Warning: file_get_contents(http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/json/urlinfo/data?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.biggtech.com%2Ftechnology%2Fpicture-the-impossible-a-social-networking-game-powered-by-microsoft-bing_287.html) [function.file-get-contents]: failed to open stream: HTTP request failed! HTTP/1.0 999 Unable to process request at this time -- error 999 in /home/content/b/i/g/biggtech/html/wp-content/plugins/digg-digg/dd.class.php on line 699

In this latest episode, Microsoft Bing is powering up this new social media game in which a user becomes part of the bigger community ecosystem. This is a community-based game, developed jointly by the Lab for Social Computing at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle and Microsoft Bing.

It’s almost like a RRPG ( Real-time role playing game ) in which the member of community are exploring the city of Rochester, the main objective is to encourage the community towards creativity and charitable giving and participate in real events. Something which is becoming scarce in the current capitalist culture. There are lot of engaging activities in which players participate such as invitation to events and locations spread across  the city, the idea is to bring people out in real. There are casual web based games, again the concept of games is to bring people out to events and location in the city. The games also reflect the ideology of Democrat & Chronicle newspaper itself.

User starts the game by selecting a player faction, namely “The Tree standings”, “The Watch Standings” and the “The Forge Standings” during the registration process. As the player proceeds within the game, any points earned by the player in a given week are contributed towards the faction to which the player belongs. the faction standings are aggregated using twitter I believe.

There are other attractions as well such as prizes (Kodak cameras, picture frames, and printers, as well as tickets to a gala party held on October 31st at RIT’s new Student Innovation Center) offered by Kodak to the competing participants.

The social aspect is to indulge players in charitable acts for Foodlink, Unity Health and Wilson Commencement Park. There is even a invite-only ball on Halloween where 300 contestants who have scored high enough in the challenges.

This is one fantastic social experiment where the idea is to engage people in social activities using the power of facebook and twitter and Microsoft search engine “Bing”. Bing will be part of the online game play and will serve the purpose of finding references and solving puzzles through clues. This allows Microsoft to showoff the Bing Maps features of visual data binding.

The game events will start from september 12 to  October 31^st (the ball is on Halloween of course).

Sign up at www.picturetheimpossible.com!

If you enjoyed this post, you might want to subscribe our RSS feed or become our Facebook fan! You will get all the latest updates at both the places. Thank You!