GPS Real World Gaming
The urban environment has become a playground. Not only recently but together with the availability of mobile technology and location based information there was a steep rise of digitally supported large scale urban games. Since the mid nineties those sort of games have been developed. First by geeks and small communities, together with universities that had a computer science department. Nowadays the games slowly become commercialized. Only this week there was a large event on the South Bank here in London organized by Hasbro. They unveiled a new Monopoly game called “Monopoly City Streets” that uses the whole world as a play board. For this Hasbro has teamed up with Google.
It is based on Google Maps and any road can be clicked and bought, provided you have enough money. A lot of the road here in London have already been bought up and their value is rising. The road I live in is already at 1’600’000 something. Players can then also start building on the roads they own (it is a bit strange to build on the road, but I assume it is more of a technical problem). So you get this castles, energy plants and high-rises blocking the road. But it looks funny. THe task is to become the riches developer by the end of January 2010.
Image taken from Monopoly City Streets – Screenshots of the game board
A more of an interactive game in the real world is fast foot. It has won this years best mobile gaming award. It is built around GPS tracking and rather simple. It is for 4 to 5 players and played in a 1 km radius. One guy is X and the rest of the players are the runner trying to catch X.
One of the most popular eighties games Pacman has also a real world version called Pacmanhatten.
Image taken from Augentedblog – Pacmanhattan
