost 30,000 regular visitors follow the emerging story, with more voices being added every day. A full-on ³Web 2.0² effort, WORLD WITHOUT OIL exists as a growing network of thousands of interconnected sites and content caches across the Internet, as bloggers on LiveJournal or WordPress link to channels on YouTube or podcasts on iTunes. The game has participants representing every major metro area and every region of the U.S., plus players in Canada, France, Germany, Iraq, the Netherlands, Holland, Brazil, Poland, Norway and Venezuela. One index of its reach: a Google search for the phrase ³world without oil² will return over a quarter of a million pertinent results.

Besides creating a rich, diverse and collaborative documentary of an oil shock, WORLD WITHOUT OIL is a forum for citizens to share life-changing ideas applicable to real life.

³Our game structure gives people Œpermission¹ to think seriously about an eventuality they might otherwise avoid thinking about at all,² says Creative Director Ken Eklund. As a result of the game, people are thinking about their neighbors and communities in new ways, and planting gardens, going to farmer¹s markets, using bicycles and transit, and otherwise questioning their dependence on cheap, plentiful oil.

WORLD WITHOUT OIL is being followed closely by many leaders in digital and gaming culture, who see the game as a groundbreaking foray into engaging “collective intelligence” to address a real world problem. The game’s serious outcome will be a realistic story, collaboratively written by thousands of authors, that tightly weaves real experience with imagined experience. This approach can create the sort of immersive engagement that
makes learning more effective. People of any age or Web ability can participate. In addition to visiting www.worldwithoutoil.org, participants can call 1-866-996-8762 to
leave a message “in game,” or send an in-game email to wwo@worldwithoutoil.org. To help middle and high school teachers incorporate the game into class activities, the designers have created a web page: http://www.worldwithoutoil.org/teach.

WORLD WITHOUT OIL is produced by the Writerguy team, and is a joint project of PBS’ Independent Lens and its Electric Shadows Web-original programming.

That’s the story behind a new computer game launching today, “World Without Oil” at http://www.worldwithoutoil.org. This game, which can be played for free over the Internet, isn’t purely make believe. It’s meant to draw attention to the real possibility of an oil shock and what our country and the world have to do to prepare for it. The ideas that people come up with for surviving in a post-oil world in the game could actually pay off in real life if they lead to less consumption and more alternative sources of energy.

The blurring of imaginary and real life is intentional. Players can affect the story and outcome of the game based on what they do in real life. The game is part of the increasingly popular “alternate reality game” genre, and its creators believe that they can use it as a serious vehicle to entertain people and, simultaneously, draw attention to a social issue.

Part of a so-called “serious games” movement, the creators hope to use the inherently entertaining nature of games as a medium to hook and educate mass audiences. It resembles other games such as “Re-Mission,” which educates kids with cancer about how to fight the disease (a game funded by Pam Omidyar, who is married to eBay founder Pierre Omidyar).

“It’s a serious game for the public good, but it’s not necessarily sending a green message,” said Ken Eklund, creative director and producer of
Advertisement

the game. “We are saying there is an oil shock. It is an alternate reality that is not so far from where we are now.”

The game is based on an ongoing debate about how much time we have before we hit the peak for oil production and consumption. Advocates of the “peak oil” theory argue that we’ve already tapped out the last of the world’s oil supplies and that it’s all downhill from here.

In the game, players are expected to band together by the thousands to tell their own fictionalized stories within the larger context of the oil shortage and how they plan to deal with it.

Over several weeks, the story will play out. But the game’s designers, dubbed puppetmasters, will change the story based on reactions from the players. They can create the story, for instance, of the impact of the oil shock in Detroit’s auto industry, or figure out the impact on people in rural areas such as Idaho.

“We don’t know how it’s going to turn out for sure,” said Jane McGonigal, one of the puppetmasters and a rock star of the genre. “Our hope is that people will come up with their own creative solutions on how to live without oil. The game helps players prepare for a future and avoid it by thinking about the alternatives to it now.”

