A game with a purpose (or GWAP) is a game played on a computer that serves some purpose for the people setting up the game by harnessing human abilities in an entertaining setting.
There are many activities that are almost trivial for humans to perform that have stymied computers. These tasks can include labelling images to improve web searching, transcription of ancient text (where OCR software faces a script they are not optimized for and degraded or damaged images) and any activity requiring common sense or human experience.
The first example was the ESP Game, an effort in human computation originally conceived by Luis von Ahn of Carnegie Mellon University, which labels images. To make it an entertaining effort for humans two players attempt to assign the same labels to an image. The game records the results of matches as image labels and the players enjoy the encounter because of the competitive and timed nature of it. To ensure that people do their best to accurately label the images, the game requires two people (chosen at random and unknown to each other), who have only the image in common, to choose the same word as an image label. This discourages vandalism because it would be self defeating as a strategy.
The term "GWAP" was first coined by Carnegie Mellon University professor Lenore Blum, a research colleague of von Ahn.[1]
A linguistic version of this design is a game called Phrase Detectives, developed by Essex University, which assigns anaphoric links within text. The game uses a decision-validation method to efficiently gather judgements from users, as well as to provide interuser scoring.
Foldit, while also a gwap, has a different type of method for tapping the collective human brain. This game challenges players to use their human intuition of 3-dimensional space to help with protein folding algorithms. Unlike the ESP Game which focuses on the results that humans are able to provide, Foldit is trying to understand how humans approach complicated, 3 dimensional objects. By 'watching' how humans play the game, researchers hope to be able to improve their own computer programs. Instead of simply performing tasks that computers cannot do, this gwap is asking humans to help make current machine algorithms better.
See also
References
- Communications of the ACM, issue: 08/08 Vol. 51 NO. 8 (August 2008), article: Designing Games with a Purpose.
- www.gwap.com
- Foldit-Science
External links
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