小游戲挑戰(zhàn)你我地理IQ

One of the most popular videogames on the Internet right now is about as low-tech as a high-school social studies quiz.

The free game, Traveler IQ Challenge, has become an unlikely hit by getting players to locate Kinshasa, Moscow and other cities and attractions by clicking on a crude, two-dimensional world map, and scoring them based on the speed and accuracy of their responses. Created as a marketing gimmick in June by TravelPod, a travel Web site owned by Expedia, Traveler IQ now has more than four million people a month who play it on sites across the Internet, including Facebook's popular social network.

Traveler IQ is part of a wave of what's known in the industry as 'casual' games -- low budget, easy-to-play titles like card games and puzzles -- that lack the visual flare of slick new products for the Xbox 360 and other game consoles. Traveler IQ is also tapping into a renewed interest in geography, stimulated by new technologies like GPS satellite-based navigation devices and Google Earth, a program from Google that lets users browse a three-dimensional model of the planet.

'I'm addicted,' says John Riccitiello, chief executive of videogame publisher Electronic Arts of Redwood City, Calif. Mr. Riccitiello says his overall Traveler IQ ranking got as high as 11th in the world at one time, but his standing dropped as more people began playing the game, sinking to 204,184th. 'Once something gets really popular, you realize what a dolt you are,' says Mr. Riccitiello, who travels about 175,000 miles a year.

Traveler IQ Challenge was inspired by games played by Luc Levesque, a Canadian programmer and traveler who founded TravelPod. When he was on train trips across Turkey and driving for days to reach remote salt flats in Bolivia, Mr. Levesque, 32 years old, would randomly name a country and one of his travel companions would attempt to name another country or capital city that starts with the third letter of the previous country's name.

The idea for an online geography game occurred to Mr. Levesque in May when Facebook of Palo Alto, Calif., opened its site so independent software developers could create games, music and other simple applications that its huge audience could post on their personal Web pages. Two programmers created the game for TravelPod in just under three weeks for an amount Mr. Levesque won't disclose, but which is likely less than $30,000 at standard salaries for engineers.

The game was designed to funnel users to TravelPod.com, an ad-supported Web site that lets travelers set up blogs chronicling their trips. 'We've seen huge increases in registrations and traffic,' says Mr. Levesque, who adds that the Ottawa, Ontario, company could eventually put ads directly inside the game. More than 1.6 million people have installed the game on their Web pages on Facebook. Most of the players of the game now come through other sites that have the program on their pages, including the CBS show 'The Amazing Race.'

Traveler IQ starts out asking users to locate some of the better known cities and attractions in the world, like London, giving users a limit of about 10 seconds to pinpoint them on a map. The locations quickly get harder with cities like Ashkabat, Turkmenistan. The game tells users how close, in kilometers, they got to the actual locations and scores them accordingly, with more points awarded for shorter distances.

Andrew Bridges, an attorney at a San Francisco law firm who has traveled extensively around the world, the game is one of a number of new technologies that help stimulate his interest in distant locales. For fun, he says he'll see how fast he can manually zoom in to find a monument like the Acropolis in Athens using Google Earth.

Jerome Dobson, a geographer at the University of Kansas in Lawrence who doesn't play the game, says new technological applications like Traveler IQ are helping to revive geography after a decades-long decline in the teaching the subject in U.S. schools. Issues like climate change, globalization and the war in Iraq are also encouraging interest in far flung places. Mr. Dobson, also the president of the American Geographical Society, an association of geographers and geography enthusiasts, says writer Ambrose Bierce said around the time of World War I that ''War is God's way of teaching Americans geography.' '

Still, studies suggest there's a ways to go before the public improves its grasp of geography. A survey from early last year sponsored by the National Geographic Society found that only half of young American adults, ages 18 to 24, could locate New York state on a map. Six out of 10 couldn't find Iraq on a map of the Middle East.

