Works
Works by Playmatics
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Playing the President: FDR’s First Hundred Days
Created as both an onsite installation and web game experience, Playing the President: FDR’s First Hundred Days is an educational game that puts you in the seat of Franklin Delano Roosevelt during the historical critical first 100 days of his presidency. Developed with students at the New York Historical Society, the game presents you with six policies decisions that FDR had to make alongside contemporary voices arguing for different positions. Players can explore how different decisions created loyalties and hostilities with different critical constituencies and how presidents deal with crises with the powers and limitations of their office.
Platform(s): Web, Museum Installation
Partners: New York Historical Society, New York Historic Teen Leader Program
Playmatics Role: Game design, programming, art, writing
You can see the installation as part of the New York Historical Society’s Meet the Presidents and the Oval Office at the New York Historical Society or check out the game on the web here.
Revolutionary Choices
Created in collaboration with the Society of the Cincinnati, Revolutionary Choices is a game that allows you to explore the military, political and art history of the American Revolutionary War. In Revolutionary Choices players must manage the entire Revolutionary War from start-to-finish, guiding decisions in Congress, commanding the Continental Army, balancing the interests of individual regions, while also fostering liberty, and unity.
Platform(s): Web, iOS, Android
Partners: Ben Sawyer, Society of the Cincinnati
Playmatics Role:
Game design, programming, visual design, sound design, writing
Find out more about the game at the American Revolution Institute.
Neuroscience Game Experiment with University of Geneva
Playmatics has teamed up with the University of Geneva and Dr. Daphne Bavelier and Dr. C. Shawn Green to create a game-based intervention as part of a neuroscience research project. Called “Robbin’ Goblins”, the game uses a tower defense mechanic to encourage participation in an experimental exercise. The game will go into trials in the near future.
More information coming soon about this collaboration and about Robbin’ Goblins.
ProPublica: The Award-Winning The Waiting Game
The Waiting Game is an interactive narrative experience, created by Playmatics in partnership with ProPublica and WNYC. Take the role of an asylum seeker, and live through every day of their lives from the moment they decide to flee their country to the moment their case is decided.
Winner of the Society for News Design’s Bronze Malofiej Award for best infographics in media from around the world. Finalist for NLA Punch Sulzberger Award for Innovative Storytelling.
Platform(s): Web, iOS, Android
Partners: ProPublica, WNYC
Playmatics Role:
Concept creation, game and interaction design, programming, visual design, writing
Play The Waiting Game at ProPublica.org now.
Scripps: Science Game Lab
Ready. Set. Explore.
Want to help science? Enjoy learning or playing games? Science Game Lab is a new portal for citizen science projects in need of your assistance, games with a purpose, and educational games in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM).
Platform(s): Web
Partners: Scripps
Playmatics Role:
gamification design
BreatheFree Smoking Cessation Mobile Game
An NIH funded free-to-play mobile game exploring how games can be used as part of a unique smoking cessation approach. In progress. Currently in clinical trials.
Platform(s): iOS, Android
Partner(s): Entertainment Science
Playmatics Role:
Full design, development, commercialization, product strategy and live operations.
David Cronenberg’s Award-Winning Body/Mind/Change
Body Mind Change is an ARG (Alternate Reality Game). Winner of the prestigious MUSE Award.
Platform(s): Web
Partners: Canadian Film Commission, Northern Army, Lance Weiler
Playmatics Role:
Game and interaction design, narrative design.
Absolut deadmau5
“Absolut unveils a new chapter in Absolut Nights. Introducing Absolut deadmau5, an interactive VR experience. Go on an unforgettable night out with deadmau5, from his studio to the club, featuring exclusive music from the artist.
To learn more about Absolut deadmau5 or to get a limited edition VR headset, please visit Absolutdeadmau5.com
You must be of legal drinking age to use this app. Remain seated when using the app. Stop use if you experience any discomfort.”
