Big data game: Relate-a-zon

Ever noticed the "people who bought this item also bought..." section on Amazon? Often, it's like mind reading. There are obviously related products, and not so obviously related ones.

Then you start looking closer at the suggestions. It's almost like a portrait of a real person, someone you know, if not yourself.

What if you could turn that into a game? We played it a lot at the office that year. We quickly learned strategies like "the category jump" which turned out to be a game changer when you needed to go from Britney Spears to Jakob Nielsen. You had to find that category portal. It would most often be a music documentary, then a book about movies, then a book about digital movies, then a book about computers, and finally, a few dozen clicks down, Jakob Nielsen smiles at you.

We also learned a weird pattern: the first time we played a mission, it would take us upwards 100 steps. Then, as we found the category portals, we would always be able to bring the steps down to a dozen.