Be a NSA Spy in this Promotion for The Watch Dogs Video Game

WeareData allows you to monitor the live activities of citizens in Europe

Watch Dogs is Ubisoft’s big upcoming game about big data, government spying, unscrupulous agencies, and vigilantism set in the windy city of Chicago. Amidst all the uncomfortably apt news of whistleblowing and Edward Snowden, creative agency Paris BETC has created a “hyped-connected” visualization tool that offers a way of seeing all the enormous amounts of data publicly available.

WeareData allows any user to tap into the networks of Paris, Berlin, and London to view real-time data mappings as they occur. Users can explore these big cities and see live CCTV cameras, the movement of public transport, traffic lights, and all the geo-location data resulting from Twitter, Instagram, and Foursquare activity. Connecting on Facebook will even allow you to see what other users on WeareData are doing as well. This little promotion might just be a visualization of publicly available data but it’s a daft reminder on how powerful big data can be when combined and analyzed effectively.

WeareData is an interesting little data-mapping tool that allows us to play with the idea of absolute access to everyone’s personal data. It is interesting to consider this idea as it relates to gamification, especially as the practice is reliant on data-driven practices. Quick feedback is one of the hallmarks of gamification and this kind of big data analytics is the ultimate feedback source for measuring efficaciousness but how will this affect our behavior over-time?

Only time will tell.

For a look at the making of WeareData, watch this behind-the-scenes video.