With Forever Beta.
Killer Snails Board Game – The American Museum of Natural History
Killer Snails: Assassins of the Sea is a deck-building game in which the players are scientists collecting predatory cone snails that prey on fish, worms and other mollusks. The type of snail determines its strength and the type of prey eaten, and the snails produce different peptides. To win the game, the player must build a venom arsenal of the correct peptide toxin combinations- much as the marine biochemist who co-created the game does. The winning combination of peptides always changes as it is drawn at the beginning of each game.
In addition to a starter deck for each player, cards may be purchased from a card market. Cards with scientific events ranging from “research”, which provides a peek at part of the solution, to “tsunami”, which shifts all the prey cards on the table, offer strategic opportunities for victory. Additionally a variety of predators may be deployed to attack the competition’s snails. The game offers a dynamic play experience in which players have to react and adjust their strategy accordingly
To win Killer Snails: Assassins of the Sea, you must out-strategize your opponents to build a venom cocktail that matches the venom cocktail created at the beginning of the game. This game was designed in collaboration with the American Museum of Natural History.
Platform(s): Board/Card game
Partners: Killer Snails, American Museum of Natural History
Playmatics Role:
Design and development.
AMC’s Award-Winning Breaking Bad: The Interrogation
Players assume the role of DEA Agent Hank Schrader. The indomitable Hank is investigating a fire that took place in a church. A shifty man named Hadley Berkitz, who volunteers at the church, knows something but he’s not talking. This game takes players inside Hank’s DEA interrogation room and asks players to try to get Hadley to say what he knows. The entire game is composed of complex dialogue trees and players must skillfully get Hank to put just the right amount of pressure on Hadley to get him to tell the truth.
Winner CableFAX Award Digital Program Award 2011. Nominated for SXSW Interactive Amusement category.
Platform(s): Web, iOS, Android
Partners: AMC Television
Playmatics Role:
Design, development and interactive narrative construction.
AMC’s Breaking Bad: The Cost of Doing Business
An official AMC Television game. The streets of Albuquerque are a dangerous place. Just ask Jesse Pinkman. He’s certainly run into his fair share of criminals since partnering with Walt, and he usually walks away from those encounters bruised and battered. Think you could help him do better? Here’s your chance to find out, playing as Jesse in this original Breaking Bad graphic novel game. Think you can make it past shady lawyers, drug-addled prostitutes and dangerous thugs without getting killed? Play Breaking Bad – The Cost of Doing Business and put your criminal wherewithal to the test.
Platform(s): Web, iOS, Android
Partners: AMC Television
Playmatics Role:
Design, development and interactive narrative construction.
AMC’s The Walking Dead: Dead Reckoning
When Rick wakes from a coma, he finds his wife Lori and his partner Shane gone and the police station basically abandoned. (Sure, former deputy Leon Bassett is still around but he’s a zombie now.) Where are Shane and Lori? How did Leon end up like that? Get to the root of the matter with this interactive teaser of The Walking Dead: Dead Reckoning, AMC’s online game which lets you play the role of Shane Walsh during civilization’s final days. Who’s a threat? Who needs to be saved? Who must be sacrificed for the greater good?
Platform(s): Web, iOS, Android
Partners: AMC Television
Playmatics Role:
Design, development and interactive narrative construction.
Nightscape at Longwood Gardens
Platform:
Real-World
with Klip Collective
Playmatics Role:
Game design services.
With Klip Collective
Killer Snails mobile (National Science Foundation)
Platform(s): Web, iOS, Android
Partner(s): Killer Snails
Playmatics Role:
Design and Development
New York Public Library: Find the Future
Find the Future: The Game is a pioneering, interactive experience created especially for NYPL’s Centennial by famed game designer Jane McGonigal, with Natron Baxter and Playmatics. Through a once-in-a-lifetime, overnight adventure played inside the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, and an ongoing online game, Find the Future: The Game combines real-world missions with virtual clues and online collaboration — all inspired by 100 works from the amazing collections of The New York Public Library.
