[ricardomilnio]

OK I don't know about everyone else but i have major problems pulling myself away from computer games to do work, I easily rack up 3 hours on a game when i tell myself I'm only going to play for 15 mins or something.

So my idea is to have a computer program running that prevents me from opening a game. Sounds simple enough but as it stands anyone with a brain cell can work out how to get around it. There's one key element to this program: When you install it on your PC, you choose 3 (could be more, this is all hypothetical) passwords, I'll come back to this later. Then the installer scans your hard disks, and finds programs identifiable as games (presumably by looking up the program launchers on a website like theigdb.com or similar). The program then encrypts these launchers, or moves them to an encrypted directory, or edits the launch parameters to stop the program executing normally.

Now comes the exciting bit. You will also edit these parameters in the installer. The game files that the program locked earlier only become available every (again, hypothetically) 30 minutes. When the 30 minutes is up, you can try opening the program. When you do, you will be presented with a password box. The password to open the game will be one of the 3 passwords you chose earlier. If you get it wrong, it's back to work for another 30 minutes.

To sum up, this program gives you a 1 in 3 chance every half hour of escaping from work to have a quick session wasting time on your favourite game. Obviously you could change all these settings, but this would also require 1 of the 3 passwords from earlier. You would also need the password to uninstall the program!

Reward: productivity- lol

[Eugene]

What if you were to do the opposite?

Create a program that terminates your game after thirty minutes and won't let you play again for an hour or something.

[amorriso]

That's a good idea. You could instruct the program to not let you run any of certain game programs that you designate for a certain specified period of time. That way if you have something to do, say an essay to write that is due in 2 days, you can stop yourself from playing your favorite computer games until after the due date. The program would also have to protect itself from being uninstalled and stop you from altering the system time on the computer before the due data arrives. It could be a great substitute for will-power!

[withinboredom]

I am so taking this on ...

[withinboredom]

Beta up and running

http://code.google.com/p/gamelocker/