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GAMERDNA ANNOUNCES CHILD’S PLAY COMMUNITY CONTEST WINNER; DONATES BUNDLES OF GAMES TO CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL

14 Leading Online Communities Spread Good Cheer –
And 12 million Virtual Badges – During the Holiday Season

 CAMBRIDGE, MA – January 6, 2009 – GamerDNA.com, an online community and social platform for video game players, today announced ElitistJerks.com, a site dedicated to online discussion of World of Warcraft, as the winner of the gamerDNA and Child’s Play Charity Online Community Contest.  The contest attracted 14 participating communities and over 12 million virtual badge views to raise over $5,000 for the Child’s Play Charity. For their achievement, Elitist Jerks will receive six bundles of Nintendo DS systems and games as well as 80 Electronic Arts games to donate to  University Medical Center (UMC) in Las Vegas, Nevada, the charity of their choice.

“Being in the hospital is especially difficult on kids, and we look for any chance to take their minds off their injury or illness through fun activities,” said UMC Pediatric ICU Manager Cindy Jones.  “Studies show that kids get better faster by using diversional activities in the hospital.  This generous donation will certainly help us in getting kids back…to being kids!”  

With the goal of helping to gather donations for children’s hospitals across the globe this holiday season, gamerDNA teamed up with the Child’s Play Charity to launch an online contest during the month of December.  GamerDNA secured the participation of 14 online communities including Elitist Jerks, GameDaily, ZAM, Piczo, Gaming Angels, College Humor, Six Apart, and IMVU, among others.  Community members were challenged to share unique virtual badges in as many places as possible online, while representing their community and helping to spread the word about Child’s Play.

“We jumped at the chance at participating in such a fun and worthy contest surrounding the holidays and it’s been great working with the gamerDNA team on this,” said Andrew Hunn of ElitistJerks.com. “We are so glad that our community joined together and that we’ve helped spread some holiday cheer amongst kids at our local hospital.”

“We are thrilled with the response we have received from the participating communities and the awareness raised on behalf of Child’s Play,” said Sam Houston, Community Manager at gamerDNA. “The level of engagement has been even higher than we originally expected and our efforts will not end here – we look forward to continuing to encourage the growth of online communities via contests, widgets, quizzes and the like in 2009.”

“We’ve raised over $1,000,000 in total donations this year, which is a huge milestone for us,” said Kristin Lindsay, Project Coordinator for Child’s Play. “We are so pleased that the gamerDNA Online Community Contest played a role in that and are grateful for all the communities that took part in the contest on our behalf.”

About GamerDNA, Inc.
GamerDNA is an online community for sharing game experiences and discovering new games being enjoyed by people with similar interests.  GamerDNA aims to know gamers better than anyone in the world and is led by a team of online media and interactive entertainment veterans out of Cambridge, MA. Additional company information is available at: http://www.gamerdna.com/alliance/about.php

About Child’s Play
Child’s Play is a non-profit organization begun in 2003 by Mike "Gabe" Krahulik and Jerry "Tycho" Holkins, the creators of the Penny Arcade comic strip, as a way to help sick children and show the world the softer side of people who play videogames. Through the generosity of gamers and the videogame industry, Child’s Play has raised over three million dollars in toys, games and cash for sick children through an ongoing online toy drive and annual charity auction. Now in its fifth year, Child’s Play is developing a worldwide network of beneficiary Children’s Hospitals in order to brighten hospital stays for children internationally. For more information go to: www.childsplaycharity.org.

GAMERDNA LAUNCHES GAME DISCOVERY ENGINE;
PROVIDES PLATFORM FOR BUILDING GAMER IDENTITY

Engine Helps gamerDNA.com Visitors Discover New Games to Play,
Extend Their Game Experiences, and Better Enjoy Games

CAMBRIDGE, MA – December 15, 2008 – GamerDNA.com, an online community and social platform for video game identity and discovery, today announced the launch of the gamerDNA Discovery Engine.  Powered by passionate feedback from gamerDNA members, the new Discovery Engine allows gamers to identify new video games to play based on their individual interests and preferences.

 “The process of discovering games - and expressing what you like about them - is fun,” said Jon Radoff, CEO of gamerDNA, Inc. “Our goal is to improve the experience of how people learn about new games. To do this, we’ve tossed out the one-size-fits-all mentality and, instead, have made game discovery an individualized experience by listening to what people are saying about games and why they are playing them.”

The new gamerDNA Discovery Engine allows gamers to identify traits and preferences that they like about a particular game and receive individualized game recommendations based on those qualities. Members engage with a proprietary trait-based system inside the gamerDNA Discovery Engine to denote what specific aspects of a game they find enjoyable. Members can select from a list of traits or recommend their own trait, such as “Social,” “Competitive,” or “Humorous,” in five categories including Setting, Tone, Hero Archetype, Enemy Archetype, and Game Features. After entering these traits, the gamerDNA Discovery Engine references similar traits selected by others in the community and the popularity of those traits, to recommend games for the individual.

GamerDNA.com is a game community that allows people to build and express their unique gaming identity while discovering new games, extending their game experiences, and better enjoying games from wherever they choose to play. Members develop a unique gamer identity – their “gamerDNA” – that records gameplay history from the places they play (such as Xbox® Live or Xfire) and allows them to share these experiences via popular social media sites and applications like Twitter. In addition, as the largest proprietary database of gameplay patterns in the world, gamerDNA applies the collective intelligence of the gamerDNA community to help members discover new games and to help game developers design better games.

For more information or to sign up for a free account (no software download required), visit www.gamerdna.com.