I'm not sure if this has been done before, but it's interesting nonetheless. Australian TV channel ABC2 is running a new show entitled Good Game, in which viewers are invited to submit their ideas for an online game which is then built throughout the series - there's an entry form here and you can also download episodes of the programme. From the press release:
As well as giving the audience a chance to develop a 'crowd sourced' game of their choice, the most innovative contributors will be rewarded with prizes, including two mentorships with an Australian games development company on offer. A selection of the best ideas will be judged by the online audience as well as a panel of industry judges... By the end of the Good Game series the audience will be able to play their own game online.
Gamesblog readers do, of course, have their own experience of group game development, thanks to Aleks' Wikigame project; then there's Dave Perry's Top Secret MMO, which uses input from the online community. But how will it work on the mass televisual scale? And is this sort of large scale communal development concept going to become more common in the future?
Perhaps not. I can't imagine whole families gathered round their TVs on Saturday night shouting, "No, that subroutine was awful - change the parameters!"
Also, the presenters of Good Game are called Bajo and Junglist - wasn't that a Megadrive platformer?
