spatch

San Francisco's Sutro Forest is now a big gamefield for the Collaborative Observatory for Natural Environments (or CONE.) CONE-SF, a joint venture between UC Berkeley and Texas A&M, bills itself (HAR!!) as a birdwatching MMORPG. Seriously.

Craigslist's founder Craig Newmark has given the team permission to mount a remotely-controlled robotic camera at his home which overlooks a swath of Sutro Forest. Using the camera controls, you can search for, take snapshots of and then identify any birds which may be hanging around at the time (CONE's instructions helpfully note that "during nighttime in San Francisco, the image will be dark.")

You score points by correctly identifying the birds. A correct identification, in this case, is determined by the majority of users making an ID of the same picture. Technically this means you could get a bunch of friends together and call every bird a dodo and start racking up the serious points, but I would assume that once your shenanigans are noticed, they would nerf dodos or something. (Additionally, houses are already nerfed. You can't check out the ones on the periphery of the view, so that means sorry, you won't be able to see what Raymond Burr's up to.)

Currently the top birdwatcher has a score of 616, over 120 points more than second place. That's a lot of birdspotting, boss. I'm pretty sure this game will skyrocket in popularity once they come up with an interface for cats, though at that point they'll have to nerf the guess "snack."