Grand Text Auto

Tiltfactor founding director Mary Flanagan and Tiltfactor alum Gili Freedman (currently Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at St. Mary’s College of Maryland) recently collaborated on an article entitled “The Effect of Embodying a Woman Scientist in Virtual Reality on Men’s Gender Biases” for the peer-reviewed, open-access journal Technology, Mind, and Behavior.

Flanagan and Freedman, along with collaborators Max Seidman (Tiltfactor Senior Game Designer) and Melanie Green (Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Communication at the University of Buffalo) tested “whether embodying a woman scientist in virtual reality (VR) leads to more positive attitudes toward women in STEM.”

Tiltfactor Lab’s very own Mary Flanagan was inspired by the Atari 2600 digital experiences of her childhood to create the artwork [giantJoystick], a 10-foot tall Atari CX40 controller weighing about 3,000 pounds.

[giantJoystick] was recently recognized by the Guinness World Records 2022 Book as the largest joystick in the world and is currently housed in the permanent collection of ZKM Center for Art and media in Karlsruhe, Germany. To learn more about the piece and gain exclusive insights into Mary Flanagan’s artistic journey, check out our Dartmouth News profile below!

Source: https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2021/10/atari-style-artwork-makes-guinness-world-records-2022-book

This week we lost a true great philosopher-king of play: Bernie DeKoven, who passed away in Indiana on Sunday. Founder of “The Games Preserve,” a game retreat center in Pennsylvania, he then went on to become involved in the New Games Movement, a 1970s collective that focused on physical and cooperative play to encourage dialogue and move away from competitive conflict resolution. During the Vietnam War, this movement stood out as having underlying political themes, and the games developed reshaped consciousness in a positive way. Bernie became the director of the New Games Foundation which created highly influential training programs as well as The New Games Book. Bernie “Blue” DeKoven brought his unstoppable brightness to his work as an organizer, trainer, thinker, writer, and activist. He impacted so many lives, including mine on both a personal and professional level.

This week we lost a true great philosopher-king of play: Bernie DeKoven, who passed away in Indiana on Sunday. Founder of “The Games Preserve,” a game retreat center in Pennsylvania, he then went on to become involved in the New Games Movement, a 1970s collective that focused on physical and cooperative play to encourage dialogue and move away from competitive conflict resolution. During the Vietnam War, this movement stood out as having underlying political themes, and the games developed reshaped consciousness in a positive way. Bernie became the director of the New Games Foundation which created highly influential training programs as well as The New Games Book. Bernie “Blue” DeKoven brought his unstoppable brightness to his work as an organizer, trainer, thinker, writer, and activist. He impacted so many lives, including mine on both a personal and professional level.

We are excited to launch our online adventure game, Crowded Dungeon!

Designed by Tiltfactor with development by Producto Studios, Crowded Dungeon at first seems like a traditional ‘dungeon crawl’-style game. The player directs a hero through many rooms of a very crowded dungeon, frequently encountering monsters that bar her way. Unlike traditional games, instead of fighting the monsters, players must talk their way past them; you’ll need to figure out what each monster wants, and figure out what you can type to convince them to let you pass.

We are excited to launch our online adventure game, Crowded Dungeon!

Designed by Tiltfactor with development by Producto Studios, Crowded Dungeon at first seems like a traditional ‘dungeon crawl’-style game. The player directs a hero through many rooms of a very crowded dungeon, frequently encountering monsters that bar her way. Unlike traditional games, instead of fighting the monsters, players must talk their way past them; you’ll need to figure out what each monster wants, and figure out what you can type to convince them to let you pass.

Our lab director, Mary Flanagan, is one of thirty fellows in the Higher Education Video Game Alliance. Read more about it in the Dartmouth news.

Happy 2016 in review! It is now a tradition for us to take a moment this time of year to give thanks for everyone’s contributions and debrief a little on studio happenings.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media contact: Amy Olson | amy.d.olson@dartmouth.edu | 603-646-3274

Digital Media May Be Changing How You Think
New Study Finds Users Focus on Concrete Details Rather than the Big Picture

HANOVER, N.H. – May 9, 2016 – Tablet and laptop users beware. Using digital platforms such as tablets and laptops for reading may make you more inclined to focus on concrete details rather than interpreting information more abstractly, according to a new study published in the proceedings of ACM CHI ’16, the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, held May 7-12. The findings serve as another wake-up call to how digital media may be affecting our likelihood of using abstract thought.

