Gamers: We Want You! May 17, 2006

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Can you name all the King’s Quest games? When Galaxian arrived? Or what kind of deviant came up with the impossibly addictive and difficult Defender? Then your skills are being sought by the Game Innovation Database (GIDb), which has been set up by Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), to track 35-or so years of videogames. Aiming to be the Wikipedia of games, gamers with some functioning brain cells are asked to visit, peruse and update entries.

"Videogames have been, and continue to be, an area where innovation is flourishing," says project advisor Jesse Schell, an instructor of Entertainment Technology who specializes in game design at the ETC. "So many videogame innovations have occurred so fast that there is a danger that many fascinating and important innovations will be forgotten. We have created the Game Innovation Database in order to create a historical record of which innovations appeared when, and why they are important.”

The database has a few hundred entries at the moment but expect this to skyrocket in the coming months as videogame boffins hear about it. Sadly, site down at the moment - let me know when it's back. Via Dr. Dobbs

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