I wanted to look at something that we will likely see in the near future of videogames: the conversion of everyday activity into a gaming context. We’ve already seen a few examples of this take place and it is a form of gaming that has yet to really emerge but one that will take off very quickly once the mainstream crowds are drawn into the addictive lure of turning everyday mundane actions into status-based achievements.

The phone rings late one evening. You answer it to hear the voice of a woman in distress: ‘I can’t keep this up any longer, they’re getting to close to the truth!’. She hangs up suddenly, but not before leaving you with a cryptic clue – a password to some online network that she had managed to get a hold of. Your next move, should you choose to take it, is to log onto that network and download the encrypted data hidden within.