Name of Game: LinkedIn

Objective of game: You can go either for the single-player mode: to gather as many connections as you can, in the shortest time possible and reach the 100% network cap (state of progress helpfully depicted in the "network" stat-bar); or the multi-player mode: to gather more "people in my network" than your fellow players.

Rule set: Positive response to "will you be my contact" mail prerequisite for the generation of 1 more network experience point. In order to avoid the spamming of too many innocent people, you can only contact people, whose email address you know or whom you went to work or school with. However, you can ask people in your LinkedIn network to "introduce" you to others, the easiest way to obtain their email addresses.

Game strategy: you can either spam everybody you know with emails (game helps you do this) or wait for others to contact you (might be more successful in the long run, but somewhat slower).
- You can also go for gathering bonuspoints (given for number of testimonals aka "endorsements"), by exchanging testimonals with people that are either a) your close friends or b) someone so afraid of being fired, dumped or flunked by you that they are willing to endorse you anytime, everywhere.
-Workarounds: If you're running out of people to contact, and the "introduce" option is dried out, emails can of course also be obtained by surfing for people's adresses on the www or spamming people you know have the emails, you're missing. You can also invent affiliations to schools you never attended, or workplaces you never worked at, in order to obtain access to new people. This could be considered cheating.

Gameplay:
* clickable colourful buttons (ADD CONNECTIONS, GET INTRODUCED etc)
* radio-buttons (crossing off people you had forgotten you knew at your previous workplaces or that you went to class with)
* text-box input (coming up with creative excuses for why you want to get in touch with people that you a) see quite often anyway b) had a huge fight with the last time you saw them c) dont really want to talk to if you meet them in real life
* searching through the address books of all your mail programmes (desperately looking for email addresses of new people to contact, so you can get your network statbar up to 100%)

Number of Web 2.0 stars *** (3 out of 5):
- stat (statistics) bar huge improvement, as allows immediate feedback on progress
- the "you can only contact people whose email you know" feature provides new interesting obstacle, in that it prevents network maximisation from happening too fast
- exchange of network connections should be possible in return for writing endorsements
- gameplay somewhat limited, developers might consider synchroneous chat option in order to allow people to persuade other people to be their contacts on site
# posted by Lisbeth at: 15:36