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from the how-about-being-aware-of-your-surroundings-instead? dept.
An unexpected catch:
In an informal investigation by Senators Jeffrey D. Klein and Diane J. Savino, staff members took a list of 100 registered sex offenders across New York City and compared it with locations where Pokémon Go players could collect virtual items or use other game features.
In 59 cases, those locations were within half a block of offenders' homes. The staff members, who played the game for two weeks, also found 57 Pokémon — which appear on players' phones as if they exist in the real world — near the offenders' homes, according to a report the senators released on Friday. Such overlap has been reported in other states, including California and North Carolina.
In New York, those discoveries prompted Mr. Klein, a Democrat who represents parts of the Bronx and Westchester County, and Ms. Savino, a Staten Island Democrat, to propose two pieces of legislation, scheduled to be introduced next week.
The first would prevent moderate or high-risk sex offenders from playing so-called augmented-reality games — like Pokémon Go — and the second would require the games' creators to cross-reference their virtual landscapes with lists of offenders' homes and remove any "in-game objective" within 100 feet of them.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Monday August 01 2016, @02:22AM
the second would require the games' creators to cross-reference their virtual landscapes with lists of offenders' homes and remove any "in-game objective" within 100 feet of them
I read TFA, and still don't know how often they want this check to be made. One time per game? It's an unfortunate restriction to put on all games, but easy to comply with. Periodically, on any scheule? All of a sudden you can't have persistent objective points unless you purposefully put them on schools, daycares, and other places that sex offenders aren't allowed to live near. What a strange constraint to place on the developers of a brand new social phenomenon.
Mr. Klein noted that while state law limited offenders’ access to social networking websites, he thought legislation was necessary as more games like Pokémon Go came online. “I don’t think this is going to be the first interactive game that’s going to be developed,” he said.
Putting aside the fact that he meant "last" (it certainly isn't going to be the first), has there ever been a non-interactive game? Don't we call those movies? Do these people even know what it is they're legislating about?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 01 2016, @06:05AM
has there ever been a non-interactive game?
Unless your definition of games insists that they be interactive, yes.
Kinetic novels [wikipedia.org] are usually classified as games.
There is also a whole class of "idle" RPGs, as well as other idle games. Usually you still have to interact occasionally (say, a few minutes per day), but there are also ones with no "player" interaction whatsoever. I believe that the first one was Progress Quest [progressquest.com]? At least the first one I saw. It summarizes the (MMO)RPG experience quite well, you have a bunch of numbers and progress bars and they keep going up, with some text for flavor :)
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Monday August 01 2016, @02:13PM
looks like Process quest beats the Idler RPG [idlerpg.net] by about 3 years according to the dates at the bottom of the page.
Such games are not my thing :P