Hah wouldn’t that be great. That would be one heck of an achievement!

Oh and thanks for checking us out.

One thing I like with how they’ve deployed their crowd-sourcing is just the simple point system. From what I can tell, there’s not real merit beside being part of a community and bragging rights of course. Maybe someday there will be an achievement on Xbox, Achievement Unlocked: Cured Cancer?

I’ve read through your company’s doc, it’s impressive.

I honestly think there’s a lot of potential in the game industry to spark learning and research. In my opinion I think gamers have a unique asset in terms of knowledge and understanding. Since society is fractured into career paths which force all of us to pick a singular field, I think video games is where it’s recombined into a stew and served with a side of fun. Not saying gamers are genius; but likely as a social group, could exceed any specific field. I think that renaissance man approach does benefit more than the good old fashioned “when I grow up, I want to be [insert occupation here].”

Seriously this could open a large opportunity for developers to slip in game content that force players to solve a real life problem. From my perspective, we’re already good guinea pigs. The idea of action and reward has really settled into the culture. And I’ll admit, sometimes highly addictive. Ethically, likely a no-no in terms of exposing humans to solving real problems for humans. But the upside is no one is really being harmed, give the lab rat a puzzle and he’ll solve it for you.

I’ve always had this idea bounce around of incorporating real life skills into a video like language, science, sociology (well, you get the point). Would be interesting how the game would turn out and how people would organize themselves s to complete these quests. Maybe next best problem to science could be the next epic quest in some video game?

Good or bad, I’m pretty happy with the fact we’re getting closer to getting new drugs for AIDS. Lots of people suffering, it’s fair that the global village is taking care of itself.