Always had a feeling that individualism really doesn't matter? Have you always strived for the greater good of the colony? Want to live life mindlessly serving the almighty hive? Want to be an drone?
The new game
Swarm!, currently under development for Google Glass, may soon fulfill all your dreams! Created by
Daniel Estrada of the University of Illinois and
Jonathan Lawhead of Columbia University, the game will connect Google Glass wearers to a virtual ant colony vying for prizes by solving real-world problems that vex traditional crowdsourcing efforts.
Similar to the pheromone trails laid down by ants, players leave virtual trails on a map as they move about. These behave like real ant trails, fading away with time unless reinforced by other people travelling the same route. Players will also be encouraged to seek out virtual resources to benefit their colony, such as food, and must avoid crossing the trails of other colony members. They can also monopolize a resource pool by taking photos of its real-world location. The photos and location data recorded by Google Glass could then be used to generate a map that anyone could use.
At a larger scale game data collected from
Swarm!, and similar crowdsourcing applications, could help city planners optimize a transport system by having fine-grained data about where and when people tend to travel. For example, if the developers wanted to create a map of the locations of every power outlet in an airport, they could reward players with virtual food for every photo of a socket they took.
The team is currently seeking donations for Swarm! to get the project moving. Please check out their video below:
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