Gwap: Changing the World Through Games

March 2nd, 2009 in News, by Head Honcho

Here’s a scenario: You need to have some work done, but you say to yourself that you can still make time to visit your favorite gaming website. But then, you enjoy yourself too much that you haven’t noticed that you have been playing for over two hours already. And then comes that empty feeling that you have just spent part of your day just playing, with nothing good to show for it. Does this happen to you?

With Gwap, there is now a good excuse to play online games - you can rationalize that your are changing the web. You may be better off just finishing that paperwork, but at least the time you’ve spent playing Gwap games has resulted in something positive.

As the elevator pitch of the website provides:

When you play a game at Gwap, you aren’t just having fun. You’re helping the world become a better place. By playing our games, you’re training computers to solve problems for humans all over the world.

For example, in Gwap’s ESP Game, you and and an online partner are shown the same image and are asked to type in a tag for it. When you agree on a tag, you move on and are awarded points. After just a minute of play, you’ve agreed on six or seven tags. The tags are then recorded and are henceforth associated with that image. Now a search engine will have a better idea of what’s in those images.

There are other games in Gwap aside from the ESP Game. The site also has Tag a Tune, Verbosity, Squigl and Matchin. All of the games require a partner (to be chosen at random by the server) in order to play.

In Hear A Tune, you and your partner hear a tune. You must then describe that tune.  Based on the descriptions, you have to figure out if you and your partner are hearing the same tunes.

In verbosity, you and a partner will alternate as to who will describe and who will guess the given secret word. If you are the one to describe, you must give clues to your partner for him to find out the secret word. If you are tasked to guess, you must type in as quickly as possible the word that your partner is trying to describe.

In Squigl, you and a partner see the same image and word. You have then have to trace the object described in the word. You get points for matching your partner’s trace.

In Matchin, you and a partner will be shown two images. You then have to choose the image that you you like most. Points will be awarded if you and your partner clicks on the same image.

Gwap also has the Gender Guesser, where you are shown 10 slides of two images each. You then have to pick an image you like better. At the end of the slides, Gwap will tell you the probability of you being a woman or a man.

So if you have time to burn, or you are just plain procrastinating, go visit Gwap for some guilt-free playtime. You can always tell yourself that you are not just wasting time, you are teaching computers things that they don’t know yet - and helping them learn.