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Earth The Internet Entertainment Games

World's First Massively Multiplayer Forecast Game? 39

Posted by Soulskill from the weather-channel-may-disagree dept.
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."
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World's First Massively Multiplayer Forecast Game? More

World's First Massively Multiplayer Forecast Game?

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  • Lame (Score:1, Insightful)

    by DaveV1.0 ( 203135 )

    Just what we need, propaganda games. I bet the conditions for winning are based in their political ideology.

    • They had an awful summary of Outlaw Planet, since that's the one I'm most interested in seeing discussions on (preferably without '1984' references - think for yourself, please*). Instead, it's how governments are struggling to deal with the increase in hacking, spam, etc online, which has reached epidemic proportions!!!!1!11!! Haxors are hacking banks and getting the money to buy World of Starcraft credits online! (I'm not making this up)

      Hackers cannot and will never be able to strike anywhere and every
      • Tsunami data stop moving because someone finds a very successful BIND attack and the worlds DNS goes down is more likely.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Nasajin ( 967925 )
      Yeah, they should just stick to non-ideological games. Like Army of Two.
    • Maybe instead of basing it on ideology they should run simulations on a supercomputer to find likely real world threats. Oops did I spoil TFA for you?
    • I clearly am in the minority on this one--on /. and in general I suppose--in that i find the concept fascinating. After reading the summaries and FAQ I'm not sure there are "winning conditions" as we commonly think of them. Call me a naive leftist, but it sound highly intriguing.

      • Call me skeptical, but all games have to have rules and conditions for winning. The people who develop the game determine the rules, goals, and conditions for winning/success.

        Here is a simplistic example:

        If one starts with the beliefs:

        • The only way to save the planet is to reduce our carbon footprint
        • Gas powered cars are the cause of big carbon footprints
        • Electric cars have little to no carbon footprint

        If one sets the goal/winning condition of the game to be "Save the planet", then one of the rules will be "I

  • 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...

    • What most people don't realize is, the Rapture already happened. It was in 1987, and unfortunately only one person qualified, a rather reclusive gentleman from Newark who only left the house to collect his social security check or go to church.

      This IS the tribulation. Fun, isn't it?

  • Not the first... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by cmdean ( 325819 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2008 @09:45PM (#25130591)

    I play the stockmarket.

  • Lets make another game! Lets call it a political MMORPG. You predict what the US will be in 2 years when Obama/McCain or another president becomes in charge. Oh, never mind the fact that unless you say that the world would be a wonderful place if whoever I want to win the election, you lose.

  • I'd play it. Good way to take out my frustration at the ignorant ignoring and frustrating solution of the real issues of the world today:-(

  • I click on the buttons and Nothing Happens. Slashdotted?

  • Did it already (Score:3, Informative)

    by DriedClexler ( 814907 ) on Tuesday September 23, 2008 @10:02PM (#25130701)

    I guess InTrade [intrade.com] wasn't good enough?

    • Re: (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I guess InTrade [intrade.com] wasn't good enough?

      Well, you see, InTrade did it right, by making people put their money where their mouth is.

      What this game will do is allow people to game the forecasts since it won't cost them nearly as much to be wrong. Then they can go proclaim those forecasts as gospel and, say, pump-and-dump stocks with it.

      In short, InTrade converges to truth, whereas this game will converge to truthiness.

    • I don't know, what odds does InTrade give of civilization collapsing by 2042? And how does a pessimist collect when they win?

  • It's just like all those post-apocalyptic games we used to play, only before the apocalypse, and in real life.
    :(

  • It's basically about being greedy. Screw the human race, just concentrate on being the person who scientists will say the human species originated from in 5000 years time.

    All you need to do is be as greedy as possible and do everything for yourself while nothing for everyone else.

    While avoiding being killed by those who resent you for doing it, or by people who see you as a threat to their own greed.

    The sad thing is that it isn't a game and people play for keeps.

    Most of them are politicians, but some are la

    • How to win: be a sociopath? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by spun ( 1352 )

      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 pe

  • So it's this site [exitmundi.nl] crossed up with an Alternate Reality Game. Whoopee.
  • Am I the only one here getting flashes of the Dharma initiative after reading this?

    This part in particular got me:

    The Superthreats

    GEAS has identified five superthreats and given them memorable names as a way of encouraging discussion and awareness:

    * Quarantine covers the global response to declining health and pandemic disease, including the current Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ReDS) crisis.
    * Ravenous focuses on the imminent collapse of the global food system, as well as debates over industrial vs. ecological agricultural models, and basic issues of access, energy, and carbon.
    * Power Struggle tracks the results of energy resource peaks and the shifts in international power as nations fight for energy supremacy and the world searches for alternative energy solutions.
    * Outlaw Planet embodies the volatile mix of new forms of surveillance, transparency, civil rights, and access to information as people work out new rules for human security.
    * Generation Exile follows the massive "diaspora of diasporas" underway globally, as the number of refugees and migrants skyrockets in the face of climate change, economic disruption, and war.

    I can't seem to find a link now, but there are 6 variables in the Valenzetti Equation, and a few of them align directly to the "superthreats".

    Interesting coincidence? Do I watch too much TV?

  • The market is the first massively multiplayer forecast game. And it's a lot cooler than the disaster scenario of the month games listed above. None of the "super-threats" can cause extinction. If there's not enough food, then people starve to death until there's more food than people. None of the scenarios can break a developed world country with the exception of "outlaw planet". Further, all of this is based on the assumption that global health, food production, etc are getting worse. I don't see that.

  • The classical example showing the error of uncritical reasoning here is the old fable about the height of the Emperor of China. Supposing that each person in China surely knows the height of the Emperor to an accuracy of at least 1 meter; if there are N=1e9 inhabitants, then it seems that we could determine his height to an accuracy at least as good as 1/sqrt(N) = 0.03mm, merely by asking each person's opinion and averaging the results.

    - E.T.Jaynes, "Probability Theory, The Logic of Science"

  • Slashdot: Outlaw Planet, covering increased surveillance and loss of liberties

    The site: Outlaw Planet embodies the volatile mix of new forms of surveillance, transparency, civil rights, and access to information as people work out new rules for human security.

    Notice the difference? The GEAS clearly sees Outlaw planet as the struggle to balance civil rights with the need for security and hence accountability. You need openess of goverment but at the same time need secure systems safe from outside influence

  • Special Advance Mission! (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jonah Hex ( 651948 ) <hexdotms @ g m a i l .com> on Wednesday September 24, 2008 @07:36AM (#25134269) Homepage Journal

    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 [iftf.org])

    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? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Dripdry ( 1062282 ) on Wednesday September 24, 2008 @08:26AM (#25134807) Journal
    Too bad, I had visions of this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/12/20/ [penny-arcade.com]
  • Lack of water is at least as important as any of the 'threats' herein delineated. It comes from three main sources:

    1) Aquifer depletion: overuse of the currently existing resource.

    2) Drought: lack of rain where there once was rain; clearly, this is exacerbated by global warming, as the monsoon belts shift.

    3) Pollution: otherwise potable water is made unusable by waste or commercial contamination.

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