Saturday, May 30, 2015

the idea

Years ago I was on a roadtrip listening to a conversation about games, when I was hit with the idea for a game. In this game, you and your teammates have a ball, and your goal is to keep the ball traveling on the best possible adventures.


Whoever purchased the ball would be the steward of its digital presence, including a map of the ball's journeys, and photos. 

Eventually this morphed into an app idea: you buy/receive a digital avatar (the "ball") and this avatar exists on people's smartphones while it travels the world. The trick is that it can only exist on one smartphone at a time, and to transfer it from one smartphone to another, both phones need to be in the same space. 

People holding the avatar/ball can post pictures of it's adventures, and then pass it to someone else to keep that avatar's adventures moving forward. 
  • Which will be the first to circle the globe?
  • Which will be the first to visit North Korea?
  • Which will make the most interesting shapes/drawings on the map??
The only prototype, so far, was a physical ball that I carried from North Carolina to Texas to Seattle and to Africa. I drew a globe with lines and dots for where it had been in the world, then I passed it to someone who took it somewhere else. I'm not sure where that ball is now. 

I'm looking forward to the next prototype, whenever/however it may exist.