Project: MyWorld intends to make THE WORLD!

Ross Mills

Full Disclosure: I'm on this project, and the technology behind it is astounding from my point of view.

“Project: MyWorld”, has been offered up by Dundee company Realtime Worlds.

The game takes technology based on “GIS” Geographical Data, and Social Networks such as Twitter and Foursquare, then uses them to make an editable version the real world in which various games can be played. Some examples are in the trailer.

Youtube Video

it's being hyped as “What would it look like if Nintendo built Google Earth?"

The game looks to be released “early next year”, according to its website.

Zilla360

Neat. [strike]Does[/strike] Can this use GPS itself or does it just grab data from FourSquare?

Edit: Didn't read OP. :P

Frem

Are you involved with this? I ask because you're clearly a ligit forum member, but there's next to no info about the game around and your post reads like a marketing blarb. (the illusion is enhanced somewhat by the quoting of an actual marketing blarb.)

This also sounds like the "Gang of Daggers" video game.

Edit: at second glance, this appears to be somewhere between a CAD MMO and a less disturbing version of Second Life. I can live with that.

Zilla360

It's being made by http://www.realtimeworlds.com/ (Crackdown, APB).

Frem

Ah! I didn't recognize the company. My expectations just increased several thousand percent.

Rhesus Positive

Hmm, interesting - although I don't know what price I would be willing to pay for it. I'd probably end up using it more as a map utility rather than a game, and then get completely lost because I'd be looking to turn left at the building shaped like a giant cock and balls and then right at the Pedobear statue.

Dratatoo

Hmm, interesting - although I don't know what price I would be willing to pay for it. I'd probably end up using it more as a map utility rather than a game, and then get completely lost because I'd be looking to turn left at the building shaped like a giant cock and balls and then right at the Pedobear statue.

Thats what I've planned -> including my hometown "Dicksville" in the game :P

Ross Mills

@Frem - Full disclosure: I'm actually on this project, I've just been so hyped and bursting at the seams to talk about this project, however, so I wanted to say something.

@Dratatoo - Unless "Dicksville" is a place in the UK, I'm afraid it's not in MyWorld yet, we chose to focus on the UK for our first dataset. It takes UK map data and converts it into an in-game model. The screenshots that have been released (http://playmyworld.com/screenshots/) show off real locations in the real world AND in the game.

@Rhesus - There will definitely be some kind of moderation in-game to hold back the waves of cock-and-balls buildings there are.

@Zilla - This uses...

• GIS data for the game world
• Twitter to show tweets in the game world, which you can turn on if you want them and reply to them. (Sort of a "Hey! You're near that building! Could you take a photo of it for me?")
• Foursquare is used to give more context to the environment, so you can tell that THAT building is the pizza hut you visited last week, and THAT is the Tescos behind your flat.

Other networks are also being looked into, and ways to feed Foursquare checkins, mayorships or Tweets into game mechanics (ie a place gets more rent if you're the mayor) have been thrown around, but everything is work-in-progress right now.

Suriko

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2010/08/16/redundancies-at-real-time-worlds/

MyWorld is all but dead, it seems.

Ross Mills

Except for the part where it's not.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/30271/Report_US_Buyer_Completes_Purchase_Of_Realtime_Worlds_MyWorld.php

Zilla360

Ah, good to see you guys are picking yourselves back up.

Just out of curiosity, what are your thoughts on this?

Ross Mills

My thoughts on that are private, or behind an NDA, or both. I have plenty of friends both inside and out of both RTW projects, and I don't want to hurt or insult them.

Personally, I'm upset that this will scare publishers away from an OPTIONAL pay-per-hour subscription method in future.