Today at GDC, we had a chance to meet with some students from CMU's Entertainment Technology Center, and ended up finding out all about The Game Innovation Database, a new and potentially intriguing website.

As the site explains: "The goal of the GIDb is to classify and record every innovation in the entire history of computer and videogames. Because we could never complete this daunting task alone, we have made the GIDb an open wiki, allowing anyone to easily add innovation entries for the benefit of everyone who cares about the history, study, and practice of game innovation."

A good example is Super Mario Bros, for which the site claims of innovations, among a number of others: "Collecting Coins: Super Mario Bros. is the first game to use item collection as a secondary reward"; "Timer with Audio Warnings: Super Mario Bros. is the first game to give audio cues before the time runs out"; "Warp Zone: Super Mario Bros. is the first game that allowed players to skip some levels."

What we asked to see were timelines (on subjects such as audio and story) with specific innovations tied to them - we think that'd really help tie an already neat (and likely to be hotly debated!) project together. But the project is already well worth checking out in any case.