John says

You are cordially invited to play a new imitation game! Alan Turing’s imitation game was a way to explore the difference between humans and machines. This game is a way to explore the difference between collective and individual communication. It’s an online chat game with real people, mediated by some new technology. Sign up to play here!

The invitation is just inside this swirling ball of light, just reach out and grab it.

How does one play?

The players are assigned to play either as groups or individuals. They join different discord servers (or element groups for the open source purists), and on there are channels they use to communicate with the other servers/groups using a tool called SpaceTube (it’s a tube that connects spaces together). The players have a week to talk to the other servers to put together a guess as to whether the channels they’re talking to represent individuals or groups.

If you're in a group, your group has to convince the other players you're one individual. If you're one individual, you want to convince the other players you're a group.

You do this by sending messages to the other players without leaving your discord server/element group. This is the magical new technology part.

After a week, I'll collect guesses from all the players about the nature of the other teams and reveal who was right and who was wrong.

Each teams gets 1 point for every correct guess they make about other players and 1 point for every incorrect guess made about them.

A very special prize goes to the winner(s)!

And how do I play?

Put your email address in the sign-up form, and I’ll contact you when there’s enough people to start the game.

On the form you can say whether you’d prefer to use discord or element, and whether you’d like to play by yourself or in a group. And there’s even a little extra space at the end if you want to ask some questions.

It’ll be fun! Click and fill it in! Go for it!

Here's the link again, you don't even have to read up the page!

This is how incredible playing the game feels.

Why does this game exist?

I’m the developer of SpaceTube, the tool enabling the group to group communication, and I want to explore its potential uses. I need people to use it and talk to me about how they found it. The idea is that using a game, people can find the edges of what’s there and what could be there in the future.

To be a little earnest for a moment, we’re going to need some form of collective intelligence to make it through the current challenges facing our societies and the hope is that this tool can make that easier to create.

If you're interested in using SpaceTube outside of the game, let me know, I’d love to assist you in doing that. You can contact me using the end of the sign-up form, or you can message me directly over matrix here: @john:spacetu.be

See you soon!