OGame is the legendary game in the space, which can be played via Internet. It uses almost no computer power of the players computers.

Let every Boinc project start a variation of OGame server with resource named "BOINC power plant". Let efficiency of this resource depends (among other parameters such as power plant level) on current BOINC projects statistics. New field called "OGame statistics password" should exists in the configuration of the BOINC project. Let user be able to activate "BOINC power plant power modules" by registering in the OGame configuration file every project he is participating (entering username and new "OGame statistics password").
Every 24 hours OGame servers schould check current user statistics and adjust power plants efficiency accordingly to the results. Each BOINC project OGame server may have his own scale of efficiency points for every BOINC project (for instance to favour a little bit points descendent from their own project). I think this should bring many new participants, especially kids.
Sorry for my bad english...

Another idea: make agreement with MMO games producers (like "Erepublik"). In exchange for advertisements in BOINC manager (on separate tab with "Recommended" games") let BOINC users get some advantages in that games (for instance some amount of free "gold" in Erepublik game every day proportionally to current BOINC stats). This will bring new users to MMO games producers and a lot of new participants in BOINC projects. What do you think about it?

Question wrote:

Why won't you allow for advertisements to show in BOINC Manager? Won't that give you an extra source of income?

David Anderson: Because that's against my philosophy.

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I'm not talking about advertisements of some boring things/products/services for dirty ;) money. I'm talking about the method of exchanging users/participants.
It happening already now between different BOINC projects. Projects with higher hardware requirements are recommending other projects for free. Tab with "Recommended games" would direct to games (some of them are free of charge, you can pay for extra things if you want) where BOINC users can have fun using their BOINC stats to take advantage over their game opponents.
Games using BOINC stats will bring new BOINC participants. Base of the MMO players is huge, we shouldn't ignore that.
I'm using BOINC manager since the very beginning (even before it, I was participating in SETI@home project) and no encouragement is needed for me other than that this is the right thing to do, to make our world better. Others may need another stimulus to join to BOINC users society (game for instance).
Maybe Mr David Anderson will accept such free of charge users exchange. Especially if advertisements will be placed on separate tab. If you click it - you will see it, if not - no advertisement will harm your tired eyes...

Another version of your idea could be the following:

Let's think of an MMO game where the BOINC credits are the virtual currency of the game. For instance, in the OGame, "X" boinc-credits correspond to "Y" units of dark matter.

In order to generate these credits, the user might download a client version of the software with an additional option called, for instance, "Dark matter mine". When the user choose this option, a BOINC thread starts until the user leave the session.

Don't worry, my english is bad too :)

Daniel, I like this new approach. I've started working on this idea in similar way some time ago. It should be easier to do. But finally I've decided to go harder way. I took sources of OGame (version XNova), and added dark energy resource (I was thinking about dark matter too :) ). The plan is to add to this game new elements, which user can buy for this new resource, among others:
- "dark energy field" - new planet shield
- some kind of canon (I'm planning to give it an ability to take preemptive strike, before each battle)
- "doom machine" - very powerful weapon, which could destroy fleet, planet's defence and even buildings on the planets.
Bigger problem is how to take advantage from Boinc achievements in such a game.
My idea is to create new Boinc project, say Boincgames. This project will serve as a place in which users could register games they participate in (pairs of data: web address of the game and user's security password - different from the password used to create account in Boincgames project). After registration in the OGame game, users will provide additionally their Boincgames project name (same as provided during registration in Boincgames project) and game security password (provided for that game in pair with web address, not a password for Boincgames project account).
Game will connect to Boincgames project to acquire user's cross-project Id. Once a day, game will connect to Boinc stats service to acquire user stats. Efficiency of dark energy resource production will be based on the user stats. I'll give possibility to choose which projects should be taken into account during stats query: all, or a few of them, chosen by game's admin, maybe with different points ratio (like resource share in boinc projects). If you have better idea, let me know. I hope that in the near future I'll start my web page with that project and test version of the game (for the start in polish language only).