{"id":6375,"date":"2015-03-01T12:16:33","date_gmt":"2015-03-01T19:16:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/BigJimIndustries.com\/wordpress\/?p=6375"},"modified":"2015-03-01T12:18:34","modified_gmt":"2015-03-01T19:18:34","slug":"endgame-helps-ward-off-endgame-for-cahokia-mounds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2015\/03\/01\/endgame-helps-ward-off-endgame-for-cahokia-mounds\/","title":{"rendered":"ENDGAME Helps Ward Off Endgame for Cahokia Mounds"},"content":{"rendered":"

from St. Louis Public Radio<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Crowdfunding and an alternate reality game provide a modern boost for ancient mounds<\/h1>\n

By MARY DELACH LEONARD<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Monks<\/a>Monks Mound, the largest prehistoric earthen construction in [the Americas]<\/em>
\nPHOTO COURTESY CAHOKIA MOUNDS STATE HISTORIC SITE<\/p>\n

After word spread that the cash-strapped\u00a0Cahokia Mounds Museum Society<\/a>\u00a0was crowdfunding to raise $7,500 to print brochures for the storied Illinois landmark — the largest prehistoric Indian site north of Mexico — donations poured in from down the road, around\u00a0the globe and from a mysterious\u00a0alternate reality.<\/p>\n

More than 500 people pledged upward of $8,500 to the\u00a0campaign on gofundme.com<\/a>\u00a0after\u00a0St. Louis Public Radio\u2019s story<\/a>on Feb. 23 made the rounds on social media. Many of the donors are players of\u00a0Endgame<\/a>, an alternate reality game created by Google\u2019s Niantic Labs, which adopted the cause because Cahokia Mounds is one of the ancient societies included in the game\u2019s lore.<\/p>\n

Lori Belknap, the society\u2019s executive director, said she was surprised and grateful when the Endgame players began driving the contributions upward. They used the hashtag #AncSoc to designate their connection to\u00a0Ancient Societies<\/a>, an Endgame website.<\/p>\n

Belknap said the campaign touched a nerve.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt says to me that a lot of people are passionate about our site and are appalled at what\u2019s happening with funding — and how we\u2019re affected by the state\u2019s politics and budget concerns,\u2019\u2019 she said.<\/p>\n

Unlikely allies from an alternate reality<\/span><\/p>\n

The crowdfunding effort by the Cahokia Mounds Museum Society was slow-going until the Endgame players jumped in. The gofundme.com page, which was posted nearly a month ago, had about $550 in contributions when St. Louis Public Radio highlighted the need behind the campaign.<\/p>\n

Brian Rose, community manager at Niantic Labs, says a player alerted Endgame to the story after it triggered a Google alert on Cahokia Mounds. Endgame issued a\u00a0\u201ccall to action,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0offering to match contributions of $5 or more marked with the #AncSoc hashtag, until the goal was reached. The players were also added to a beta list for a mobile game app that will launch soon.<\/p>\n

Rose noted that some of the players live in the St. Louis area, but most of the contributors live across the United States, and some are from Europe and Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really great to see how quickly people leapt to action on this,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u201cPlayers wanted to contribute because that\u2019s sort of what the game is all about — rediscovering and supporting these ancient societies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Niantic matched about $2,100 in donations, and author James Frey, who wrote the Endgame trilogy on which the game is based, donated $1,000.<\/p>\n

Rose said the challenge fit with the mission statement for Niantic Labs — \u00a0\u201cadventures on foot with others\u201d — which seeks to build real-life experiences into its games.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were looking at how people were playing video games and it\u2019s somewhat of a solitary hobby. Usually, people were sitting behind TVs or computer monitors,\u2019\u2019 he said. \u201cWe wanted to give people some encouragement or incentive — some reward to explore neighborhoods around them and to travel more and to rediscover their neighborhoods and find the hidden gems in their towns.\u201d<\/p>\n

[ click to read complete article at St. Louis Public Radio<\/a> ]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from St. Louis Public Radio Crowdfunding and an alternate reality game provide a modern boost for ancient mounds By MARY DELACH LEONARD Monks Mound, the largest prehistoric earthen construction in [the Americas] PHOTO COURTESY CAHOKIA MOUNDS STATE HISTORIC SITE After word spread that the cash-strapped\u00a0Cahokia Mounds Museum Society\u00a0was crowdfunding to raise $7,500 to print brochures […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversation-information","category-culture-art","category-projects"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6375\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}