Imagine working towards a single goal with five million
other people, and the only communication between you is the tapping of fingers.
This is the gaming experiment that is Curiosity.
In November of 2012, 22 Cans released Curiosity, a game
originally for the iOS platform, and eventually became available for Android.
The game places every player in the same digital room with a single colored cube.
Players take turns cracking the cube until one player delivers the final
breaking blow and the contents of the box are revealed to that player. Then the
game moves onto the next layer or cube until the final layer is broken.
Peter Molyneux, 22 Cans studio head and former Lionhead
Studios CEO, describes the game as “an experiment.” What kind of experiment?
According to Molyneux, “…it is an experiment with tech, and getting servers
right. We didn't do that terribly well at the start. But it's also an
experiment in psychology, and the psychology of being anonymous, and the
psychology of giving people these big, huge, insane objectives--like get to the
center of the cube--and how that psychology plays into peoples' behavior.”
While unique and worthy of merit on its own, a new
development with the game has surfaced. As of May 1st, the game now
has a countdown timer, counting down to the projected breaking of Curiosity’s
last layer. There are roughly 50 levels or cubes at this time, and the
countdown will continue until the final cube is broken and its contents
revealed. The final contents are said by Molyneux to be “life changing.”
Only days prior to the game’s counter being added, Microsoft
announced that they would be unveiling their latest game console, XBOX 720 on
May 21st, a month before the annual gaming expo E3 (Electronics
Entertainment Expo). Curiosity’s expected date for completion is about the same
day. Coincidence? Maybe.
Molyneux’s previous company, Lionhead Studios was owned by
Microsoft Game Studios suggesting the possibility of sly Xbox buzz, though when
asked directly about Curiosity’s projected end, he replied to Gamespot: “I
thought six months was about the length of time that Curiosity should go on
before it closed…" and "…bizarrely, as part of that controversy, is
that the end of the cube--the last layer of the cube--might well be, I mean
probably if you look at our analysis of probability, the same day that the next
Xbox is announced. Which would be a bizarre twist of fate."
The question of whether or not this ‘bizarre twist of fate’
is unclear, though Molyneux’s following words, “There's an interesting
opportunity, possibly, for me to… well, I can't say any more than that...” only
add to the mystery.
Sources: Gamespot.com and IGN.com.
