Glitchhiker was the winner of the 2011 Global Game Jam NL. Its a simple game with a fantastic mechanic, the game can die. Infact it is already dead. The game works by having a global life count, starting the game uses a life and collecting 100 coins gains a life. Once the lifes reach 0 the game is no longer playable or downloadable so it dies!
This is quite a similar concept to what I picked up from Iain M banks. I think it would be really interesting to build a world from data which only develops based on if people are using it. I can picture this in a few forms;
- A virtual world which grows over time as it is viewed at a speed based on the amount of people viewing it. If no one or a limited number of users are viewing it then it will degenerate with time until its being watched again.
- A generative narrative animation which progresses when ever someone is viewing it so that if you come back to it you will miss parts of it. This would work really well if it was a 24 hour loop so it would encourage people who are interested in the story to visit regularly so that they can know where they are within the story and then catch up. This would need a story which did not depend on traditional narrative structures, such as the Golden Notebook by Dorris Lessing
This kind of approach also in this idea I was talking about previously in my blog about treating the website like a real thing which has a life away from the user. This contrasts with the classic view of it being a portal to dispense information.
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