Platform(s):Real-world, iOS, Android
Partner(s): New York Public Library
Playmatics Role:
Design and development
Free Lunch Society (documentary)
More than any other idea, the notion of an unconditional basic income divides philosophers, economists, politicians and citizens likewise. Why should a community grant benefits without demanding service in return? Would people still work if they could make a living from their basic income alone? And is it financially feasible?
Partners: Golden Girls Film Produktion, LTD. A cinema documentary by Christian Tod.
SMOSH Gamification
Future Energy Chicago
You have the power to change Chicago’s energy future! The challenge for our future is how to produce the energy we need while balancing the trade-offs, such as cost and the impact on the environment. Future Energy Chicago, MSI’s newest permanent exhibition, turns this challenge into a fast-paced simulation game where you compete to make the energy choices that create a more sustainable city … and generate a lot of fun.
Platform(s): Museum installation
Partner(s): Museum of Science and Industry, Potion Design
Playmatics Role:
Educational development and design thinking.
Traveling While Black
Playmatics is responsible for the gaming component of this seminal project by Oscar Award-Winning filmmaker Roger Ross Williams.
Traveling While Black is a transmedia project currently under development that explores the often-harrowing landscapes African Americans traversed during the pre-civil rights era to highlight the urgent need to remember this past and dialogue about the challenges minority travelers still face today.
Platform(s): Web, iOS, Android
Partners: Roger Ross Williams, Bonnie Nelson Schwartz , Lina Srivastava, Tribeca Interactive
Playmatics Role:
Interactive design
LEGO On Patrol
LEGO City is busy. The police are looking for thieves, the fire brigade is on the move, the ambulance is off on rescue, the cargo train is fully loaded, Play On Patrol for some platform-hopping good fun.
Platform(s): Web
Partners: LEGO
Playmatics Role:
Design and development.
Play On Patrol now. Please note that you will need to activate Flash on your browser.
Koronis ADHD Phase I NIH Grant
Platform(s): Web
Partner(s): Koronis Biotech
Playmatics Role:
Prototype, design and development for the purposes of a research study leading to full product commercialization.
Come Out and Play Festival
An annual festival in New York, Pittsburgh, and San Francisco dedicated to new street games.
Platform(s): Real-world
Partner(s): Greg Trefry, ESI (Peter Vigeant, Debra Everett-Lane), Catherine Herdlick, Mattia Romeo, Peter Lee
Playmatics Role:
Co-founder
The American Museum of Natural History — MicroRangers
MicroRangers is a new mobile game at the Museum that shrinks you down to microscopic size and sends you into exhibits to combat threats to biodiversity. Nine MicroCrises await—real-world scenarios involving microorganisms— starting in the 1st floor Hall of Biodiversity. For advanced game players, marshall your resources to take on the 6th Extinction. Armed with the mobile app and a free Communicator Coin, augmented characters – both microbes and scientists – will send you on missions and help you along the way. Have fun while you learn how even the smallest things can make a big difference.
MicroRangers employs a range of technologies to: geolocate you within the Museum, offer augmented animated characters to guide you, and provide mini-games that bring the dioramas to life.
Platform(s): iOS, Android
Partners: American Museum of Natural History, Geomedia
Playmatics Role:
Game design
American Museum of Natural History: Pterosaurs the Card Game
This companion app for Pterosaurs: The Card Game explores amazing ancient reptiles and their food chains. When triggered by cards from the Pterosaurs deck, the app reveals animations of pterosaurs walking, flying, and more.
Pterosaurs were flying reptiles that lived during the age of dinosaurs—and the first vertebrates to fly under their own power. This app and the analog card game draw on images and information from the 2014 special exhibition Pterosaurs: Flight in the Age of Dinosaurs.
