I've been playing Drop7 a lot recently. It's kept me up until 3 in the morning. I've missed tube-stops. I've stopped looking for work. It's extraordinarily good fun. But even I realise that walking along the street playing it is probably a stupid thing. However, the ability to play games on the tube, on the bus, in a queue leaves me feeling a little empty when I'm just walking along listening to music. I want to be doing something more. Maybe not playing a full attention game but I'd like to be playing a glanceable game.
WideNoise is quite like what I'm after. It's not really a game at all, it's a tool for measuring sound levels and sharing them on a map. But it's got just the right levels of interaction to make it playful while walking along. You poke at it occasionally, it makes some satisfying buzzing and you feel like you're engaged in something. It turns the walk into a project. It's another bionic noticing tool, encouraging you to pay attention to something about the city you're in. And the slightly nukepunk design helps too, it makes you feel like a technician and a member of Kraftwerk. If WideNoise had points, some kind of scoring system, it'd be perfect.
But of course it's not a game. It's a rather functional thing designed to crowdsource the measurement of noise pollution. And given the limitations of the technology it's only approximate. But it feels like a sign of something important - showing how simple sensors + people + lots more people can measure important things and make you feel good about doing it.