hiding data,
content and
technology in real
world games
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaichanvong/
social content
play data
Jaggeree
techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
I work in the intersections of these things here, by day I work a lot in open data and in
looking at how we can improve services built on data, often through play, lots of the social
games I make are about data gathering if you dig deep enough or understand how people
realate to things

location
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
some core forces at play
we’ve got more ability to locate people and objects than ever before

people
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
and people are key, not just data points, we need to stop seeing massive data sets en masse
but more individually
for me seeing pedestrianised times square was interesting, how you can see individual people
breaking existing relationships with built environment... could have watched groups and
individuals for hours here, on the outside you just saw lots of people being a bit bemused
and then enjoying it
making things which look at behaviours is really interesting to me

sensors
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and we have these things with us all the time, things that Matt Jones calls ambient sensors
know where you are, what you’re doing if you tell them, which way you’re pointing them and
through extension can know how far you’ve walked/run, how warm it is, what your pulse is
and what your blood sugar is

social games
are everywhere
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
social games are all around us, like Playfish’s games

social games of
electing politicians
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
and Obama’s iphone app with a high score table for call totals

social games of
watching politicians
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
and the guardian’s mp’s expenses game

I like play...
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
and they’re fun and take in stuff from real life games and playful experiences

my first console
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first experience of games

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this is what you could play if you tuned your telly to it properly, glorious black and white

paddles FTW
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but so easy to play...

game controllers should have
less buttons than this
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sorts of games I hate are the ones with controller pads with as many buttons as this

or this...
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sorts of games I hate are the ones with controller pads with as many buttons as this

games are more fun/easy to play
with more natural controllers
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we all know people play most naturally when they can use natural gestures

current obsession
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we all know people play most naturally when they can use natural gestures

kids get gestural
interfaces
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my son who is 2 gets the iphone interface totally, including multitouch swiping, tilting... in
fact he gets annoyed when displays like those at the London Transport museum don’t swipe

http://www.flickr.com/photos/angelsk/
making playful
gesture based things
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and when I was at Mind Candy we made sure that Moshi Monsters was gesture based, wiggle
the mouse to tickle, click on them to poke them, drag food onto them

not my septuagenarian
parent’s game consoles
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and if you get all this right, everyone will play... my parents are DS lite owners and addicts
and they’re in their 70s... I can’t keep up with what they’re playing

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaichanvong/
even easier with every day
objects: SMS, Twitter
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techonology based real world games
Terra Future 09 /think/help/create/work
so we like making data and information collecting games with services like SMS and Twitter,
agree with Alice that bidirectional SMS is tricky all the while the operators charge us 4p per
message, but you can design around

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ogil/
play is an important
social construct
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half the world’s population lives in cities now and in tower blocks like this
very asocial and if you ask almost anyone they really don’t notice the built environment too
well

photo: David Cushman
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this has important implications for society and also for advertising, if people don’t notice the
environment they’re in, they’re probably not going to see your adverts

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We’ve built a game which tries to surface this built environment and make you see unusual
things
it merges this interest in built environment with collecting data and also meeting new people
and its really low tech

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but it surfaces beautiful things you’d never normally see

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or are just things of beauty like these old doors in a glass facade

treasure hunt end of school hidden geo
I spy + holiday essay + analytics
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we’ve combined some fun things, a treasure hunt / I spy game which you play using your
mobile, which generates a list of everything you’ve seen at an event (in a end of school
holiday essay style), with geotagging and analytics
your mobile number is the tracking cookie

A game of finding things
and making lists of them
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we call the game And I Saw...

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We put easily removable stickers on things

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaichanvong/
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Terra Future 09 /think/help/create/work
and you text in the codes you see (instructions on the sticker)
Very easy to play. Very lowest common denominator SMS is ubiquitous and works really well
at festivals where 3G dies and not everyone understands GPS or mobile internet

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and we build them an essay of everything they’ve seen... in the style of a kid’s end of summer
holiday essay, it’s why the game is called And I Saw... “I went to the zoo and I saw lions and
tigers and elephants and...”

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We know where we’ve put markers as we have a GPS trace of us walking the course, we know
how long we take to move between places too..