We are looking for a full stack developer to create a small mobile application that can capture, process, and display images. The software is to run in a standalone setting— the main reason for mobile is to use the touchscreen on wall-mounted tablets (likely iPads) and access the camera. Therefore the project could be made in a wrapped browser window inside something like Phonegap — it’s not intended for distribution on the app store.

Tiltfactor Lab Open House

April 27 (Wednesday)
3:30 – 6:00pm
Room 245 in the Black Family Visual Arts Center (VAC)

Enjoy Thai appetizers and beverages while playing video games developed at Dartmouth’s very own Tiltfactor lab, including the award-winning Smorball, as well as top secret games still in development, and board and card games. Meet and chat about games and game design with Professor Mary Flanagan and the Tiltfactor team.

Everyone, we are excited to announce that Dr. Gili Freedman will be joining our Tiltfactor team. Gili is a social psychologist who is interested in how people interact with each other and how we can make those interactions better.

She received her B.A. in Psychology from Haverford College and her Ph.D. in Social and Personality Psychology from the University of Texas at Austin. Most recently, she was a visiting assistant professor at Roanoke College researching social rejection and teaching social psychology, personality psychology, and psychology in the media. Dr Freedman is very excited to be joining Tiltfactor this Spring, and we are excited to have her!

We’d love to share our gratitude for all of the good Tiltfactor goings-on with you! There is quite a bit to be thankful for this year.

Awards

This year, to date, Tiltfactor garnered much recognition!

Smorball and its ‘Best Serious Game’ award

1. In September, the Tiltfactor team won the “Best Serious Game Award” for our transcription game Smorball at the Boston Festival of Indie Games. Read all about it! Our computers were constantly filled, as players loved the game and fiercely competed to top each others’ high scores! Check out the complete list of awards at the festival.

Post Doctoral Researcher Position at Dartmouth College for 2016

The award winning  game design and research laboratory at Dartmouth College, Tiltfactor (http://www.tiltfactor.org) has an opening for a full-time postdoctoral research position in social psychology to begin January or August 2016. The Tiltfactor team designs, creates, and studies games for social impact. The postdoctoral researcher will design and conduct formal empirical studies, primarily on games.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact: Amy D. Olson | Amy.D.Olson@dartmouth.edu | 603-646-3274

Dartmouth’s Tiltfactor Launches Games to Improve Access to Biodiversity Heritage Library Content

Smorball and Beanstalk Allow Players to Transcribe Texts through Play

HANOVER, N.H. – June 9, 2015 – Today, Dartmouth College’s Tiltfactor, an interdisciplinary studio that designs and studies games for social impact, announced the launch of two new crowdsourcing games, Smorball (smorballgame.org) and Beanstalk (beanstalkgame.org). The games have been created to improve access to books and journals online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) collection by verifying the accuracy of text previously encoded by optical character recognition software.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact: Amy D. Olson | Amy.D.Olson@dartmouth.edu | 603-646-3274

Dartmouth’s Tiltfactor Launches Games to Improve Access to Biodiversity Heritage Library Content

Smorball and Beanstalk Allow Players to Transcribe Texts through Play

HANOVER, N.H. – June 9, 2015 – Today, Dartmouth College’s Tiltfactor, an interdisciplinary studio that designs and studies games for social impact, announced the launch of two new crowdsourcing games, Smorball (smorballgame.org) and Beanstalk (beanstalkgame.org). The games have been created to improve access to books and journals online in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) collection by verifying the accuracy of text previously encoded by optical character recognition software.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

HANOVER, N.H. – March 2, 2015 – Dartmouth College’s Tiltfactor, an interdisciplinary innovation studio, is excited to announce new work with collections from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. A living memorial to the Holocaust, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum inspires citizens and leaders worldwide to confront hatred, prevent genocide, and promote human dignity.

