i first had this idea more than a decade ago: a way to translate gaming tasks into something productive on the other end of the pipe. the gamer doesn't realise, and the company actually solves issues by just letting the gamer play the game.
in the non-gaming world, i think the closest mass market idea has been google's captcha which actually trains an AI in the background. that's very naive and very simple, and definitely not a game, but imagine something similar with puzzles (i.e. Witness, the game, is all about puzzles. why not replace those puzzles with puzzles from real life that actually need solving).
in the non-gaming world, i think the closest mass market idea has been google's captcha which actually trains an AI in the background. that's very naive and very simple, and definitely not a game, but imagine something similar with puzzles (i.e. Witness, the game, is all about puzzles. why not replace those puzzles with puzzles from real life that actually need solving).