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[GDJustin]

I attended the mobile games conference last week, and it was largely pretty freaking boring (as expected), but one keynote got me genuinely excited, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it, or its implications, since:

http://www.modojo.com/news/20060718/732/

Some choice quotes, but I strongly encourage you to read the entire thing:

"You gain 'experience points' by using MSWord or by sending emails. Every item you cross off a 'to do' list gives you an experience bonus, until eventually you 'level up' your life," Hall said with a grin. "You become U+1."

"Imagine the game that runs on top of Jaiku alerts you that a bomb is going to go off in 24 hours. To defuse it you need to assemble 16 levels of chemistry expertise, and 22 levels of physics expertise. The friends on your friends list all have levels for both skills - levels that have been determined by their real-life expertise and activities. You'll need to pull enough people together, either friends or friends of friends, to defuse the bomb," Hall said.

"This game is how we learn that we can aggregate our friends to solve the real problems in our life, and not just the fictional ones."

It's been bouncing around my head since I heard the speech last Friday, and there's all sorts of cool concepts that he didn't even get into... I get the feeling they're sort of implied. Like... after a point you can't participate in any more world-saving activities, because you haven't slept in 18 hours. Your phone knows this. Gotta sleep you regain your AP

Stuff like this is so cool. It's true that giving up all the personal information is a bit of a red flag... it does make a bit of an exclamation point go off over my head, MGS-style... but man, it's so damn cool!

 

[GhaleonEB]

Great. A game to measure the exact degree to which I suck at life.

 

[Rur0ni]

Great. A game to measure the exact degree to which I suck at life.

How unfortunate.

 

[Odysseus]

This is like the "jump to conclusions" mat.

 

[mug]

Sounds like a great idea.

 

[Tyrone Slothrop]

i'd seriously like to see this sort of thing applied to gaming in the future, things that reward active intelligence and real life skill or something that can help improve upon it.

if you whittle it all down gaming is the ultimate time waster. but things like this and brain training and whatever gaming product that serves to help the consumer in other ways than simply entertainment could change all that

 

[Wollan]

Me and a friend did this a couple of years ago for a month or so.
We valued simple day tasks with a certain amount of xp and we even made skill trees.
We had it all down on paper. Neither of us went past lvl 10 though. :lol

Spoiler

Yes I know, it reeks of geek.

 

[Belfast]

Once again, I point everyone to http://www.perplexcity.com

This thing is already in practice.

 

[GDJustin]

Me and a friend did this a couple of years ago for a month or so.
We valued simple day tasks with a certain amount of xp and we even made skill trees.
Neither of us went past lvl 10 though. :lol

Spoiler

Yes I know, it reeks of geek.

Yeah, it does, but in a good way. Imagine that exact same thing... levels, skills, experience, only it's all automated, based on a system that knows what you're doing with your time.

Ultimately it would still be a "game" and not lead to real improvement, however. Because it measures time spent, which does not always correlate with knowledge gained.

 

[beat]

It sounds more invasive but not more rewarding than the passively single player Progress quest.

 

[The Faceless Master]

sounds like too much work...

for true passiveness, try IdleRPG

you literally gain exp and level up by idling on an irc channel... actually doing anything like talking, parting, changing nicks, quitting, etc all have negative status effects...

 

[threeball]

Yeah sounds like it would be time consuming. We have lives..