Travel IQ provides its own report card, of sorts, on geographical skills. Among those who use the game on Facebook, Tata Consultancy Services, a technology consulting firm based in India, had the lowest average Traveler IQ among workplaces, at least until the rankings were updated during the middle of this week. Mike McCabe, a spokesman for Tata Consultancy Services in the U.S., in an email called the findings 'interesting' and said the company will consider them when training its staff, though he said, 'Engineering skills and an overall cultural understanding of the company and its customers' are higher priorities at Tata than geography.

如 今在互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上最火的一款游戲，其技術(shù)含量卻與高中生的社會(huì)學(xué)科測(cè)試相差無幾。

這是一款名為《旅行者IQ大挑戰(zhàn)》(Traveler IQ Challenge)的免費(fèi)游戲。游玩家在一張二維地圖上尋找金沙薩、莫斯科或其他城市及景點(diǎn)的所在位置，然后根據(jù)答題的速度和準(zhǔn)確度來評(píng)分。怎么看這都不像是款會(huì)大受歡迎的游戲。但Expedia Inc.旗下的旅游網(wǎng)站TravelPod出于營(yíng)銷目的在6月份推出這款小游戲以來，其每個(gè)月的在線玩家人數(shù)已經(jīng)突破400萬，其中甚至包括 Facebook之類流行社交網(wǎng)站的用戶。

《旅行者IQ大挑戰(zhàn)》在業(yè)內(nèi)被稱作“休閑”游戲，像卡片游戲和謎題游戲也屬于這種類型，其特點(diǎn)是開發(fā)成本低，易于上手，畫面也不像為Xbox 360等游戲機(jī)開發(fā)的新游戲那般絢爛華麗。而另一方面，隨著全球衛(wèi)星定位系統(tǒng)(GPS)導(dǎo)航設(shè)備及Google Earth等新技術(shù)的應(yīng)用，人們對(duì)地理知識(shí)又開始感興趣起來，于是便有了《旅行者IQ大挑戰(zhàn)》的成功。Google Earth是谷歌公司(Google Inc.)推出的一款電腦軟件，用戶可以在地球的三維模型上進(jìn)行地理搜索。

美國(guó)游戲發(fā)行商電子藝界 (Electronic Arts Inc.)的首席執(zhí)行長(zhǎng)約翰•里奇泰洛(John Riccitiello)稱，我已經(jīng)沉溺于這款游戲難以自拔。他表示，自己的全球排名一度到過第11位，而隨著越來越多的人開始玩這款游戲，他的排名已經(jīng)掉至第204,184位。這位每年行程達(dá)17.5萬公里的高管稱，一旦某樣?xùn)|西真正流行起來，你才知道自己有多么弱智。

這款游戲的創(chuàng)意來自TravelPod網(wǎng)站創(chuàng)始人、加拿大程序員盧克•萊維克(Luc Levesque)玩的一種游戲。當(dāng)32歲的萊維克坐火車橫越土耳其，或驅(qū)車去玻利維亞偏遠(yuǎn)的鹽沼旅游時(shí)，會(huì)時(shí)不時(shí)與同伴玩一種單詞接龍游戲，規(guī)則是用頭一個(gè)國(guó)家或城市地名的第三個(gè)字母作為下一個(gè)地名的開頭字母。

今年5月份Facebook開放其網(wǎng)站，允許數(shù)量龐大的用戶在個(gè)人網(wǎng)頁(yè)上公布獨(dú)立軟件開發(fā)者制作的游戲、音樂和其他簡(jiǎn)單的應(yīng)用軟件。于是萊維克便有了制作一款在線地理知識(shí)游戲的想法。他聘請(qǐng)了兩名軟件開發(fā)人員用三周時(shí)間制作了這款游戲。雖然他沒有透露成本幾何，但一般情況下的報(bào)酬應(yīng)該不到3萬美元。

