Friday, November 9, 2012

Curiosity - What's Inside The Cube?

The British game designer Peter Molyneux as part of a new start up "22Cans" has released a new app for the Apple and Android Market, Curiosity - What's Inside the Cube?

The premise is to dig through the surfaces of a mammoth cube to get to the centre. The player is presented with a rotating cube, when they zoom in (a lot) they realise it is made of many milions of smaller cubes called "cubelets". The purpose of the game is to tap on these cubelets to make them disappear. Players must dig through each layer of the cube one at a time, but one layer is millions and millions of cubelets. Along the way players are rewarded with coins for every cubelet tapped, which can be cashed in for tools to speed up the process. The game is multi player, in that every person who is playing the app is chipping away at the same layer simultaneously in real time. However this is not to say it's a team activity, all players are in competition with one another to be the one who chips away the very last cubelet to "find out what truly amazing things lie in the centre". 

The developers are calling it a social experiment (the first one of 22). It is fascinating the huge surge in popularity of the app, since none of the players have any idea what the purpose of the game/experiment is or where it is all leading. But as the experiment suggests, their curiosity is getting the better of them. Is it their competitive nature coming out or a case that people enjoy being part of something bigger, feeling like they belong? It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get to the centre, will it be as amazing as the developers are making it out to be? Or will people get bored before they even get there?

To keep up with the latest developments in Curiosity and for any new experiments released, check out 22Cans website.



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