New Google Chrome Experiment Turns Websites into Marble Mazes
Chrome Experiments is touted as a showcase to demonstrate creative experiments using emerging web-technologies like HTML5, Canvas, SVG, and WebGL. According to TechCrunch, a new experiment has just emerged from Google Japan that will enable you to turn any desktop website into a 3D maze that could also be controlled by your smartphone.
The World Wide Maze works by simply having you search for the website of your choice, taking a snapshot of that website, and tilting it onto a flat plane with varying levels depending on the layout and links present in the website. You can either play with your Android/iPhone device to control a silver Chrome ball to navigate the maze and collect blue orbs for points. Reach the goal (decorated with swirling website metadata) to finish the level within the time-limit.
I don’t currently own an Android/iOS phone so I resorted to using my keyboard to play the game and it’s really interesting to see how the game engine breaks down the images of websites and transforms it into marble mazes. Gamification Co resulted in a really flat and easy course but GSummit.com has an interesting “basement” level to explore with elevators to move between them.
While the experiment remains as a novel approach to demonstrate the neat capabilities of HTML5, synced accelerometer support, and other features, there could be potential for this to be used as an immersive marketing-game platform.
Imagine the ability to design websites that take advantage of the website-maze converting process and create interactive paths for users to explore. It could be useful for website tutorials and even marketing advertisements for certain products. The idea that a website can exist simultaneously as a standard webpage and a 3D-plane that acts as a maze with a completely different purpose sounds like an amazing creative challenge. But of course, who knows if the World Wide Maze will become anything more than an experiment.
What I do know is that I scored 2187 points in my first playthrough of the GSummit level.
There’s a special GSummit prize for the first person to beat my score! For discussion’s sake, do you think there’s a greater potential than mere gaming for websites using this technology? Sound off in the comments.
Seems to fit only a select player profile, but an extremely clever idea…love it!
I think could be useful for creative arts projects and maybe even some advertising. It’s odd because a friend of mine was talking about a similar technology a few years ago. I think the application is pretty cool even though it’s a little funky using the keyboard. Either way I really wanted to get that prize so I was determined to win 🙂
Nice job Sean! Shoot me an email at ivan{at}gamification{dot}co
Congrats Sean.
Interesting but does it really help you explore or is it just a gimmick?
Thanks guys. Steven, I think I see what you mean but the given the right presentation it could be kinda cool for exploring webpages in that fashion.
For the right type of website this could be a great way for users to engage, explore and interact with the content on a website. It would be great if you could make users scroll over the right type of words to find a answer to a particular questions, or really have them being aware of the content they are passing. This form of website experiment will certainly be more popular of the coming years to break through the noise that users deal with on a daily basis.
This is only the start and there is a far greater potential for this technology… if this is the starting point it looks like it will be very exciting that is for sure.
This one is really awesome