The Game of Books

[Daigohji]

A game for adventurous readers where the books you read earn you unique points and rewards.

Imagine a game where you - the reader - are the main character, and every book you read earns you points and rewards. The Game of Books is a game for adventurous readers where the books you read earn you points based on what they are about.

The Game of Books combines the physical world of books with the digital and imaginary. It is a website and mobile app that combines "Foursquare for books" and Xbox Live-style gamer achievements, earning you badges and points for the rare themes you encounter in books.

At its heart, The Game of Books allows those of us that love reading to earn something extra for what we already love, to become the master of themes that we visit more than others, to discover books we'd otherwise miss, and to track how we have grown as readers over time.

The Main Points of The Game of Books:

Readers earn points and badges for the books you read.
Play The Game by yourself, or with friends locally or on social media.
Each book in The Game has its own unique digital game card. There are more than 100,000 game cards in the Game of Books today.
Open Access: The Game of Books is intended to be easily connected to existing reading communities, such as Goodreads.com. Play The Game in the places you already read.

http://kck.st/Q6krcH

This is the first time I've given money to a Kickstarter campaign. Follow the link and watch the video, and you'll see why. It's an exciting concept that incorporates a website that tracks reading achievements, a mobile app that can scan the barcodes of books and display their respective game card, and various optional materials like stickers and bookmarks for families, schools and libraries to use.

As a reader, I find the prospect of gamifying the act of reading an enticing one. As a writer, I see this as a way to track how much I'm reading about various subjects, which will be especially useful when I'm at the research phase of new writing projects.

[Udderdude]

Sounds cool, but unfortunately, with only 4 days left to go, it seems unlikely it'll hit it's goal. :(

[Ruldra]

Can't help but imagine some people would go to the local library and scan every book in sight to get a killer score, lol.

Nice concept though. Would certainly make a lot of people get into reading.

[SuperGrafx]

Don't Kobo branded E-reader devices already have something like this built in?
Even the Kobo apps for Iphone, etc have these "achievements" and goals built in for reading certain books, etc.

[Daigohji]

Sounds cool, but unfortunately, with only 4 days left to go, it seems unlikely it'll hit it's goal.

It was looking that way, but in the last 24 hours it has jumped from about $48k to $81k. They still need another $21k. At this point, I think publisher interest will swing it one way or the other. Lulu contributed $30k early on, and there have been a couple of other contributers at the $5k+ incentive level that's reserved for publishers only.

Don't Kobo branded E-reader devices already have something like this built in?
Even the Kobo apps for Iphone, etc have these "achievements" and goals built in for reading certain books, etc.

I'm not sure. I have a Kindle, so I never looked into the Kobo. The appeal of The Game of Books is that it's not limited to books from one outlet. As long as they have a game card written up for a particular book, it won't matter if you have a physical copy or an e-book version from any provider.

[Daigohji]

It funded, with just a few hours left on the clock. Some big name authors weighed in to support it during the final four days, and there was a sudden flood of contributers after that (I heard about it via Patrick Rothfuss linking to it on Facebook).

[Udderdude]

Miracles do happen :3

[Ruldra]

Bump.

As someone who wants to get back to reading, I've been looking forward to the release of this game. These past few days I was trying to check their main site but it always returns a 503 error.

Then I went to the comments section of their Kickstarter page and found this:



Could someone who backed this log in and check out that post? I guess it's pretty much confirmed it was cancelled but I just want to know what happened.

[Mischief Maker]

Guess someone figured out Pizza Hut already beat them to the punch with "Book it!"

[Daigohji]

They haven't flat-out said that development is cancelled, but the product is apparently likely to change to the point where it no longer resembles what the Kickstarter was intended to fund. The statement to backers was pretty vague and couched in the corporate language of not revealing too much about unfinalised business decisions.

[BryanM]

I, too, liked this better when the reward was pizza instead of just exuberance.

There's a website out there for this kind of thing for japanese children's cartoons, called MyAnimeList. Where you watch a bunch of awful cartoons and review them.

For some reason, that time I read a book that taught you how to juggle and then I was able to juggle, that's gotta be more rewarding on a visceral level than this Achievement Unlocked! kind of stuff.

[Ruldra]

They haven't flat-out said that development is cancelled, but the product is apparently likely to change to the point where it no longer resembles what the Kickstarter was intended to fund. The statement to backers was pretty vague and couched in the corporate language of not revealing too much about unfinalised business decisions.

Thanks for the info. Too bad things didn't work out the way it was intended.

For some reason, that time I read a book that taught you how to juggle and then I was able to juggle, that's gotta be more rewarding on a visceral level than this Achievement Unlocked! kind of stuff.

I intended to use this "game" to keep track of what I've read over the years. An achievement system is ultimately useless but at least it's more fun than a spreadsheet.

[CKR]

I intended to use this "game" to keep track of what I've read over the years. An achievement system is ultimately useless but at least it's more fun than a spreadsheet.

Goodreads.com already does a good job of doing of tracking what you've read. They were planning on integrating The Game of Books into that, so you might as well use Goodreads.

[Ruldra]

Didn't know about that site, thanks for the heads-up. Surprised to see how big their catalog is, there's even some obscure brazilian books I own in there.