There’s an interesting thesis project underway at the USC Interactive Media Division in Southern California. Capturing data packets from users on a torrent swarm and identifying their geographical location, users control a Torrent Raider ship to “search and destroy virtual violators.” The Torrent Raider ship comes equipped with a variety of “dazzling projectile weaponry” which players use to patrol the “ad-hoc networks generated by torrents linked to copyrighted material.”
Torrent Raiders is a thesis project of man named Aaron Meyers, a graduate student at the USC Interactive Media Division. Currently in his second year working towards an MFA degree in Interactive Media, he currently anticipates spending the next year bringing Torrent Raiders to fruition as his MFA Thesis. 
Torrent Raiders is to be an “…arcade-style video game and a dynamic network visualization.” It will take place in real-time, driven by the activity of peers in a given BitTorrent Swarm. Players are to take on a tongue-in-cheek role as a “…government agent tasked with surveilling the ad-hoc networks generated by torrents linked to copyrighted material.” Who the good guys will be, either John Q. User or the government, MPAA, or RIAA entities remains unclear, but Meyers asserts that the game “…will challenge Internet users, content pirates, and government spooks to examine their allegiances and mistrust their computer connections.”
A companion website will upload the the information gathered by a player in the game to a central MySQL database. Animated visualizations created in Processing will be hosted on this companion website, and will be driven by an “…aggregated database of information collected by players” of Torrent Raiders. The visualizations will become more and more complex as the number of players in the game increases. A new torrent will be used for the game each week, with Torrent Raider players being automatically directed to it and thereby “…creating a gallery of visualizations for the shape of the torrents speed.”
Game technical design specifics include it being built “…using C# and the .NET platform; the graphics will be powered by Direct3D and it will use the open source btSharp library for real-time interaction with torrent swarms.”
According to his thesis production timeline, May 2007 is the date which Meyers intends to show and present Torrent raiders to the faculty. So as far as when the mainstream user will see it remains anyone’s guess. He intends on completing a Torrent Raiders Beta version in January of 2007, so perhaps this is when we may see a version to check out and take for a test drive. Can’t wait to get the guys from the RIAA and MPAA in the sights of my Torrent Raider ship. Heaven knows that TorrentSpy sure could use “a few good men” to clean up some of their torrents
Tags: torrent raider
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