Greg Samways: March 2017

 I have been dreaming of creating geoscience games for many years now, ever since I read “Reality is Broken” by Jane McGonigal.  Here conclusion from studying World of Warcraft players was that they we hooked on the “game” because it was very well designed:  clear objectives, clear paths to learn the skills to solve the problems and rewards for collaboration and success.  If only the real world was like that!

Creation of geoscience games is now becoming more attainable and affordable for non-coders.  Platforms such as “Game-Guru” use drag-and-drop technologies to create gaming environments that could easily be adapted to geoscience games, rather than first person shooter games!

Then there are the very affordable platforms for creating terrains like the “Floating Mountains of Pandora”.  These terrains were created using Vue software, which again seems quite intuitive and a clear candidate for building virtual geological worlds.

I am also a great fan of Star Citizen which is building whole planets! Just imagine what kind of virtual geological worlds we could create with these technologies:    In Star Citizen you can even go in to an asteroid mining career, which requires you to find asteroid belts, analyse them, exploit the minerals and make your fortune!  Anybody out there want to collaborate on a mining operation?

So many possibilities!  Do you fancy getting involved in creating geoscience games?