On March 4th, 2013, the oppressive armies of the 2nd Collective Task Empire launched a successful invasion on the mainland of the then divided Casian States. Over the weeks prior, many of the independent states had participated in border skirmishes, and while divided, the Casian states defeated the precursor to the 2nd Collective Task Empire in December. However, given the brutal nature of the Task offensive, 6 of the Casian states have unified to retake the Casian Archipelago. Together, the Pink Panthers, Galloping Giraffes, Head Honchos, Hungry Hippos, Turbaned Torpedoes and the Two Door Cinema Club strive for unconditional victory and the complete destruction of the 2nd Collective Task Empire.

In Reality Is Broken, Jane McGonigal discusses the use of ARGs to give incentive to complete real-world tasks. The ideas espoused in her book may seem radical and counter-intuitive to some. However, in our experiment, these concepts have proven useful to improve the quality, quantity, rate of completion, and efficiency of our assigned academic work.  After having applied McGonigal’s concepts to construct a game of ‘Risk,’ each member of our team completed the individual portfolios in a successful and timely manner.

We invite you to follow us in our analysis on this successful experiment.

-Jonathan Bedard, Joth Bhullar, Michael Echaniz, Lauren McCormick, Mohit Nalavadi, Bernadette Saddik