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Desktop Creatures

Submitted by: _Matt_
Created: Jun 28, 2006, 3:00 am

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The Idea

Create your own desktop Creature that lives on your desktop and can visit other peoples computers, explore and come back to report and be cared for. By controlling them from the task bar, you can set them against other creatures other people have created. Let them lose on the internet, track where they are, see them learn and change by meeting other creatures. Uses peer to peer technology to have the creatures interact. Allow coding of internals for advanced users.

I thought of this idea when I was...

Sims, creatures, etc

Comments Posted

bjizzle Posted: July 14, 2006, 1:35 pm

Any ideas on a business model?

HereNow Posted: July 15, 2006, 5:54 pm

There is a sample program at MS that shows how to do this using DirectFX

_Matt_ Posted: July 24, 2006, 4:05 am

It makes money selling t-shirts, hats and toy spin offs.

RiskyBiznatch Posted: August 9, 2006, 2:48 pm

neat idea. Sounds like a fun little gizmo with some "buzz appeal"

Caidor Posted: August 11, 2006, 12:05 pm

It could make money by having the creature towing or carrying a small sign or banner 10px x 30px of an advertiser (just a little amazon.com logo or something) who "sponsers" the creature.

Also, If you got a website to sponser the creature, you could program it so that when a user went to that website, it would open a new item or ability for your creature. So if you had your creature program open when you went to amazon.com, and amazon.com was a sponser, it would activate a new ability. Like a little dance script, or a noise, or give it a shirt or a collar or staff or something it could carry around. Then when your creature visited another computer and did it's little action, if people liked it, they could click on it to see where it went to get what abilities, and if they liked it, they could go to that site to get the ability too.

The site wouldn't have to change or add anything, your creature program would have an "if person visits amazon.com, pop-up notification telling them a new ability is available". This way when people are browsing the web they periodically get "rewarded" for visiting certain sites. This would drive traffic to those sites, especially if a new reward item or ability was added every day or week (depending on how much that site wanted to spend to sponser abilities/awards).

Whichever site the user has the most abilities/items from will determine which banner the monster carries/tows.

I'm in if this idea ever goes live...

triptych Posted: April 14, 2007, 1:21 am

Isn't this called Spore?

Rizal Posted: April 30, 2007, 6:57 am

dont get it

zentropy Posted: July 30, 2007, 6:53 am

I don't think he means Spore, more something like online cross-computer Tamagotchi.

WizDum Posted: May 19, 2008, 9:20 am

Greetings from Russia!

My boss also had this kind of idea and now it is made a reality:

http://virtuzoo.com/

Hello!

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