Sims creator Will Wright developing new game for real life

http://nma.tv Will Wright is the designer behind successful life simulation game The Sims. Wright's next creation, HiveMind, aims to take the player into the real world. Wright describes HiveMind as a group of cross-platform, cross-media online applications. It is designed to turn everyday life into an interactive gaming experience. This is done by tapping into personal information from social media networking sources such as Facebook and Twitter and layering this with information about a person's physical surroundings. The result is an alternative reality game. HiveMind will learn your wishes and map these to the people and world around you. Wright calls this "situational awareness." He got the idea when stumbling upon a car show he hadn't known about. Wright says HiveMind can make real life richer by allowing players to serendipitously discover new opportunities and experiences. "I started thinking about games that we can build that would allow us to triangulate you in that space and build that deep situational awareness," says Wright. "There will be all types of games, but the key will be focusing the experiences, including multi-player, within the real world and away from the fictional world that games currently invest in."