PlayPower is a project that used radically affordable 8-bit “street computers” as a platform for educational gaming. It was the winner of the 2009 MacArthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Grant, and was noted broadly in the academic domain and by the web community.

We started PlayPower as a student project in India in 2007. Later-on it was developed further at MIT’s DLAB summer school. Other collaborators included Don Miller (N0Carrier), Jeremiah Johnson (NullSleep), Daniel Rehn, and Jeremy Douglass.

With games co-designed in India by students at the CMU/IIIT-Hyderabad winter school, we developed an 8-bit typing game (Hanuman Typing Warrior), a science quiz game (Hanuman Science Adventure) and a Malaria education game (SWAT). These games were presented to the CTO of the Obama presidency in 2009.

Read more about PlayPower.org on The Guardian, Wired, Calit2 and abcNews.