"Backseat Playground" -- interactive games for carbound kids

When we were kids, we used to stave off boredom on long car trips by climbing into the back of the station wagon and making faces at drivers in other cars, hoping to get a reaction (this was before the days of seatbelt laws — and way before portable DVD players). If John Paul Bichard at the Interactive Institute in Stockholm has his way, future motorists will be spared the annoying glances from bored and bratty kids — though they may still be playing a role in the kids' games. Bichard heads a project called "Backseat Gaming," which seeks to create a "rich gaming experience where narrative episodes and embedded gameplay combine with the experience of traveling through the road network."
Bichard's games would be a sort of cross between alternate-reality gaming and a geography lesson; kids would engage in
"an ongoing game plot" that would include elements of their surroundings such as roads, towns and, yes, other vehicles,
all the while learning about the region in which they're traveling. Too bad they didn't have this when we were kids; we might have actually stayed in our seats and not pissed off every driver around us.

[Via Near Near Future]