Game "Infection Free Zone" maps based on OSM

General talk
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Just saw this post apocalyptic base building game (demo) on Steam:

The game-map data is form OSM so the apocalypse can take place in your city if you like. :smiley:

[edit]: Only 4 cities are available in the demo.

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Thank you for posting this.

OSM has seen this before: with a “real estate trading game” (beginning with “M” and originally created in the early 20th century by Parker Brothers, a toy/gaming company in the USA), with PokĂ©mon Go. In the former case, it didn’t last very long (underfunded? too complex? not enough bandwidth / interest among early players?..) and in the latter case, it is still ongoing. With PokĂ©mon Go, some “seeding” of our actual map database was seen by players to “game” the game (as it were), in some cases this bordered on or was actually considered to be Vandalism in OSM.

I say OSM keeps a (not necessarily wary, but vigilant) eye on “Infection Free Zone.” While it can be valuable for such games (and this game, as a gamification system) to be played (potentially valuable data might be gleaned from the results of such play), it can also lead to Vandalism in our map. I’m not saying there is anything wrong with this (there isn’t), simply that it can lead to unexpected consequences from the interaction between data in OSM and the use of it in the context of a game / simulation like this: people will enter data into OSM to affect play, that is simply going to happen.

What is meant by “unexpected” will ultimately be up to OSM Contributors as “good, respectful use of OSM” or possibly “not a particularly welcome participant in being downstream of OSM data.” Or anywhere in-between.

Eyes open, community. This could be another wonderful “creative, unexpected use” of our data, it could be a scourge that requires tedious clean-up. I am optimistic (until that’s proven wrong, if indeed it comes to that).

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