The Tiltfactor game design and research laboratory at Dartmouth College (http://www.tiltfactor.org) is seeking applications for a full-time postdoctoral research position in social psychology for the 2015-2016 academic year. Tiltfactor Lab at Dartmouth College designs, creates, and studies games for social impact. The lab’s projects include games that address (and change) biases and stereotypes; games for health, which seek to educate players about issues in public health and health care delivery; and crowdsourcing games, which aim to harness the power of crowds to gather new information.  The postdoctoral researcher will design and conduct formal empirical studies on games.  The lab’s previous games include board games, card games, sports, and digital games. A suite of games addressed gender bias in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), such as the lab’s party games Awkward Moment, Awkward Moment at Work, and Buffalo The Name Dropping Game. Currently, we are working on a National Science Foundation-funded project that uses “interactive text adventures” to improve the classroom climate for underrepresented students in STEM classrooms.  Other current projects focus on topics ranging from counteracting climate change to modeling effective bystander interventions in cases of potential sexual assault.

We are pleased to issue an open call for applications to “Engaging the Public: Best Practices for Crowdsourcing Across the Disciplines.” This workshop, to be held at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD, on May 6-8, 2015, is being led by Dartmouth College and the University of Maryland, with the support of the National Endowment of the Humanities, the Institute for Museum and Library Services, and the Sloan Foundation.

Dartmouth College, in collaboration with the University of Maryland, has received an award for a cooperative agreement from the NEH’s Office of Digital Humanities to fund a workshop, “Engaging the Public: Best Practices for Crowdsourcing Across the Disciplines.”

This project will explore how “crowdsourcing” can encourage wide audiences to engage in humanities projects by participating in and contributing to research. The workshop is tentatively scheduled for May 2015; check the Crowdsourcing Consortium for Libraries and Archives’s website, crowdconsortium.org, for updates.

NEH Press Release
@NEH_ODH

Tiltfactor and the University of Edinburgh, Library and University Collections are excited to announce the addition of over 3,300 images from the University of Edinburgh to Metadata Games. This collection, a miscellaneous “gallimaufry” (a confused jumble or medley) of digitized items from Special Collections, displays the sheer variety and breadth of material held by the Centre for Research Collections.

Metadata Games is a free and open source (FOSS) crowdsourcing gaming platform that entices players to visit archives and explore humanities content while contributing to vital records. The suite enables archivists to gather and analyze information for digital media archives in novel and exciting ways. Metadata Games contains tens of thousands of media items from over 40 collections represented by 10 institutions.

On December 11, 2014 at 12pm EST, the Crowdsourcing Consortium for Libraries and Archives (CCLA) will hold its second 1-hour webinar titled, “Scoping and Funding Crowdsourcing Projects.” This webinar, hosted in conjunction with the OCLC, will explore how researchers, as well as libraries, museums and archives, interested in studying or using crowdsourcing techniques can seek funding for their ideas.

Crowdsourcing in the humanities is an emerging new area for museums, libraries, and archives. The CCLA was formed with the goal to unite leading-edge technology groups in libraries and archives as well as humanities scholars and scholars from the sciences in a conversation about best practices, shared toolsets, and strategies for using crowdsourcing.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Institute of Museum and Library Services-Funded
Crowdsourcing Consortium for Libraries and Archives
to Host Inaugural 2014 Open Webinar

Crowdsourcing 101: Fundamentals and Case Studies” Webinar
on October 29, 12pm EDT.

HANOVER, N.H. – October 20, 2014 –The Crowdsourcing Consortium for Libraries and Archives (CCLA) announced the first in a series of international webinars, titled ‘Crowdsourcing 101: Fundamentals and Case Studies,’ scheduled for October 29 at 12 pm EDT. Crowdsourcing in the humanities is an emerging new area for museums, libraries, and archives. The CCLA was formed earlier this year with an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) award, with the goal to unite leading-edge technology groups in libraries and archives as well as humanities scholars and scholars from the sciences in a conversation about best practices, shared toolsets, and strategies for using crowdsourcing.

For Immediate Release:
September 30, 2014

The National Science Foundation’s Research on Education and Learning (REAL) program has awarded Dr. Mary Flanagan, Tiltfactor Laboratory at Dartmouth, and collaborator, Dr. Melanie Green, University at Buffalo, a three-year, $1,134,208 grant to develop and research an “interactive narrative” technology for use by students and instructors in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) classrooms.