Use the Pterosaurs: The Card Game app with cards that can be downloaded for free here to reveal animations and 3D models for several species. The analog Pterosaurs: The Card Game is based on the biodiversity card game Phylo (phylogame.org) and was developed by teenagers in the Museum’s #scienceFTW program with game designer Nick Fortugno.
Platform(s): Board/Card game
Partners: American Museum of Natural History
Playmatics Role:
Design and development.
USAID Field Work
A mission to Indonesia to explore the use of mobile games to help teach people about disaster risk reduction techniques
Platform(s): Field work
Partners: USAID
Playmatics Role:
Field Work
Disney’s Kingdom Keepers: Race to Save the Magic
Kingdom Keepers: Race to Save the Magic is a brand new type of gaming experience that expands on the Kingdom Keepers brand in thrilling directions – exciting fans in the run-up to the next book launch and recruiting a whole new generation of young adults to enter the electrifying world of Kingdom Keepers. The game combines the following elements from several successful gaming genres: alternate reality games, “choose your own adventure” books, hidden object games, spot-the-difference games.
Platform(s): Web
Partners: Disney Publishing
Playmatics Role:
Concept, design, game development, script writing + working with on-site video production.
Genigames
Dragons breathe fire and hoard treasures, but can they help students become more interested in genetics? SciPlay, in collaboration with the Concord Consortium and Michigan State University, is researching this question by modifying the Geniverse software, which students use to breed fictitious dragons and solve genetic problems in a virtual lab. The National Science Foundation (REESE program) funded project, called GeniGames, will study whether adding game-based design elements to PBS science curricula can improve students’ motivation, engagement and learning.
GeniGames will add three gaming elements to Concord Consortium’s dragon breeding software: a strong story line narrative, a quantifiable goal that students can work towards, and a team competition feature. GeniGames will test the extent to which adding each of these game-based design elements to a PBS curriculum enhances students’ engagement, while still supporting the learning that has been documented with PBS curricula. The research will take place in New York City high school classrooms studying genetics and at the New York Hall of Science, and will include students from groups underrepresented in science and engineering careers. An advisory committee consisting of experts in genetics, the learning sciences, cognitive science, and gaming will evaluate the results of the project.
You can read the abstract here.
Although the project will not be completed until 2014, researchers theorize that bridging formal school curriculums with the informal learning environment of the gaming world will increase students’ motivation, which in turn will increase their learning. Plus, dragons will be able to add another skill to their resume: breathing new life into genetics education.
Platform(s): Web games
Playmatics Role:
Educational development and design thinking.
History Detectives Laboratory
History Detectives Laboratory (HD Lab) is an online educational game inspired by the PBS television show History Detectives.
HD Lab is free for classroom use by middle school students. It has two main components: Game Modules and an Open Investigation. In the Game Modules the student plays the role of ‘detective,’ and investigates a mystery surrounding an object. The Modules also help prepare students for their own more free-form ’Open Investigation’ of an object they are curious about, and which may have a connection to U.S. history. The Open Investigation can also be used independently of the Modules. The HD Lab website’s educational resources support the Modules and the Open Investigation. Many of the lesson plans and resources can also be used independently of the Modules and Open Investigation. We have created two Modules – The Case of the Curious Clock, and The Case of the Hooked Hawaiian Knife. They are aligned with Historical Thinking and Common Core State Standards and support curriculum in two historical eras: The New Immigrants (1880 – 1920) and the Emergence of Modern America (1890 – 1930s).
Platform(s): Web
Partner(s): LionTV, Corporation for Public Broadcasting
Playmatics Role:
Design and Full Development
Our City with USAID
Through a one-of-a-kind serious game, players will engage in productive city-building experiences with opportunities to engage both on and offline. “Our City” will focus on exploring how social media, and more importantly serious social games, can engage and empower youth to understand how they can participate in building a vibrant city. The IYCE pilot game will develop an understanding of the key elements in building a vibrant city and offer players the opportunity to accelerate their advancement in the game both through online and offline, real world community engagements. Real-world experiences will be facilitated by strategic partnerships with local youth-focused NGOs. Players will learn to make decisions around an integrated on and offline engaging game experience, developing a community-oriented perspective to make a difference in their digital and real-world communities. Playmatics contributed design and product development services, including on-site visits.
