Inventing for the Internet the Early Years

Over on the Inventor Blog, I have just posted on Inventing for the Internet – the Early Years. Below is a brief synopsis but please see the post for the examples.

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Here is a look at inventing for the Internet written in 2005 looking back over the ten year period from 1995 up to 2005. In general, the focus was on making new use of the medium:

1. People can interact to make content not just view content
2. People can communicate with each other
3. A computer mediates to enforce rules of a game or environment
4. Production and distribution of virtual objects are free

Other inventive focus was the relation between story and game play. Sometimes a story would suggest game play but usually a relevant story was created for a given game play.

Here are the comments about inventing features for the Internet in the early years. Many of these ideas would have relevance being redone in today’s social media aware world – because we were socially aware in the past but perhaps did not quite have the platforms and sharing systems worked out.

Inventions for 2005 – 2010 will be the focus of the next posting.

Enjoy – Dan Zen – Full Post

Save Earth – Sci-fi Pattern Matching Game

Save Earth is a massively complex game with a simple pattern matching skill game at its core. The story and the data tracking however are quite extensive.

The site is set in 2020 and features some loosely projected technologies. We probably will not have screens or perhaps even text by then so the predictions are not particularly serious.

There is a part 2 of the game for when the over one million patterns are mapped and the invisible sphere surrounding Earth is shattered. It looks like we are about 11% of the way there but there certainly have been some dedicated pilots with several flying hundreds of times and tagging thousands of patterns!

Baron Digbody’s Castle – Spooky Interactive Mystery

Baron Digbody’s Castle is the third Moustache Mysteries interactive mystery produced. This one includes the booklets to play the mystery offline with friends. It is ideal for Halloween time and indeed was played several times with great success.

Perhaps Dan Zen’s favourite mystery, it features a cast of crazy characters and a twisty plot.

Still to come is the Violet Vale – a fortune teller’s ball mystery and The Hungarian Hunting Lodge – treasure hunters mystery.

You play Gloves, one of the Chauffeurs vying for a position at the castle. The opening mini-game of driving a car along a twisty road to get to the castle will give you an indication of your driving skills ;-). This also works lightly into the plot.

Please contact us if you are stuck and we can help guide you through.

Hypno – Dan Zen Marketing – Viral, Urban, Interactive

Hypno is a site which features information on Dan Zen marketing campaigns before the Pagoda Interface. It was created for the Board interface.

Of note are the Dan Zen stones, the urban posters and stickers and the interactive advertising section. There are some summaries of viral marketing games too. Many of the features were created from first principles and were quite unique for their time and in some cases unique even to date.

Kula Pu Idol – Hawaiian Bungalow Mystery

The second of Dan Zen’s fully interactive mysteries, The Kula Pu Idol mystery was launched as people were looking forward to summer vacations. Set in the Hawaiian bungalow of Princess Lava Lava Yo, the mystery features a dozen characters most of whom seem to have alternate identities.

You play the pool keeper and have stumbled on an auction for the Kula Pu Idol. Although it seems more like a party to you, there are a lot of mysterious things going on underneath.

Best of luck and if you enjoy the mystery, please let others know and let us know too! We hope one day that the mysteries will be made into movies – then at least they will be solved 😉

We played this mystery a couple times at parties where everyone had booklets and it was pretty incredible.