http://news.cnet.com/8301-17938_105-575 ... lity-game/
Related: http://www.aqualab.cs.northwestern.edu/ ... ownload/82Last week we began to see the first hints of Google's first foray into so-called "alternate reality gaming," in which cryptic clues are strewn about the on- and offline worlds for the perusal of highly engaged fans. "What is the Niantic Project?" asked a teaser video. As of today, we know the answer: the Niantic Project is a game called Ingress .
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The thing about layering things onto a world that can only be seen via smartphone is that it tends to make the real world look boring by comparison. On my smartphone, I was capturing portals and linking them to far-flung places; in the real world, I was a guy standing on a corner dodging people heading back to the office after lunch. Alternate reality games promise a kind of magical intersection between real and virtual worlds; Ingress, at least at this early stage, hasn't quite delivered it.
(LINK)We implemented a proof-of-concept augmented reality game for Android called Ghost Hunter. In Ghost Hunter, a player chases ghosts and other monsters around her neighborhood and “zaps” them by capturing their photo through an augmented reality display, for which she is awarded points. We chose this augmented reality game for our implementation because it supports the most control over a user’s device; in addition to a user’s location, augmented reality allows us to control the heading and orientation of the device.
The game consists of two parts: a map screen and an augmented reality display. To play, the user walks around toward the location of “ghosts” which are overlaid on the map screen. When sufficiently close, the game switches to an augmented reality mode in which the player follows arrows on the screen to place the ghost in their cross hairs. Once the ghost is within their sights, the player is able to capture it. Ghost Hunter is implemented in about 3,500 lines of Java code.
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By pairing network services, such as a mobile sensing application, with location-based apps, CSC allows researchers to leverage an application’s incentives (e.g. game objectives) to control the movement of participating users
Gamification. Past generations gamified traditional economics. The idea used to be to 'work hard', collect tokens of success over a period of years, & place them conspicuously in your environment in order to 'rank up', socially or what not. The psychopaths among us were able to extract a lot of power from that game. But this new kind of game is many orders of magnitude more compelling from a power acquisition standpoint.
The free (as in freedom) economy is being dismantled.
Going forward, there will be no economic liberty for the vast majority. The free (as in freedom) economy will be accessible by invitation only. The rest will simply run around in pre-defined physical spaces, digitally tugged by the nose into one planned & programmed economic transaction after another. They will measure 'success' not by the amount or quality of physical goods they acquire, but by how complete their digital game profiles are. It will be natural to them. This is already the case to some extent in many games like World of Warcraft.
The people who run the game will be powerful beyond belief.
Now we begin to see the actual end-game behind all of the data collection and simulation projects in the world.