Update : [ Today techcrunch has published an article on Grey Area, a  Finnish smartphone games developer, doing a alternate reality game called Shadow Cities. They raised Series A funding. ]

One of the trends that i always think is gonna be big in future is gaming in the real world. By that I mean that when people themselves will become characters of the games that they are playing in the virtual worlds. The merging of your virtual and real self.  Location based services are getting us there.

That is why it was very interesting to read that Frog Design is working on a location based game in Las Vegas. Interesting stuff.  Read the details of that initiative here : http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/frog-brings-ge039s-desert-quest-to-ces.html. And maybe be a part of it in case you are around in Vegas when this is happening .

On a related note, you should watch the following TED talk by Seth Priebatsch. He talks about how the next big thing is gonna be the game layer that will be built on the social layer that has already been created largely by Facebook. Though he talks about known concepts, but the way he puts it all together makes it very fascinating. He is trying to create such a integrated framework that uses game dynamics in order to get people motivated and makes them do stuff. It would be an awesome tool in the hand of marketing people.

And a funny video to follow that up from the Gamify Initiative: