Alex Reid

This may be a first; game developers using open government data.

A group of seven technical students from Vancouver’s Center for Digital Media have created a game using Vancouver’s Open Data. Built on Microsoft’s Silverlight development platform, Bing Maps and the City of Vancouver’s Open Data Catalogue, the group of students have developed “TaxiCity” a Web-based driving game that allows the player to take on the role of a taxi driver, pick up passengers and deliver them to various locations around Vancouver.

The realism isn’t so much Grand Theft Auto, more pre-Google Street View, such as block outlines, building shapes, green spaces and the centre medians along main routes. The group also pulled their data from VanPark, a site that used Vancouver open data to help people find and track parking during the Olympics.

Open Government Data expert David Eaves was involved in the project, and he says the project is “pure R&D experiment.”

“It begins to show us some of the really complicated things that could become possible if cities shared their data,” he said. The game “also takes a step closer to being able to create games where you actually race around the City of Vancouver, which could be fun from a game perspective,” Eaves said.

You can play the game here.