Run Online
Published by Christy Dena October 25th, 2005 in Off Topic, games.
Locative Arts (where a game is played with people running through the streets, rigged with PDAs, GPS and phones, usually with online players as well) have been big for a few years now. I missed the last Blast Theory event that happened in Oz last year and so am keen not to miss another one. Luckily, the game has online players as well and so I can join in on the fun. Blast Theory and the Mixed Reality Lab are running Can You See Me Now in Cardiff at the end of Oct. Here is what happens:
Online players log onto the website to be dropped into a virtual Cardiff. Blast Theory runners will search for you on the real streets using GPS, tracking your avatar down as you run away from them online. Use your arrow keys to flee down the virtual streets, send messages and exchange tactics with other online players. An audio stream from Blast Theory’s walkie talkies lets you eavesdrop on your pursuers, getting lost and out of breath.
Game times (GMT):
Friday 28: 10.00 - 12.00 and 14.00 - 16.00
Saturday 29: 11.00 - 13.00 and 17.00 - 19.00
Sunday 30: 11.00 - 13.00 and 14.00 - 16.00
There is a video of a previous running of this game on the web too.
The game is being presented as part of May You Live in Interesting Times, Cardiff’s inaugural Festival of Creative Technology. On Saturday 29th, a talk by Ju Row Farr from Blast Theory will be streamed live.
Are there text-based components of this, and if so how do they work? It seems like a lot interesting stuff going on in the augmented-reality / mixed-reality sector is based on GPS mapping, but doesn’t necessarily annotate the map with text in interesting ways (as for example Google Map Hacks often do).
Its funny - I really like our “Off-Topic” category, because it allows us to maintain some disciplinarity without disciplining ourselves all the time. But, in the spirit of my concepts forum, it seems like you only have to look at most of our off-topic idea sideways for a moment before asking the inductive question that makes it on-topic… although that might be true of anything, if next-step thinking is admissible (”What does classical opera have to do with dogs? Well, what if we made a classical opera out of recorded dog noises, etc. etc.”)
Off the top of my head I cannot recall any geared-up locative arts projects having text as a big factor. The most important screen-based item has been the map: with online and real people represented, or with clues offered in text balloons.
Whenever I teach locative arts, however, I refer to more ‘analogue’ or low-tech versions that have text: like Nick Montfort and Scott Rettberg’s Implementation and Ji Lee’s The Bubble Project.