Hacking the Database

The other-day I was introduced to the most fantastic game I have ever played. I shall call it Wiki-races for the purposes of this post. In Wiki-races one is given a topic such as Kanye West. Using the random page generate to create a starting point the player must use the hyperlinks to get to the topic from the random page. The aim is to do this task in as few moves as possible or less than your friend who can play after or simultaneously with you, provided you have another web capable device.

Here was my journey:

From….

 

I got to

Which had a link to

That allowed me to end up at the page of Mr….

Four moves, whoop whoop!

Reflecting on this I was quite amused because it seemed this game was a way of hacking the database. By this I mean using the database in a way which was not intended by its designers. Wiki-races are very much in the spirit of Higenbothen when he made a tennis game with an Ostilethscope.

I would argue that this is more ludic than just interacting with a database because you can get better at this to an extent. i.e; the less hyperlinks it take you to get form point A to B could be used to indicate an improvement in your skills a the game.

Your thoughts?