| This is one of those posts about business ideas that might as well be a Lazyweb request. I'll toss it out because I'd really like it to happen in the real world and I'm unlikely to make it happen myself. But if you pick it up and run with it, offer me a job, ok! At the moment it's one of those dotcom business plans Step1) Have Idea. Step 2) ????. Step3) Make Loadsamoney! Ever since I first discovered computer adventure games, RPGs (Role Playing Games) and MMRPGs (Massively Multiplayer Role Paying Games) I wanted them to leak out into the real world. I wanted some of the puzzles and clues to be out there in the real world, eg "Go to Reality Checkpoint at 7:07 on 7-7 and get X" or "23rd word, pg23, penguin edition of Decline and Fall". Then I came across a group in Finland who had combined Dungeons and Dragons, SMS, paintball and the primitive geo-location of cellphones to make an online game where you picked up virtual weapons at specific locations and attacked people who were physically near you all via SMS. Yesterday, I heard about an ICA experiment that unfortunately has just finished. "Uncle Roy Is All Around You is a game to be played in the streets of London: Street Players search for Uncle Roy through the back streets, the tourist traps and the leafy boulevards of Westminster with a handheld computer. Online Players cruise through a virtual model of the same area, searching for the Street Players and looking for leads that will help them find Uncle Roy. Using web cams, audio and text messages players must work together. They have 60 minutes and the clock is ticking..." Today, I came across a Multi-level marketing group called C4 Game Club that among other things is franchising WiFi hotspot equipment specifically aimed at people who want to have LAN Party group gaming sessions (Counterstrike, Team Fortress, Unreal, Quake etc) in public places. Then there's those TV programmes with the gorgeous Suzy Perry racing about and being directed by people in the studio trying to solve puzzles. So I'm putting all this together and seeing the potential for a game that involves roaming yoof armed with camera cellphones, WiFi/GPRS connected PDAs and such like, playing interactively with people who are broadband connected but at home and/or laptop connected and at a WiFi hotspot. Mix in a bit of the background from the Playstation game "The Getaway". Add IM, VoIP, speech synthesis and a soundtrack. You'd have online people communicating and directing offline people and vice versa, working in teams and in real time. Somebody please build this. I want to play it. [from: JB Ecademy] |
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[ 13-Jun-03 9:10am ]
