In a two-birds-one-stone fashion I spent the better part of a week experimenting with the HTML5 Canvas and JavaScript to create Portfolio Quest.
The premise is simple--like most adventure games--the pages of my portfolio are lost and it's your job to find them. As a game it's painfully linear, lacks conflict and has no reason to engage past the single five minute quest; however, as a portfolio it beckons more than just a passing glance.
Getting people to engage becomes a secondary challenge. At a conference like the GDC you are overwhelmed not only with visuals and sounds, but more business cards than you can imagine. I chose to 'borrow' some equity in keeping with the theme of my portfolio and created minimal business cards.
I regretted not putting more contact information on the cards as I found myself jotting my email down quite a bit for people you wanted to reconnect during the show. (I also did similar cards for my start-up, and had similar regrets...)
All in all, I believe the project was a success and has had a steadily rising visitor rate even after the conference. If you want to try it out, go to the Portfolio Quest site. If you want to see what the non-gamification version of my portfolio looks like, visit www.michaelwilson.tv.
