Big Games

Photograph by Kevin Slavin, area/code

Think big and you’ll catch on to one trend in game design. Some innovative game designers are thinking about ways to move players from game consoles to the outdoors in massive multiplayer games that are partially mediated by technology. These so-called “Big Games” are large-scale endeavors that take place in the physical world. One might involve transforming a neighborhood, a city, or multiple cities into a large game board with hundreds of players on the streets, scouring for invisible treasures or jockeying for strategic position.

 

ConQwest

ConQwest 2004, sponsored by Qwest, involved teams in different cities on different days seeking 2D barcode stickers (placed throughout the area) that can be scanned and decoded with a camera phone. Players sent the photos from the cell phone to ConQwest HQ, where the images were decoded and points awarded.  Five teams competed in each of five urban areas over eight zones. They marked their playing zone with a giant totem they carried into place. Once a team established their totem in a zone, no other team was allowed to enter it to seek its barcode treasures.

Pac-Manhattan

Pac-Manhattan was a large-scale urban game played with cell phones, Wi-Fi Internet connections, and custom software throughout New York City to re-create the 1980's video game sensation Pac-Man. It was developed in NYU's Interactive Telecommunications graduate program, precisely to explore what happens when games are removed from their "little world" of tabletops, televisions, and computers and placed in the larger "real world" of street corners and cities.

A player dressed as Pac-Man ran around Washington Square Park attempting to collect all of the virtual "dots" that run the length of the streets. Four players dressed as the ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde attempted to catch Pac-Man and prevent him from collecting all of the dots. Their progress was tracked and broadcast over the Internet for viewers around the world.

Crossroads

The Van Alen Institute, an organization dedicated to architectural education and new uses of public spaces, commissioned the firm area/code to create a Big Game called Crossover as part of The Good Life exhibition. Crossroads is a mobile phone–powered urban game. It’s a two-person, real-world strategy game that uses specially prepared mobile phones equipped with GPS and takes gamers onto the streets of Manhattan from the exhibition site on Pier 40.

Cool applications of new technologies

Not only do Big Games bring players into the physical world, they often employ location-aware technologies and help invent interesting ways to apply them. They employ tools that handle some aspect of the physical world/information space crossover and build games around them that help people have fun and achieve goals in the physical world.