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Real Lives 2004 - Living Other People's Normal Lives?
Thanks to USA Today for its article discussing an educational videogame which allows players to live the life of another person. The piece explains: "Real Lives 2004 starts by automatically generating a life based on current population and birth rate statistics", before explaining possible outcomes: "Our teen-testers were able to experience many different lives in just a few hours. One was a boy born into a poor family in Zhangzhou, China, who did not attend college or vocational school. As a mail clerk, our teen-tester faced decisions about gambling, alcohol and drinking... He found romance but had no children and he died at age 84 from cancer."
I remember playing something similar, although really archaic. It was a game in grade school in the late 80's on UNISYS machines called "A Day In The Life Of".
I cant really remember much about it other than going to the mall and hanging out, what a blast... Ahh i miss those days of the giant trackball..
So... we go from playing games as an escape from real life to playing games ABOUT real life. Funny how that works.
Then again, given The Sims, this isn't exactly a new development.
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Can you upload your own life and let it run a simulation to see how you will end up in life? This would be interesting to see when your 40, 60, or 80 years old.
Subzerorz
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- Statistically predict future events for people based on a series of questions ("Are you married?", "Do you drink every day?"
... )
- Randomly generate backgrounds for people in the Witness Protection Program or for people using other fake identites
One character claimed to have been on the Phil Donohue Show, but the main character figured that he may have been qouting from his randomly generated GRIOT background. Statistically, every once in a while, GRIOT would have to say that a person had been on a TV show.The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
One of the things I'm REALLY looking forward to is once people become "gargoyles" and start wearing small video cams almost 100% of the time to record their lives.
Then you will have a much better way to live someone elses life. In fact, I think it could offer up a whole new genre.
It could be quite cool to have enough video footage to be able to live someone elses life with the video acting out your choices in a much more advanced way than is possible today.
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You may want to check graal online http://www.graalonline.com is basically zelda online in the style of an mmorpg of sorts is cool and to certain extent is free.
A comment about the game, Im sorry but I really cant vouche for nintendo on their decision to require 4 gbas to play a 4 player game, it sounds more like a scare tactic than a product feature. And come on? 4 friends with 4 gba'S? I have 2 brothers a neighbor and between all of us we have 4 friends one gba and one gamecube. In which alternate reality every brother in the same household and every neighbor friend has a gba?
Go ahead MOD my day!
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There was an interesting comment made at the recent Game Developers Conference in the Serious Games Summit. Someone was asked what would be the equivalent of the DARPA Grand Challenge as it related to game technology? The answer described a scenario that went something like this...
"You and your team walk into the DARPA director's office with a globe. You give it a spin and ask him to randomly choose a place - some country/location. You go back to your office and get working. A week later, you give him a 'game'. He runs it and finds himself 'in' that location he picked. He hears the language, sees the sites, hears the sounds, etc. He plays this for a week. Then he actually goes to that place. When he gets there, he 'knows' it already because you've really taught him."
Neat challenge idea.