Links for Me: eScavenger

Only three links here to review, so let's have at the first one.

eScavengers - Let The Adventure Begin!

Aside from being a sort of puzzling dual website, this game seems to be an online game where you compete with other players in order to gain in-game currency, which can be traded for more tangible products. Online retailer subscriptions, various products, and so forth.

The method of playing involves a scavenger hunt through selected pages of companies that sponsor each game. The game gives you a hint, the answer type (image, text, number, etc.), and you have to scour the page to find the item that matches the hint and select the correct area with the crosshairs. Incorrect guesses penalize you with time, which I assume lowers your overall reward. It involves careful reading of each page, which explains why it has specific sponsors, because it forces you to read the website carefully rather than skimming over it.

As to how I think the game works, I'm guessing it's all pre-determined, rather than an on-the-fly scan and hint generation. Since the game only requires you to get about 6 answers to clear the level, then the creators can pick 20 hints from 20 different pages and just randomize them.

As to the relevance to our project, in dealing with the whole internet scanning idea, it doesn't quite match. Rather than translating the page into a whole different format, the game makes you deal with all the formatting the vendor wants you to see. The pages are likely pre-formatted and pre-loaded, and don't deal much with how pages can change and can be edited. As for the competition aspect, it kind of follows the idea of discovery, but hardly a who-can-discover-this-first, and more of a who-can-complete-the-levels-fastest. The real world prizes for game resources is a good motivation, but obviously out of the scope of a project made by two college students.

All-in-all, a good game that makes dealing with webpages a game rather than a chore (even if it is a blatant advertising ploy on the part of the company sponsoring it), and a good way to reward people for participating.