I remember Pieter mentioning that his former boss Guillaume Van der Stichelen thought the next big taboo to break was privacy. Wright seems to agree and to even bank on it with his next project. He sees youngsters sharing a lot of stuff people used to keep personal, probably since they now have the tools. He hopes to give them even more with his new project codenamed HiveMind.

Gathering data about people is one of the main areas of R&D and we already see some cool stuff happening. Up, a wristband by Jawbone, allows you to precisely monitor your every move and combined with the amazing tech one can find in a smartphone it opens a whole new world enablingstuff like sleep analysis and health monitoring. Wright wants to go even further and collect as much data about the ‘player’ as possible.

You see, he’s going for the end game, the point where it all comes together. You might wonder whether it’s fair to use the term ‘game’ for this, but that seems to be his point. What he is working at is bringing down the boundry between the digital and the ‘real life’.

Sounds far fetched? I don’t think so. The tools  (smartphones, sensors, mobile data, …) and services (foursquare, facebook, twitter, last.fm, …) are in place. We just need a way to connect them in a very elegant way. And to make that happen, you need someone to pull it. Someone with a license to dream.

Someone like Will Wright.

So here’s how I experience it. You’re at work, doing your thing. All of the sudden, the phone buzzes. It’s your employer, they need you to eliminate someone. You glance around whether anyone is paying attention and sneak out to do what you have to do.

Of course, there’s a little downside. Sneaking outside means going to the toilet and locking yourself up for 15 minutes. Oh, and the notification isn’t as immersive as it could be. But still… huge potential there. Can you make fake calls with the iPhone? Like receive a fake one from an app? That would be… woah.

THIS is where it gets interesting:

More info here, with a link for downloading the software.

Social Gaming is hot and everyone’s in a rush to know the secrets. Hell, if even Will Wright says they’re good for 25%, what are we waiting for? We need to get in the game ASAP!

And sure, there are some mechanics that make this thing work. I’m taking the liberty of compiling the Top Ten mentioned at SGSVGS  (thanks to Alice Taylor for the tweeting):

10: Daily Bonus
9: Cuteness
8: Appointments
7: Boosts
6: Energy
5: Achievements
4: Neighbors
3: Crew
2: Crafting
1: Limited Offers

All sounds familiar enough? As you can see, not all are really linked to the "’social gaming’ phenomena, some are just plain general for the current state of gaming.

In posts to come, I’ll probably go a little deeper in some of these aspects as I prepare myself for the course I’ll be giving in 2011 at KHLIM. Stay tuned.

Alice announced on her fantastic Wonderland blog the start of a new project Channel 4 Education did together with Welcome Trust and Oil Productions.
Today, dear students, we’ll be learning about DNA and genome, the fun way. By playing Routes.

The 8-week during game will contain a lot of platforms as players play mini-games (obviously), solve puzzles and watch comedian Katherine Ryan as she discovers what exactly defines who she is. Is it our genes, or does our environment play a bigger role there?

They kick off with a first mini-game where you get an organism. When breeding with other players, your organism evolves, creating a lineage you can look back upon.  You can show off your organism by using widgets like the one below:

Feel free to breed, but please, be gentle ;)

For those looking for a bit more challenge, the real game starts on monday and there will be prizes ;)

I can’t tell you how excited I am about this. Using games to educate people is a strategy not explored enough and hugely underestimated. On the other hand, I can imagine projects like these don’t come cheap so my hat of to Channel 4 for seeing the value of this.

The British Red Cross

The game tells the story of Joseph. War in Northern Uganda has pulled him from his family. Finding the Red Cross is the only way to know whether his mother is dead or alive.

The game launched with the following video:

Register at the game’s site and wait for a mail from Joseph. A little tip: watch your spamfilter, mine took it.

More info on the how and why of the game can be found at (the by the way very interesting) Eliane’s Future-Making Serious Games. And, as usual, unforums are on the game!

The year is 2019. Human kind is facing extinction by 2042 if we don’t act now.

That is what the new game by IFTF (The Institute Of The Future), Superstruct, is all about.

They like to describe it as follows:

Superstruct is the world’s first massively multiplayer forecasting game. By playing the game, you’ll help us chronicle the world of 2019–and imagine how we might solve the problems we’ll face. Because this is about more than just envisioning the future. It’s about making the future, inventing new ways to organize the human race and augment our collective human potential.

Join up and create yourself in the future, as you see yourself in 2019. This future you will have to focus on the superthreaths to mankind: Ravenous, Quarantine, Outlaw, Planet, Power Struggle and Generation Exile. After checking out the introduction movie for each superthreat it’s time to act.

For explaining how the game is played, I once again turn to the FAQ:

Superstruct is played on forums, blogs, videos, wikis, and other familiar online spaces. We show you the world as it might look in 2019. You show us what it’s like to live there. Bring what you know and who you know, and we’ll all figure out how to make 2019 a world we want to live in.

Sounds like a very interesting project of what collaborative storytelling could bring. Those interested in playing the game should start over here. Better hurry up though, the game started the 6th of October and ends the 17th of November. At the end of the game, people over at IFTF (under the name of The Ten Year Forecast team) will start gathering everything the players generated and prepare an official Superstruct Report.

Can’t wait to see that one! But let’s play first, shall we ;)