Gameology: Commentary and Resources for the Game Studies Community

I had a very similar reaction, commenting a comparison to the Amazon mechanical Turk.

I wonder if it is eerie or obvious that we both immediately thought of the iterated prisoner's dilemma? Perhaps only because it leads to great examples of collusion. Reactions:

Going by title, "Image Labeler" this is being presented as a collective intelligence public works project, like Amazon Mechanical Turk. That may be why the side-effects of competitive play weren't fully anticipated - the attitude may have been that to some extent all play would be collectivist in outlook. Perhaps a hard lesson will be learned when they datamine the results, or perhaps they have found that it is trivial to screen cheaters - although it doesn't appear so given that the rankings boards have been full of cheaters.

Also, regarding the comment on the ESP game, Luis von Ahn has confirmed it was Google licensed for Image Labeler purposes.