The pitch

So the past month we're been busy at work with our super secret project, codenamed hood-o. As things moved on, we've build the handset proto to test the game and our ideas in the real world and so far it looks very nice indeed! 

So what is hood-o all about? Here we go.

Hood-o is an unique game of exploring one’s surroundings in a meaningful way. People in general are stuck with a very small range of movement and experience boredom seeing the same things every day. Hood-o challenges people go out of their way to experience and engage in different things within their environment. Instead of being just another augmented reality gimmick, Hood-o is engaging and keeps people finding new context with their environment and the people around them. Hood-o has the makings of not just a game but a social movement that changes people’s perception about the world around them.

What I think is wrong with the gaming culture these days is that the virtual friendships and connections hardly lead to any real-life activities. Maybe it's just because I hang out with geeks. The sports/outdoorsy people tend to have a stronger real-life connections than gamers thru sports clubs and sporting events and they gain social value from it. I think the problem of computer games is that no real incentives to form real-life connections outside the gaming forums or chat rooms are presented. 

The games companies want their people to form communities because Communities Are Gold, they bind people with the game and create a sense of commitment to the product. And that is all fine and well. What we're trying to do is to have the real-word interaction built into the game and produce all these little opportunities for even the geeky or shy people really to meet each other and Do Stuff. 

Hood-o is designed in a way that it's perfectly enjoyable when played alone but to get further in the game, actual interaction with real people is imperative. We've designed a number of little play-related tasks that vary from simply saying hello to running events with thousands of people in the game.

So the focus of the hood-o is in bringing people together. It's about gamifying a very ordinary activity, making it an extraordinary one. There are no space wizards from Uranus, all that stuff that appeals only to nerds is done away with so even people with no interest in computer gaming can pick it up and play.

Without saying too much, hood-o is for the body and soul. Our game will get the masses moving. I'm sure we've discovered a very interesting concept here and we're pushing hard to finish the proto and do a few VC rounds this summer along other things.

Todays build of hood-o looks very good. Dr Lukasz has really been rocking it on android studio this week, now it's our (the designers) turn to get of our butts and playtest.

Finishing the blog and heading out for my pre-alpha hood-o kicks now, catch you soon!