Internet of Elephant is a for-profit social enterprise and therefore our mission is to provide as much benefit to conservation as possible while also rewarding our customers and our shareholders. The majority of proceeds generated through our games will be redirected to our wildlife conservation partners and other wildlife conservation initiatives that meet our grant criteria. While playing the game, players will always know how much of what they spend will be directed to wildlife conservation and for what purposes.

Your support will go directly towards the creation of our first product, and not directly to the conservation organizations or projects themselves.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 11:16

Yes.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 11:16

Traditionally, conservation organizations each do their own fundraising. Our game is unique because it brings together several organizations on one platform. This means that we are bundling our marketing efforts. Furthermore, we will create a city-based approach to our game launch. This means we will launch the game initially in a city like Chicago and work with the city, local conservation organizations, corporates and institutions such as the Chicago Zoological Society in order to get the entire city behind the game. We can roll out the game in subsequent cities across the globe from South-America to Asia in a similar fashion.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 11:16

If you believe in what we do but you are not interested in playing the game yourself, you can still choose to donate to the crowdfunding campaign simply because you want to help us make this innovative approach to engaging people with wildlife possible. In this case you might want to choose one of the rewards that are not game-related or make a donation without a reward.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 11:17

Assisting in achieving the survival and welfare of wild animals is the aim in everything we do. Our approach to doing so is to enable a massive audience to engage with wildlife and easily and positively impact wildlife conservation in the process. We see interactive games as a powerful and effective channel to do that. Thus, our mission is to harness the power of games and social media to attract a broader audience to wildlife conservation and generate revenue for the sector.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 11:17

All data is obtained through partnerships with wildlife conservation organizations that have been using the data for scientific studies in the animal’s natural habit. We do not collar animals nor collect any data ourselves.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 11:17

We clean the data, analyze it for quality, consistency, and applicability for the games, create models from it, and then incorporate it into online and mobile games. It is never shared in any form other than what is seen through our products, and continues to be owned by our conservation partners.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 12:23

Since our entire purpose is to support wildlife conservation, the security of the data and the safety of the animals is our top priority. Technology has allowed wildlife conservation organizations to track animals and key locations on GPS units, which are then uploaded and displayed on a map. There are two primary areas of security we are concerned with.

First, securing the raw data itself from any unauthorized access. We will store all our data in industry standard data centers with physically secure and redundant facilities. We will use best of breed encryption, access control and audit logs to ensure data is secured in transit and at rest. Our servers, besides being physically secure, will be housed in access controlled and secure VP(Virtually Private) networks, ensuring there is no possibility of ingress or egress of data housed by us.

Secondly, for the data that we do expose through the games, we want to prevent misuse, either by those that intend to do harm to animals, or those that may wish to influence the results of the games themselves. While raw data will never be exposed, it will be possible to understand an animal’s location(s) because of the nature of the games.

We have two approaches to discourage misuse.

1) Delay the transmission of the data – therefore, while the data will be current, it will never be real time. We are still determining the optimum delay to balance security needs and richness of game play.

2) Offset the data – so, keep the relative movement of the animal the same, but offset the location for where it happens.

If we feel that either or both of these methods would not be sufficient to ensure the protection of the animal, we would not introduce it into the game. Ultimately our conservation partners will determine the overall risk and make the final decision about whether any animal’s data is included in our products.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 12:23

The data we use is collected by wildlife organisations for scientific reasons through collars with GPS technology. We only work with reputable conservation organizations who already have permission to study the animals and are trained in conducting this research in a non intrusive way. We will never collar or un-collar an animal for the purpose of the game. Ultimately any final decision to include an animal’s data into the game will be at the discretion of our conservation partners that own the data.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 12:27

We are not in the tourism business and do not provide a tourism experience. We do not sell or share the personal data of our gamers with any third party. The types of players we get and how they play the game, what they choose to learn about, etc. will be of great benefit to our conservation partners and to our ability to understand the conservation and commercial impact of what we do. As such, it is likely that we will share data at aggregate with our partners and use it for our own purposes to increase our impact and improve our products and services.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 12:27

For our initial launch, English. We will evaluate other languages over time as we gain a better understanding of our market demographics.

Last updated: July 09, 2017 12:32

The answer to this depends on the game and the means by which a player makes a contribution.

As a company, our mission is to contribute 20% of all revenue directly back to our conservation partners and other conservation related projects. After that, if we are profitable, and as profits go up, the percentage of profits that go back to conservation go up. The whole model is a shareholder model with our partners. If IoE does well, they do well. In absolute terms, our goal is to contribute more than $20M annually to conservation. This is of course, all dependent on our games being successful and reaching the audiences we are targeting.

Each product we introduce will contribute to the above in a different way, depending on whether money is coming through in-app purchases, or through direct donations to our partners. All our products, when released, will be explicit about what percentage of in-app purchases are directed towards conservation, to which organizations, and for which projects.

Last updated: July 11, 2017 20:31

Safari Central will be developed for both Android and iOS, as will the Preview apps that come before. Future games created by Internet of Elephants may be for different platforms, including console or PC based games.

Last updated: July 11, 2017 20:32

Your contribution goes towards the creation of the next set of animals we create. Shortly after your backing, you will receive an email from us pointing you to a survey where you can vote on what you would like to see built next. We can’t guarantee that the top vote getters are exactly the next set of animals we can build, but the votes will be a strong contributor to those decisions. We want to balance between what is popular, what needs the most attention, which conservation organizations we can support, and what we can technically accomplish.

Last updated: July 11, 2017 20:32