I'm developing Primer and the Open Primer platform could help power Evoke

Evoke team,

I'm developing a first-person learner game called Primer and a learning game platform called Open Primer.
http://www.openprimer.org

In a nutshell, Primer is a learning game with an epic story that teaches players to master real-world skills and ultimately to make new learning games using an OpenPrimer platform so that anything is possible and anything is playable.

Players traverse the world tree from the roots of Mythosia and Historia (where we come from) to the trunk Myopia (the nearsighted now). Players must save the future from where we are heading, Dystopia (hindsight), to unlock the future of humanity, Utopia (foresight). The story begins with the player escaping from the Platonic Allegory of the Cave in Mythosia and world-hopping their way through timespace, scientific history and allegorical mythology to face the greatest dangers threatening the future of our world and mastering real-world knowledge and skills to overcome humankind's greatest challenges.

I think the OpenPrimer platform could be used to help develop Evoke's missions into a cohesive 3D MMO gameplay environment to augment the CMSRPG gameplay that it has now.

I currently teach Gamebridge Unityversity game development cla**** at Noisebridge Hackerspace to develop the game development learning curriculum for Primer using the free Unity game engine..

1. The Place. Where will you make a difference? Describe the institution, community, town or other geographic or virtual space in which you will focus your efforts.

We're often asked who our "target demographic" is, to which we reply, "Humans." The Primer game will make a difference to every person who wants to learn, and especially young people with a thirst for knowledge. It will contain age-appropriate learning to teach literacy and numeracy to younger players and adult-appropriate challenges including university-level learning of open courseware in an immersive game environment much like America's Army does with real military training.

Primer will initially run on iPhone/iPad but it will be quickly portable to run on all platforms: iPhone/iPad, Android, Mac, Windows, web browser plugin, XBox 360, Playstation 3, Wii & Ubuntu netbooks.

It will also integrate with web-based CMSRPG gameplay like Evoke's and Open Courseware systems like Open Learning Initiative.

It will appeal initially to players in first-world countries with decent 3D graphics-capable devices like iPhones and laptops, but it will eventually support a wide range of devices that are affordable enough to make A Young Afghan's illustrated Primer a possibility. This is our first experiment in creating a special set of missions designed to help kids in a particular third-world environment to bootstrap themselves. The Young Afghan's Primer missions show players how to create wifi networks and netbook access for their communities to connect with the world, improve access to aid services, and learn geek skills to earn money in the global economy.

2. The Challenge. What will you aim to change, and for whom? Highlight what is the need that you perceive and who will benefit from this change.

Ignorance is the new malaria. Boredom is the symptom. Learning games are the cure. And games that teach players to make more learning games are the cure multiplication delivery vehicle that makes it possible for every learning game that could be built to get built. The technology now exists to bootstrap humans with games to make games to bootstrap everything else. Apathy is obsolete.



3. The Idea. Your solution – what is the action, product, service, project, change that you will initiate? Tell us how will your idea will succeed where others have failed.

Learning games so far have existed in a "serious" or "educatainment" category without mainstream game industry appeal. And the learning games that appeal strongly to a narrow interest group are two few to cover all the areas to which learning games could be applied. As a result, not enough gamers play learning games, and not enough good learning games exist to teach the full range of learnable knowledge.

Primer is simultaneously a AAA-quality immersive MMO that regular gamers can get sucked into and a platform for making more learning games so that every area of interest can get covered by an explosion of new learning games. Primer will make learning games the most popular category with gamers and OpenPrimer will enable the creation of games that cover the full spectrum of learning to offer gamers a path to learn anything and everything while having fun doing it.



4. The Money. What would you do with your first US$1,000 given or invested in support of your vision?

I have spent my life savings up to this point developing two parts of the Primer game system:
a prototype of the CMSRPG back-end for players to create real-world profiles of themselves with which to learn
a prototype of the 3D MMORPG for players to learn the skills they need to accomplish both in-game and real-world missions

I started a side project called Tactical Corsets (http://www.tacticalcorsets.com) to help fund continued development. But at the moment I'm the only full-time paid team member. I need funding to change that and get more team members working away.

I'm building a budget for the first release of the game and platform technology that will itemize the project's financial needs in more detail.

The first $1000 would go to immediately recruiting and paying our first 3 team members:
a dedicated Unity programmer
a 3D artist with modeling, texturing and character animation skills
a web developer preferably with Drupal and/or Python skills

The sooner I have paid team members working on these areas, the sooner I can concentrate on the game design instead of implementing all the web and game code and art myself as I've done so far.


5. The Primer team so far:

Alex Peake, project leader, game designer, writer, programmer, modeler, texturer, game development teacher
Michael Csurics (of 2K/Bioshock 2 fame), audio & voice acting director
Elizabeth Vaughan, lead voice actor
Colin Barton, writer
Skye Estes, artist
Caitlyn Meeks, Unity mentor

Sincerely,

Alex Peake

Alex Peake
Primerist http://www.openprimer.org
Corsetier http://www.tacticalcorsets.com
openprimer@gmail.com

"What is meant by evolution? It's the choice species have got:
extinction or adaptation. Survive's an option. Change is not."