What’s your idea?
The year is 2112 and mans’ careless use of natural resources has left the world devastated. A group of time travellers head back to 2012 to find the causes and change the earth’s fate. London 2112 is a social Alternative Reality Game (ARG) for mobile devices, designed to educate about the dangers facing our planet. Players will solve the mystery of London’s destruction by visiting real locations in the city, where through their GPS enabled iPhone they will be able to see a virtual version of the future. They will need to solve puzzles in the past in order to change the future.
What is the social need or challenge your idea could address?
Education is the most essential tool for creating permanent change in the way we care for our planet. One of the biggest barriers people face is visualising the future results of our actions. London 2112 creates an engaging experience where players are able to directly see the results of climate change and other environmental threats. They can then explore their surroundings to see how their current actions can reduce the damage in the future.
What’s really new about your idea?
We believe this to be a completely innovative approach. We are combining a large cross section of technologies and adding unique and engaging gameplay. We combine the use of cross media narrative from ARGs. We use mobile phones and location data to localise and personalise the experience. We use aspects of mobile social networking to allow users to share their experience and thoughts about a social issue. Upon all of this we build engaging gameplay which all together creates an immersive experience which raises social awareness.
What inspired you to come up with your idea in the first place?
I was recently as a showcase of youth talent and I saw a play by a primary school on the water crisis in the world and how our actions could influence change. I found this inspiring and speaking with the teacher afterwards it became apparent that one of major issues was people being able to visualise the realism of the changes around them. I started to think about how we could replicate the look of real world places and create environments that showed the effects of climate changes and other environmental disasters.
From 1-5, what stage of development would you say your idea was in?
We are currently in the first stage of development. We have the idea and we have thought about the technological ways in which it could be implemented. We have not considered how it could be funded or distributed.
Idea submitted by Jeremiah Alexander
Jeremiah is the Ideas Architect at Ideonic Limited (also called the MD but that’s a boring title). They spend their days looking at how you can use games design and technology to create innovative learning and communication solutions.