Evaluation of 2 mobile mixed reality games by Blast Theory
WHERE ON-LINE MEETS ON-THE-STREETS:
EXPERIENCES WITH MOBILE MIXED REALITY GAMES
This article compares and contrasts the learning from two Blast Theory produced mobile mixed reality games in which online players, either play with, or against those on the street. In the first game, Can You See Me Now? (CYSMN) which ran in late 2001 players were online, influencing professional performers on the street, and listening in as those performers ran about the streets trying to catch them. On street performers spoke with each other in real time audio, whilst online players could only communicate via text.
The second game Bystander, reversed this relationship, with players at large in urban settings. In both games GPS, much less accurate than expected, with errors ranging from 4m to 106m. In CYSMN this inaccuracy became an embedded knowledge strategy for the runners to exploit, placed on the ground as they were they more readily realised where it was accurate and therefore where they had more chance to catch the online players.
Online players were less aware of these differences, relying more readily on their interpretation of the contextual sounds being broadcast in the runner’s audio streams. In the 2nd game, Bystander, the performers were online collaborating with on street players to help them find a mysterious person whose name and picture they had only briefly been shown.
The GPS inaccuracy was problematic, as performers were using it to help them advise the players where to go. The production team had to adjust the design of the game to compensate by e.g. inserting a cross on screen at the point of the most recent GPS update, as well as a series of octagons to represent the field of potential error, but concluded that the change needed to be even more intrusive, and that future iterations should obscure part of the map to make that point even clearer. As a result, audio became key, and online performer helpers would often ask players to describe what they saw.
Beyond GPS inaccuracy and the need to expressly communicate that inaccuracy in the interface, the researchers concluded that other key challenges included ways to enrich the real time audio with more contextual knowledge such as time periods, and the historic stories associated with each place.
Flintham, M., Benford, S., Anastasi, R., Hemmings, T., Crabtree, A., Greenhalgh, C., Tandavanitj, N., Adams, M. and Row-Farr, J., 2003, April. Where on-line meets on the streets: experiences with mobile mixed reality games. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 569-576). ACM