Aardvark Daily

The world's longest-running online daily news and commentary publication, now in its 30th year. The opinion pieces presented here are not purported to be fact but reasonable effort is made to ensure accuracy.

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Who's game?

4 December 2008

Like everyone else with an internet connection, I spent quite a while strolling around New Zealand early this week, thanks to Google's StreetView.

It was fun to visit old haunts and famous places for a while but the novelty has now worn off and, despite its technical cleverness, there's not much chance I'll become one of the view-hunters that spend most of their lives seeking out someone caught doing something they ought not have.

However, it struck me that cruising the streets with Google was strikingly similar to playing a first-person shoot-em-up game.

You can move forwards, backwards, turn, look up, look down and bring specific scenes closer to you -- all with the click of a mouse.

On some occasions I was also able to trick the StreetView software into showing me the raw images that Google had sent to my computer.

Now imagine this...

What if one of those seriously-popular computer driving games were written to take advantage of the raw data that StreetView dishes up?

How about a version of Grand Theft Auto that you could play through the streets of your own town?

Or maybe a multi-player game like Doom where you could play shoot-em-up in your own neighbourhood?

Of course Google's StreetView only goes as far as the road-side - but Google Earth can give a useful two-dimensional view of the territory beyond your neighbour's fence and it wouldn't be too hard to interpret this data into some kind of cool 3D rendering.

I'm pretty certain that it's only a matter of time before someone brings Google Earth, Google Maps and StreetView together into an interactive (probably multi-player) online game that will knock your socks off.

But who's going to do it?

I strongly suspect that Google themselves won't. They don't want to be seen to be "misusing" all that valuable and carefully collected data.

I doubt any commercial game-maker will. They're unlikely to get permission from Google to legally use that data for the same reasons that Google themselves won't release such a game.

So that only leaves the armies of talented hackers out there who have the skills and thrive on a challenge.

So here's a call to all those who are currently writing viruses, trojans and other forms of malware...

Stop what you're doing and come up with the game to end all games!

Let's see if you're really good enough to create the next uber-game that really clouds the division between the real-world and the virtual one.

Deliver the world a programme that lets me drive from Auckland to Wellington at speeds far beyond the legal limit, in a supercar of my own choice or even my own design.

Let me race down State Highway One, duelling with other drivers who have the same goal -- all in real-time and using the images from Google StreetView.

And, if you want to make money from this -- just add some billboards on the side of the highway that can carry paid advertising.

With the computer games industry being worth more than Hollywood, this would seem to be a real money-maker, especially if someone could convince Google to hand over the keys to its StreetView system so that it could be done legally.

Would you buy a game that allowed you to locate the action anywhere you liked in your neighbourhood, town, country or even other countries thanks to StreetView?

Perhaps there already is such a game. Does anyone have links?

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