In her previous job at 42 Entertainment, she helped create some award-winning alternate reality games, including “ilovebees.com,” an alternate-reality game that served as a promotion for the launch of Microsoft’s “Halo 2″ video game. That game drew 600,000 serious players and more than a million casual observers who monitored its progress.

McGonigal estimates there are now about 20 alternative reality games being played at any one time, supported by groups of fans who play together such as the group Unfiction.

“World Without Oil” came about because ITVS Interactive, a public television production house in San Francisco that celebrates alternative voices, wanted to fund a video game that could help it further its aims and reach broader audiences. ITVS invited pitches and Eklund responded in June 2005. Eklund, a 49-year-old game writer in San Jose, says he pulled the idea “from the swamp of my brain” and started sketching out how it could unfold.

“We found the theme to be relevant,” said Cathy Fischer, a senior producer at ITVS.

McGonigal, a developer of alternative reality games, reviewed the proposal. After she completed her doctoral thesis at the University of California-Berkeley, she left 42 Entertainment and took a position as a research associate at the Institute for the Future, a non-profit research group in Palo Alto, where she is helping the institute think about how these games can help prepare us all for the future. That’s why she joined Eklund’s team, which has grown to about a dozen people in addition to some volunteers.

There are already groups of fans forming in places such as Australia, Denmark and Russia to participate in “World Without Oil.”

“There is something amazing about huge numbers of people banding together,” McGonigal said. “It’s like a human supercomputer.”
San Jose Mercury News

Jane McGonigal figures that she or one of her colleagues can win a Nobel Peace Prize within a decade.

The Nobel Prize in economics, well, she’s giving them 25 years to take home that medal. The prizes for medical science and chemistry are a bit trickier still. “With science awards it tends to take a couple of decades before people say, ‘Oh, now in hindsight we realize that was important!’” says McGonigal. It might take, say, 50 years. The out-there possibility, the big stretch, would be to score the Nobel Prize in literature.

Maybe the Nobel Committee could bundle them in a prize pack.

So who is this woman you have never heard of, and what on earth is she working on that could possibly encompass world peace, science, and literature? Is it some kind of highly nutritious manna produced from simple chemicals that could end world hunger and its ravaging effects on developing economies … um, delivered in the form of edible books?

It’s more fanciful than that. McGonigal designs games for a living, and she believes they point the way toward civilization’s next step forward. Her games are sprawling extravaganzas that suck in thousands of players and force them to pool their talents to become, essentially, one big networked brain. In the young and burgeoning genre of alternate reality games, otherwise known as ARGs, the players’ collective intelligence is applied to cracking codes, solving puzzles, and completing complex tasks doled out by almighty “puppetmasters.” McGonigal is one of the people who pulls the strings.

People play McGonigal’s games not just to escape or for indolent pleasure, but for the sense of urgent duty they invoke.

In the biggest game she worked on, 2004’s international smash hit I Love Bees, she and her colleagues got players to hang out by more than 1,000 pay phones around the world, waiting breathlessly for calls that contained clues. (In San Francisco, gamers staked out a chain of pay phones along Market Street, from the Embarcadero to South Van Ness.) More recently, she convinced hundreds of people to show up at historic cemeteries to play a bizarre and acrobatic form of poker.

The games slowly reveal a fantasy universe that sends tendrils through both the virtual and real worlds — mysterious clues and puzzles are revealed through Web sites, blogs, message boards, voice mails, text messages, and with strange objects that show up in the darnedest places. Because the clues are scattered so widely, and because many of the puzzles and codes are hard to crack, players work together, setting up forums and wikis to pool their resources and coordinate their efforts. With thousands of brains linked by new technology, players become one collective detective, and accomplish remarkable feats.

Thus far, ARGs have been used as a form of guerrilla marketing, to build buzz or give a product a badge of cultish credibility. Before the South Korean monster movie The Host arrived in America, its ARG waded ashore; players successfully wrapped up the two-month-long game Monster Hunter Club at the end of March. Other regular ARG players are eagerly awaiting the game that will herald the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, since the game that accompanied the previous Pirates installment ended with the discovery of a Volvo SUV buried on a beach in the Bahamas.

Read more here