Whale of a crowd: Quantifying the effectiveness of crowd-sourced serious games

In this paper we analyze several Crowd-Sourced Serious Games (CSSGs), a new genre focused on advancing widely respected causes such as social equality and science. We observe that the general effectiveness of these games has remained largely unknown. Existing performance analyses have been limited to documenting experiences with individual systems. More importantly, existing game analytics approaches are designed for games that provide personal experience and entertainment. In contrast, CSSGs attract participants by evoking their sense of social responsibility and sympathy for others. Intuitively, social awareness and sympathy alone may not result in the same level of consistent participation as personal achievement, or fun. Consequently, the success of a CSSG may be more tightly linked to the contributions of few highly-dedicated players (whales).