Citizen Archivists at Play: Game Design for Gathering Metadata for Cultural Heritage Institutions


Flanagan Mary Punjasthitkul Sukdith Seidman Max Kaufman Geoff Carini Peter
2014 DiGRA '13 - Proceedings of the 2013 DiGRA International Conference: DeFragging Game Studies

In this paper, we detail our design process for the Metadata Games project and discuss a number of design challenges involved in making a “metadata game,” such as incentivizing players to offer accurate information, devising and deploying methods for verifying the accuracy of data, and introducing effective motivations for ensuring high replay potential. We present our “Outlier Design” model for creating effective crowdsourcing applications, and offer the Metadata Games prototype One-Up as an example. This game’s design addresses the challenges of gathering increasingly higher quality metadata while creating a compelling play experience.