World's First Massively Multiplayer Forecast Game?

krou writes "The Institute of the Future will soon be launching what it calls the first massively multiplayer forecast game, billed as The Superstruct Game. According to the game's FAQ, the idea is to 'imagine how we might solve the problems we'll face.' Interestingly, the game itself is meant to be played 'on forums, blogs, videos, wikis, and other familiar online spaces.' From the IFTF website's sneak peak, the game is set in the year 2019, where the Global Extinction Awareness System (GEAS) has forecast the possibility of human extinction by the year 2042 as the result of five simultaneous 'super-threats': Quarantine, which is a result from 'declining health and pandemic disease'; Ravenous, which relates to the global collapse of the world food system; Power Struggle, related to the flux of power 'as nations fight for energy supremacy and the world searches for alternative energy solutions'; Outlaw Planet, covering increased surveillance and loss of liberties; and, lastly, Generation Exile, which covers the massive increase in refugees."

Comments

haha... post rapture forecasts..

[marcushnk]

I'd love to see this run as a Post Rapture forecast game... how much more interesting and less populated the world would be "post rapture"

heh...

Not the first...

[cmdean]

I play the stockmarket.

Did it already

[DriedClexler]

I guess InTrade wasn't good enough?

Special Advance Mission!

[Jonah Hex]

It's the summer of 2019. You're you, but you're a decade older. Where are you having dinner, what are you eating, what are you thinking or talking about?

(and check out other players' dinner stories in the comments of our Superstruct announcement! http://www.iftf.org/node/2098)

Soooo... they want us to write essays on the future. Sure I'm eating all my food in pill form and discussing how screwed up the world is. Collate this into your forecast idiots!

Jonah HEX

It's not Weather Forecasting?

[Dripdry]

Too bad, I had visions of this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/12/20/

How to win: be a sociopath?

[spun]

The average human is a social creature, motivated by what is good for the species, not for them as individuals. Modern economic experiments all agree, the selfish actor theory is dead. People are far more motivated by notions of fairness and reciprocity than self interest. People will incur serious harm to themselves to punish perceived unfairness in others, giving up months worth of real salary in recent experiments to punish the greedy players.

This is the reason that true sociopaths are so uncommon. If people really were selfish, sociopaths would have the advantage, and they would be genetically selected for. They aren't, so there are very few of them.

They are the real problem, though. People only act selfish when there is no other option. The prediction that people will act selfishly becomes a self fulfilling prophecy. People see selfishness and act selfishly to avoid being taken advantage of. Sociopaths always act selfishly.

Our society is set up to reward sociopaths. Because of this, society is seen as selfish, and people feel the need to act selfishly in order to survive. If society punishes sociopaths and selfishness, experiments show people will act in a fair and generous fashion.