"Hello, My Name Is…" Gaming Site for Kids Launches

TopCoder, DARPA Launch NoNameSite.com CS-STEM Gaming Site for Kids

GLASTONBURY, Conn., Sept. 12, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — TopCoder®, Inc., today announced the launch of NoNameSite.com, an innovative game site and community for inspiring computer science, science, technology, engineering and math skill development in middle school and high school students. NoNameSite.com was developed and is maintained by TopCoder with the support of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and will empower kids to exercise and develop their minds through games and challenges in a competitive but safe online environment. The platform will seek to become a top destination for the grade 6-12 demographic by providing an ever changing range of dynamic and fun activities that have the potential to develop innovative thinking and become building blocks for increasingly complex CS-STEM-centric challenges. Measurement and value analysis programs will be matched with incentives to maintain long term player engagement. Participation is free.

Currently funded as a DARPA program, the NoNameSite.com platform is expected to be a fully self-sustaining commercial entity by late 2012. This will be achieved in part by corporate sponsorships and other advertising revenue streams.

“The United States has always been a thought leader in developing new ways to address pressing problems in the economy and the environment that impact society in this country as well as globally. Solutions to many of these problems will come from individuals who have successfully mastered critical STEM-related skills,” said Jack Hughes, chairman and founder of TopCoder, Inc. “This community-centric educational experience will create new competitions and opportunities that will encourage young students to develop their critical thinking abilities through the concept of ‘gamification’, and help build better solutions for our world.”

Examples of ready to play NoNameSite.com games include:

Brando the Egghunter:
Brando is an egg collector who is climbing on a cliff face. He can’t see the moves he needs to make soplayers send Brando text directions by typing specific commands to get him to turn the desired direction a certain number of degrees. Link here

Into the Claw:
Inspired by the classic arcade game which uses a mechanical crane and dropping claw to retrieve prizes. Into the Claw is a numbers and operators challenge that requires ‘capturing’ specific values while working towards set goals under precise constraints Link here

Alice in BooleanLand:
How hard can “true” and “false” be?  Alice and the Cat will show you!  Players correct jumbled truths and plumb the secrets of a 0 and 1 world by playing this Boolean game. Link here