PlayMancer Project aims at implementing a "Serious Games" platform focused on rehab and therapy for behavioural and addictive disorders.
NetUnion will lead the work on user requirements and game scenarios, validating game prototypes as supporting modules for the Salut guided self-help programs, based on the principles of cognitive and behavioral therapy for bulimia and compulsive overeating.
The project shall make use of state of the art games research to achieve the following objectives:
- create next generation networked gaming environment
- advance the principles of Universally Accessible Games
- develop Serious Games for physical rehabilitation, therapeutic support and lifestyle management
SYSTEMA TECHNOLOGIES S.A. - GREECE
TXT E-SOLUTIONS SPA - ITALY
UNIVERSITY OF PATRAS - GREECE
NETUNION S.A.R.L. - SWITZERLAND
UNIVERSITE DE GENEVE - SWITZERLAND
TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET WIEN - AUSTRIA
FUNDACIO PRIVADA INSTITUT D'INVESTIGACIO BIOMEDICA DE BELLVITGE - SPAIN
Funded under the 7th FWP (Seventh Framework Programme) with a 2.21 million euro grant, overall costs to the value of 3.13 million euros are anticipated by the project end date on October 31st , 2010.
Neuromancer: The Spark That Started It All
Released in 1984, the book is hailed as the bible of the Cyberpunk generation and sold 6.5 million copies worldwide. It is the first novel to win the holy trinity of science fiction: the Hugo Award, the Nebula Award and the Philip K. Dick Award.
With Neuromancer, William Gibson introduced the world to cyberspace and innovative concepts describing a high-tech dystopian future: global computer network, cyberspace representations in the form of navigation interface (kind of immersive 3D), brain-computer interface, virus-like software and network hacking/ attacks, biomedical engineering, AI and much more.
Neuromancer, the book: First version front cover
In Neuromancer, Gibson first used the term 'matrix' to refer to the visualized Internet, two years after the nascent Internet was formed in the early 1980s.
In this conception of the "matrix", he predicted a worldwide communication network eleven years before the origin of the World Wide Web.
In 1995, he identified the advent, evolution and growth of the Internet as "one of the most fascinating and unprecedented human achievements of the century", a civilization shift to a new kind of society organization.
In 2000 he predicted it would lead to the death of the nation state.