Glitch Real Life!
Inspired by this forum thread and in particular this comment, I started to ponder how the goodness of Glitch could be brought into day-to-day living. Unlike Glitch, real life isn't designed from the bottom up to encourage cooperation and sharing. It's easy to say, "Oh, just go be nice to people more." But it's actually more challenging than that.
However, people often say (and I agree based on my own life experiences) that life is what you make it. If we make it fun, it becomes more fun. I realized that what we humans need is some reason or inspiration to motivate us and keep us going when real life gets challenging.
I came up with an idea for a web/mobile app called Glitch Real Life. We would play it much the same as we play Glitch but interactions take place in real life, as much as possible. Photo-sharing, groups and forums would, of course, be built in.
Every action could have point-values for Mood, Energy, iMG (or XP). Pet a strange dog on the street: -1 Energy, +3 Mood, +2 iMG. Eat a meal (with variations for Snack, Normal, and Gut Buster meals): +X Energy, +X Mood, +X iMG.
This incorporates all those exercise apps (exercise gets you points!) and sleep management apps (points for sleep too? Wee!) and diet management apps (everything you eat counts). It's your Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/whatever (the more we know about your previous/current life experiences, the more accurate your scoring is, the better your starting level could be). It's your photo-sharing site. It could easily incorporate Augmented Reality features. It's your blog. It's your location-sharing app (Foursquare). The more you live the more experience you get, but doing Glitch-style things gets you more points because scoring is weighted that way (there's the motivation!) e.g. a verbal conflict with your mate will get you XP but cost you lots of Energy & Mood whereas preventing a fight might get you lots of XP AND lots of Mood with only a small reduction in Energy.
There could even be Quests! "Give 5 unknown pets some love today." "Smile at 25 strangers for no reason whatsoever today." "Make 5 strangers smile at you." "Go grocery shopping. Check prices on these 5 obscure items (photo proof required)." "Visit every street within x blocks of your home and look for ghosts. (There's that augmented reality!) "Check-in to 5 businesses in your neighborhood this week."
Of course, this is wide open for anyone to come along and lie their way to the top of the leaderboard. But I can think of a couple ways to address that problem.
Listen, we already carry around our phones all the time anyway, checking into TwitFacePlusLinkSquare and texts and emails and posting pics and so on. Why not have it all centralized into one app that then gives you points (and Achievements) for living your life in a manner that brings what we love about Glitch to the real world while still having our online community for support?
Okay, those with the Programming Skill, get to it. The rest of you, start thinking of things to do to earn points.