萊維克制作這款游戲的初衷是想引導(dǎo)用戶登錄他的網(wǎng)站TravelPod.com。這個(gè)網(wǎng)站是靠廣告收入維持運(yùn)營(yíng)，旅游愛好者可以在網(wǎng)站建立博客來記錄自己的旅行。萊維克稱，網(wǎng)站的注冊(cè)人數(shù)和點(diǎn)擊量大幅增長(zhǎng)。他表示，最終有可能通過游戲直接投放廣告。目前已有超過160萬人在Facebook的網(wǎng)頁(yè)上安裝了這款游戲，不過大部分玩家都是從其他網(wǎng)站上下載的，就連哥倫比亞廣播公司(CBS Corp.)的“驚險(xiǎn)大挑戰(zhàn)”(The Amazing Race)節(jié)目網(wǎng)頁(yè)也提供這款游戲的下載。

《旅行者IQ大挑戰(zhàn)》按照由易到難的順序，一開始會(huì)讓玩家用10秒鐘左右在地圖上找出倫敦之類的比較知名的城市或景點(diǎn)，很快接下來的提問會(huì)越來越難，例如找出土庫(kù)曼斯坦的首都阿什哈巴德 (Ashkabat)。然后游戲會(huì)告訴玩家自己的答案離城市的實(shí)際地點(diǎn)偏離了多少，并給予相應(yīng)的評(píng)分，偏差越小則得分越高。

經(jīng)常周游世界各地的舊金山律師安德魯•布里奇斯(Andrew Bridges)表示，這款游戲和其他的幾種新技術(shù)手段調(diào)動(dòng)起了他對(duì)千里之外地點(diǎn)的好奇。他表示，想看看自己在Google Earth上能用多快的時(shí)間找到雅典衛(wèi)城之類的某處名勝，這是件好玩的事情。

堪薩斯城大學(xué)(University of Kansas)地理學(xué)者杰羅姆•多布森(Jerome Dobson)雖然沒玩這款游戲。但他認(rèn)為，數(shù)十年來地理課在美國(guó)學(xué)校教育中的份量不斷下滑，而包括這款游戲在內(nèi)的新科技手段有助于推動(dòng)地理學(xué)科的復(fù)興。像氣候變暖、全球化和伊拉克戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)之類的事件，也在喚起人們對(duì)遙遠(yuǎn)地區(qū)的興趣。身為美國(guó)地理學(xué)會(huì)(American Geographical Society)主席的多布森引用美國(guó)知名作家安布魯斯•畢爾斯(Ambrose•Bierce)在第一次世界大戰(zhàn)的話稱，戰(zhàn)爭(zhēng)就是上帝讓美國(guó)用來學(xué)會(huì)地理的。美國(guó)地理學(xué)會(huì)是一個(gè)由地理學(xué)者和地理愛好者組成的團(tuán)體。

但研究表明，讓美國(guó)普通大眾提高地理知識(shí)還很有長(zhǎng)的路要走。美國(guó)國(guó)家地理學(xué)會(huì)(National Geographic Society)去年初組織的一項(xiàng)調(diào)查顯示，美國(guó)18歲至24歲的青年成人只有一半能在地圖上找出紐約所在，60%的人在中東地圖上找不到伊拉克。

《旅行者IQ大挑戰(zhàn)》還會(huì)定期公布關(guān)于地理知識(shí)的各類成績(jī)排行榜。至少本周更新之前，在Facebook上玩此游戲的人中，平均地理IQ最低的單位是印度高科技行業(yè)咨詢公司──塔塔咨詢服務(wù)公司(Tata Consultancy Services)。該公司駐美國(guó)發(fā)言人邁克•麥克白(Mike McCabe)在一封電郵中稱，這項(xiàng)統(tǒng)計(jì)很“有趣”。他表示，公司會(huì)在培訓(xùn)員工時(shí)考慮這點(diǎn)。但他稱，相對(duì)于地理知識(shí)，公司更重視工程技能，以及對(duì)公司及客戶文化的總體理解。