Semantopoly
A couple of weekends ago I was at Semantic Camp where I presented a game called Semantopoly. I mentioned it briefly in my write up of my experience at the event but felt, due to its success, it warranted it’s own blog post. Instead of describing it in detail I’m just gonna post a link to the loverly pictures taken of people enjoying the game that are on Flickr. and a PDF of the rules. That was easy.
The game was more successful than I could ever have hoped. Firstly because it created quite a stir in the blogosphere - Jeremy Keith, who played as himself and wrote a nice review on his blog, certainly enjoyed it and a Google search for Semantopoly comes up with over 10,000 hits. I’m expecting a cease and desist from Hasbro any day now. Secondly the game achieve it’s purpose. Let me explain.
If you have read the rules you should now understand the main premise of the game. There are two types of property available. Technologies like HTML, RDF, OpenID and Social Networks like Twitter and Facebook. To develop social networks (and thus command a higher rate of return) you must first develop technologies, the idea being that to build successful social networks (and be successful in the game) you must make use of open, semantic data. I also hoped that it would encourage those playing to discuss the technologies they were playing with and during the first game at least, once the novelty of the game itself had waned, this was the case.
If you are lucky enough to be attending Bar Camp Brighton 2 then you will have an opportunity to play the game and hopefully in its second iteration with some panned tweaks and improvements. Shortly afterwards I plan to make my designs available as PDF’s so that you can print them off and make your own.