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techonology based real world games
Terra Future 09 /think/help/create/work
So the data actually becomes web analytics for festivals in 3d - x and y and time with the
phone number acting as a tracking cookie. We can use this to help festivals understand
crowd flow and in/out points and the players just have a good fun thing to do where they can
socialise and see things they’d never spotted before

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaichanvong/
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we love it when players try and hack the game, like a player photographing an interactive
display at Hide and Seek showing where things may be

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaichanvong/
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and when people ask for lots of stickers and cover themselves with it

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and stick them to bins

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaichanvong/
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we also love it when businesses get involved and people discover them... good for both sets
of people

http://www.flickr.com/photos/abcoathup/
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
and when people turn it into a social thing... one team in the Hide and Seek game created a
meta game within the game
we’d said we’d give a prize for who photographed the most things, uploaded them to Flickr
with the numbers hidden, one team did that but took it further, always trying to get a stuffed
toy into the pictures.

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4.5 things per person on average seen in Thames Festival game, about 15 things per player
in Hide and Seek one, difference between a community of interest and an everyday audience,
however top players in Thames Festival game were seeing a similar number of things to Hide
and Seek game and many people just wanted a free balloon at Thames Festival
if you build this sort of thing into your events or campaigns you can build in quite strong
engagement

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techonology based real world games
Terra Future 09 /think/help/create/work
We’re also kind of interested in Twitter... microblogging/persistent
We’re interested in where and how people use it and also in how they describe things on it,
how much precision there is in their messages and responses
We’re interested in this as there is clearly an interesting need for listening tools, both for
brands and organisations and also for services like the 311 service in the US

merge microfiction and
gameplay
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
Story telling and personal involvement in story telling are fascinating too, like Japanese
mobile phone fiction
Can you merge in microfiction, choose your own adventure, pervasive games and twitter, we
think you can

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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
collaboration with David Varela, game has a story arc, a set of missions and also had an
endgame... players could also be put in jeopardy (not physical)... we’re planning to play it
again with more “NPCs” and bigger missions at Hide and Seek

part of Hide and Seek
Bond, James Bond sandpit
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
So we were asked to produce a game about James Bond for a pervasive games festival as part
of their Cubby Broccoli season

weaving in real world objects
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
And we wanted to weave in real life objects like this toilet door graphic we added red dots to
and turned into an assasination target

follow M to join the game
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
Game play is simple, follow M, who follows you back and DMs you

M sends missions as DMs
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
M then sends you on missions as DMs, remember, it’s a game about spying and DMs are
hushed whispers

players DM their solutions back to M
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
The players then DM their solutions to the missions back to M, keeping their answers secret

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Posted on May 2, 2009
by wiilassie
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players send in twitpics
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Sometimes their DMs contain Twitpic links if we’ve told them to photograph something
©2009 Twitpic Inc, All Rights Reserved Home Blog API FAQ Terms Contact

active listening robots and a
custom contol deck
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
We have some automation tools, robots which sit talking to the Twitter API and deciding
whether the player’s messages have fulfilled the missions and sending them on new ones.
We also have a custom game control panel where we can look at messages which we can’t
categorize and act on automatically

surfacing game activity on twitter
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
Instead of spamming back into the players stream we surface the game activity on a separate
twitter account... player’s stream stays as their own.
Here we’re surfacing it about 20 foot tall with a projector on a wall at the BFI using a hacked
up copy of Twistori

why am I telling you this?
playadvertainment with real friends
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techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
could be significant part in advertising/marketing/engagement
video may be the majority component of the bits delivered, that’s just because of the sheer
number of bits for a single second of video
majority of web useage is search, email, social sites - bidirectional at the very least, user
driven in reality, Digital Britain is in my opinion very wrong as it’s talking more about push to
the user, users are wanting to push themselves a lot and are also not in a space where they
just want to be receivers
services are the key
push from the centre is probably a 20th century aberration, will always exist but will have a
slightly lesser impact...
use herd nature of social games and social proof to engage and promote your things

http://www.flickr.com/photos/paulhammond/
Jaggeree
techonology based real world games /think/help/create/work
I’m going to leave the last words to Matt Webb from Activate
“I think it starts with your friends you know, making entertainment with them, having dinner
with them, playing music together.”
Open air games are a great thing to do with friends either competitively or as teams
I think that making them playable with natural interfaces with SMS/Twitter and including easy
to approach themes such as treasure hunts and problem solving/espionage can really bring
them to a mass market audience

http://www.flickr.com/photos/blackbeltjones/
Chris Thorpe
blog.jaggeree.com
chris.thorpe@jaggeree.com
twitter:jaggeree
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