“Internet Eyes” – Redefining gaming… by a lot.

October 15th, 2009

Have you heard about the UK’s newest game, “Internet Eyes”? It utilizes their preexisting CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) system in a way only Orwell could have imagined. It’s the talk of thousands of journalists, bloggers and civil liberties activists throughout the UK, and has become an increasingly popular web buzz topic in America, too.

During a research project, “On the Threshold to Urban Panopticon?”, conducted by URBANEYE, coordinated by the Centre of Technology and Society at the Technical University of Berlin, it was estimated that the UK is home to approximately 4,200,000 cameras – one for every 14 citizens.

Internet Eyes is a web-based game set to launch next month. Visitors to the game’s official website can play for a prize of up to £1,000 ($1,627) by watching live streaming video from various, “secret” locations and reporting possible crimes. Winners are determined based on a points system (highest scorer wins), where users accrue points which are awarded based on the “accuracy” of their reports. Prizes, or “awards”, as the company prefers to call them, are rendered each month.

Any business or organization which is in possession of a property where a CCTV camera is located may participate in the game by offering their video feed for viewing on the site, and also contribute directly to the success of the game by being determining factors in how “accurate” each user’s crime reports are.

From the official site: “The camera owner will… feedback (rate) the result of the alert. Their feedback is converted into points and entered into a Viewers monthly league table. At the end of each month the highest scoring Viewer will receive the reward money; this could be split in the event of a tie.”

Also from the official site, crime “events” which may warrant reporting include:

* Shop lifting
* Anti social behaviour
* Burglary
* Vandalism

In more recent news, the company behind Internet Eyes, known only as “Internet Eyes Ltd” (despite some research effort on my behalf, I cannot seem to find more information about the company), is eyeing (no pun intended) Australian citizens, because of their difference in time zone, to monitor its presented video feeds during the late night hours while the number of UK viewers may drop.

Information used in this entry was pulled from dailymail.co.uk, news.com.au, urbaneye.net, wikipedia.org and the Internet Eyes official website.

Entry Filed under: Stuff You Should See