Slashgeo

The Earth Contest Game (launch coverage), one of many Google Earth games, claim in a press release to attract more than 60, 000 people worldwide. From the PR: " EarthContest.com reported today that its online game has drawn over 60,000 new users from over 16 countries within only two weeks after its initial launch. [...] The response has been overwhelming and we are now busy at creating the Big Game with even more mystery and some big prizes." The Ogle Earth blog discuss the announcement.

Slashdot discuss a Google Maps RTS game (the game site is slashdotted right now). Their summary: "Play the first Google Maps RTS! Online players (2-25) randomly receive a set of countries with troop hitpoints based on real world population data. To play: attack neutral and enemy countries in an effort to try to take over the world. You have a 20% chance of receiving more troops when you overtake an enemy country. More features to come! (currently in public beta status)." From the comments, we find those this other Google Maps CyberNations game and a list of games using Google Maps.

All Points Blog links to a National Geographic article on location-based mobile games. From the article: "In Plundr, players move within a city as their computers track their movements. They trade goods or build up their arsenals to prepare for battles with other "pirates" cruising the city streets. The roving role-playing game is an example of what have been dubbed mobile social games—games that use global positioning systems (GPS) and other location-based technologies to track players' movements within a fictional world layered on top of the real world. [...] A variety of mobile social games have been developed for cell phones or personal digital assistants (PDAs), although only a handful so far have achieved wide popularity. "This is really a nascent field, especially in the [United] States," Slavin said. "

GeoBloggers provides many links discussing the new Backseat Playground game in development, targeted at car passengers with a GPS and a laptop. From the site: "The purpose of the project is to design and implement a game prototype that enables kids/big kids travelling in the back seat of cars to enjoy a rich gaming experience where narrative episodes and embedded gameplay combine with the experience of traveling through the road network. The game and game story will be designed to be meaningful even when the tempo and order of the journey changes." We learn from High Earth Orbit that this project is sponsored by Microsoft and the Ordinance Survey.

Both Vector One and Spatial Sustain discuss this week what is the influence of gaming on geotechnology. From V1: "In fact, it can be argued that as GIS and geotechnology contribute real-world spatial data into the modeling and gaming environment – games becoming more reality based. [...] Gaming is shifting science to entertainment – make no mistake, some serious science is embedded into gaming development, tools and products. The shift that is taking place is more subtle, causing science to be fun and the pursuit of knowledge and discovery (key ingredients of science) to be entertaining." From SS: "Microsoft’s Virtual Earth technology is being married to their Flight Simulator software program to provide greater realism at multiple scales so that those piloting simulated aircraft have a more realistic experience from the cockpit. [...] We are in need of greater realism, and the expanded demand of the gaming community means that there is a revenue stream to pay for the collection of more detailed and realistic models. The geospatial community is in need of more interdisciplinary interaction, and the creation of more collaborative gaming platforms could help pave the way for more interactive simulation environments that could be harnessed to understand earth systems." I copied below a few geospatial games mentioned previously, yes, there's *a lot of them* (and much more that probably weren't shared on Slashgeo).

Some not-so-closely related geoblog entries. First is Spatial Sustain linking to an article showing correlation between the spatial distribution of fast food restaurants and obesity in Canada. Very Spatial discuss MapEcos a site mapping U.S. industrial pollution. And finally if you have some time during the holidays, APB links to an article about the Traveler IQ Challenge online game, I admit I tried the game some time ago and its simplicity and educative components charmed me. From the MapEcos article: "It offers information on the environmental performance of more 20,000 industrial facilities across the country. Visitors use an interactive map to reveal government data on toxic pollution as well as information from the facilities themselves on what they are going to protect the environment, being gathered by the site's developers." Several related stories below.

Chris Spagnuolo's GeoScrum blog has a very nice game for the GIS professional on it. It written completely in flash and is very fun to play. It involves being given a random location on the earth, and few seconds to click that location on the map. Give it a go and post your scores here so the rest of the GeoCommunity can make fun of your low scores :). Update: 04/10 13:59 GMT by S : This game was mentioned before on Slashgeo previously. I also copied some other previous geo-games below. And since many shared their score, here's mine: 527,701 pts, Level: 12, Trav. IQ: 127 (I admit this score was not done on my first try, but I haven't played often ;-). Update #2: Thanks to Marc K. for the submission of the same story prior the publishing of this one (yours has been pending too long in our system - thanks for your efforts).