Platform(s): Facebook
Partner(s): Nancy Schwartzman, Jessica Devaney
Playmatics Role:
Game design services.
Confidential Project with Nancy Schwartzmann
Top secret game.
Platform(s): Real-world, web, iOS, Android
Partners:Nancy Schwartzman, Jessica Devaney
Playmatics Role:
Design and development.
Meerkatcher Math Game
The rascally meerkat gang has ruined the zoo’s fences. Add, Subtract, Multiply, and Divide fractions to fix the fences and catch those ‘kats! In conjunction with Lion Television and PBS, Playmatics has created Meerkatcher to help students with their common core math skills!
Platform(s): Web
Partner(s): Lion Television, PBS
Playmatics Role:
Design and development.
Decisions for a Decade with USAID
n Decisions for the Decade, each participant is a provincial governor and small teams make up the governing body of a nation. Central to the game experience is that participants do not initially recognize the likelihood of disasters as deeply uncertain and, like many decision makers in the real world, plan for the most likely disaster scenarios rather than for extreme events that can bring devastating outcomes. All participants begin the game with a budget of ten beans (for a ten-year cycle), and seek to maximize the prosperity of their province and country by investing their budget in long-term development. However, floods and droughts can threaten this investment. The threat of extreme events is initially depicted by a six-sided die, introduced to players as the probability distribution function of precipitation based on the past record (a 1 represents a drought, a 6 a flood). Governors may choose to allocate a portion of their budget to disaster protection to avoid humanitarian crises – investing one bean offers protection against one extreme event. If each extreme event that occurs during ten rolls of the dice is matched by a corresponding protection investment, their development investment leads to prosperity, and the player will accrue Prosperity Points. However, if they incur a crisis (for example more floods occur than flood protection beans invested) all of their development investment for the decade is diverted to crisis management, and the prosperity of their province does not increase. After three ten-year cycles, the winning provinces are those that have accrued the most Prosperity Points while having simultaneously avoided crises. Importantly, unknown to the players, the object representing rainfall is changed at the start of each new decade: the six-sided die is first replaced by an eight-sided die (a flood occurs if the roll is 6 or more: i.e. a probability of 3/8, or more than double the original probability of 1/6); and then by a truncated cone that is nearly impossible to understand in terms of the chances of falling on the big base (representing floods) or the small base (representing droughts) vs. landing on its side (good conditions). As with actual climate projections for much of the world, different players formulate very different interpretations of whether future conditions are likely to become wetter or drier, and as a team they have a chance to reflect on how to manage the emergent deep uncertainty. The game offers participants robust options, which are insensitive to the probabilities of disasters, but which also have a lower payout than would an optimized investment if these probabilities were known. In other words, the robust options work well no matter what the disaster regime, but they may not be the best in any single predicted regime. The game further invites urgency, as scientific information changes during game play, and conflict, as certain decisions require consensus in the face of diverging beliefs about the scientific information.
Sherlock
These workshops explore collaborative creativity and storytelling through the frame of Sherlock Holmes and using the affordances of the Internet of Things.
Platform(s): Storytelling
Partners: Lance Weiler, Digital Storytelling Lab (Columbia University), Lincoln Center
Playmatics Role:
Co-Founder
Higher than the Stars
An IoT enabled game for 12 people that simulates the use of night for early identity exploration, or more simply, sneaking out of your house at 13 to make out.
Platform(s): Real-world
Playmatics Role:
Concept, development, design. In progress.
Landor Associates
Playmatics Role:
Brand and digital media strategy.