I’m looking for an intern / collaborator / web coder. The task is small, but needs to be done in the next 2-3 weeks. There is some pay.
Here’s the project:
Game: Prayer Call / Silent Attack
What: Social media lets people shout out into the silence. But what if the silence had a chance to shout back? In this real-world, persistent game of freeze tag, players sign up with their mobile number. Five random times a day, they receive an SMS to stop what they’re doing for a full minute – no matter what. Scores for the number of successful freezes, bonuses for high-profile situations.
Where: NYC based, but open to distance collaborations. The game was commissioned by the Religion Media Culture conference in Eskisehir, Turkey, with help from the University of Colorado, Boulder. Will be deployed both places, with other festivals interested at this writing.
When: Immed!
Background: Game designer is Jason Anthony, who works at the intersections of games and religion. Prayer Call/ Silent Attack is a hack of the 5x day Salah prayers that devout Muslims observe – stopping everything in the middle of the day to shift their perspective. Game is designed for an audience of mixed Muslim/non-muslim, religious/secular audiences as a introduction to the topic of games and the future of religion.
Help Needed: 1 Intern / collaborator / webmaster
Requirements: Coding ability. Will need to create 2-3 pages on the game site. These pages let the user sign up with a mobile number, and push 5 SMS messages to them at “random” times the next day. (The times can be determined in advance, if easier.) Easiest may be to integrate the Twilio API, which facilitates web to SMS. Position will need to figure out this portion – how to sign people up, and push these SMS messages to them. (Twilio has offered to help support implementation.) Design needs to happen and playtest in the next few weeks (!), before the first conference on July 8 in Eskisehir, Turkey. Availability for further game deployments this summer/fall TBA would be great. Game smarts also welcome. Designer open to design ideas and improvements.
Pay: Some. Honorarium negotiable. There’s $300 from the festival which I can offer, and I may be able to wrangle addl funds.
Artist’s Bio: I’m a game designer/writer who works at the intersections of games and religion. (I am not religious myself.)
I’ve staged my games around the world. Shabbat-Put was mashup of Jewish sabbath rituals, performed and at the London Southbank Center. Union Theological Seminary in NYC commissioned me to create a game-based church service, which ran by the rules of blackjack. I staged a revival of the Aztec ball games, complete with human sacrifice.
I lecture widely about gamification and meaning. Recent engagements include: Keynote speaker at the Institute for the Future (Palo Alto & San Francisco); Keynote speaker at the Nordic Exceptional Trendshop (Århus, Denmark); Keynote speaker at the Lego Education Symposium (Billund, Denmark); Plenary speaker at the Intn’l Conference of Digital Religion (Boulder, CO); Keynote speaker at the Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference (Salt Lake City), and many others. I’ve just contributed a chapter to an academic textbook about religion and digital games, to be published this fall.
I guess I’m most noted for creating the Ten Year Game, a fully gamed religion. That project is ongoing.
Here’s a 5-minute lecture I gave at the London Center of Contemporary Art, which sums up a lot of my work.
