The history of Britain is a rich tapestry woven out of the hairs of unicorns, the blood of dragons, and the beards of the Irish. This charming Olde World culture has contributed a great many valuable concepts to the whole of humanity’s evolution, but an idea posited by Mark Eyles, a researcher at the University of Portsmouth, at this year’s Women in Games conference, completely negates the value of anything the English have ever contributed. The American government is in talks to have them stricken from our history books (much like the aforementioned unicorns), and France has agreed to a baguette embargo upon the UK, at least until they draw and quarter Mr. Eyles for his utterly blasphemous plans.
Mark Eyles proposes that people’s everyday lives should translate into accomplishments in a role-playing game of his own design. For instance, as people walk along, shop for groceries and collect materia in their real-world lives, they gain the ability to move, fight monsters and discover items within the game. This way, people don’t have to be actively engaged in the game to succeed, which would be a marked change from titles in which a person has to spend hours and hours passively interacting with a television and controller.
My favorite part of the above-linked Gamespot article regarding Mr. Eyles research is the following;
Eyles said that he got the idea for the project–which is part of his PhD research–while he was listening to Brian Eno’s album Music For Airports. He said, “I was thinking, if that album was a role-playing game, what would it play like? And on the cover it says ‘as ignorable as it is interesting.'”
Mr. Eyles went on to say that he received the inspiration for slicing off his nipple with a razor blade from Pink Floyd’s The Wall, and that after listening to The Spice Girls’ Wannabe, he had an irresistible urge to “Zing-a-zing-ahhh” … whatever the hell that means.
