World of World of Warcraft World under construction!

In my Visions of the Gamepocalypse talk last year, I predicted the coming of a LARPing theme park which I jokingly called World of World of Warcraft World (WoWoWW). And it looks like something of the sort seems to be happening! A park in China called "Joyland" will have a mix of Warcraft and Starcraft elements. When it will open is unclear. What is clear, though, is that a major amusement park BASED ON A VIDEOGAME is being built right now. Two tickets to the Gamepocalypse, please!

A Toothbrush Moment

This year at GDC, just one year after I delivered my famous "toothbrush talk", Brian Krejcarek has now presented me with a functioning Green Goose points-giving toothbrush! There was some dispute over whose idea it really was...

Actually, that's just us trying out the toy swords he has on the same system! +5 points for toothbrushing, +5 points for eviscerating your enemies. Neat! Thanks to Floyd Mueller for the photos! :)

Green Goose

Points for toothbrushing? That's crazy talk!

What I love about Green Goose is how incredibly flexible the system is. And Brian Krejcarek is super smart!

Greenopolis and Oceanopolis

Waste Managment (you know, the garbage truck company) owns a company called Greenopolis (a recycling company) that has launched a Facebook game called Oceanopolis. It's, you know, a game about recycling. But here's the part where they drive their hybrid car into the Gamepocalypse: If you do real world recycling at Greenopolis recycling kiosks, you earn points for Oceanopolis, which you can then cash in for real life pizzas from Domino's, which generates pizza box waste to be hauled away by Waste Management! See? You recycle, and everyone gets richer! Except you.

Ten bonus Gamepocalypse points if you can say "Greenopolis Gamepocalypse" five times fast.

Games to Prevent Suicide

Kognito Interactive has created a game that lets teachers practice identifying students at-risk for suicide. Their studies have shown that teachers who have played the game are more likely to identify at-risk students and intervene on their behalf. I strongly suspect the success of this system is likely to greatly increase the amount of training simulations that involve interviewing virtual characters. Thanks to Fiona McDevitt of Kognito for the tip!

Videogame Bus Stops

Let's say you are waiting for a bus, and don't have a smartphone. Or a DS. Or a book. And, further, let's say that you don't mind touching a public touch screen at a San Francisco bus stop. In that case, does Yahoo have a great surprise for you! Not only are they instrumenting twenty bus stops with videogames, but the neighborhood with the highest scoring bus stop will get a free block party! Thanks to Zach Coe for the tip!

Seriously, though. WEAR GLOVES.

Biotic Games

Ingmar Riedel-Kruse at Stanford has created a series of videogames which involve controlling REAL paramecia with electricity and chemicals, to make them part of simple arcade games. Why? Other than the pure joy of cruelty, "Riedel-Kruse says his larger ambition is to find ways to make the games useful, perhaps in the context of science education, or even as tools for crowd-sourced research projects." The link has several videos that must be seen to be believed. I predict games that involve all the things living in the finger grease on your iPhone. Thanks to Scott Landsman for the tip!