How to use technology in urban gaming (Wired UK)

This is a guest post by Clare Reddington, director of Watershed subsidiaries The Pervasive Media Studio and iShed, which work to curate and develop artistic projects.

Smart cities, fast networks and clever phones offer brilliant new possibilities for making games and play in public spaces. But when you are off the sofa and out of the living room, designing a coherent experience becomes all the more important. Here, I consider how to use new technologies for making play.

Choose the right tech
Ask yourself, are you making an experience for a specific device, to run across platforms or online? Do people need special equipment to participate? GPS and RFID are the easiest technologies to use, but you need to understand their affordances and then test, test, test (with real people). GPS will drift around, so make this part of the experience rather than a fault.

Consider social factors
Is your experience made for people to play on their own or with others? This will effect the technology you use: a family game might not work brilliantly if everyone has to crowd around one phone. Noise, screen glare, weather, traffic and network strength all need to be considered. Build in ways for people to share their experience, but be sure about how much you want them to reveal.

Context is important
Design your experience with its setting in mind -- the key is to augment the real world, rather than distract or bombard your audience. But remember public spaces are chaotic, multi sensory places. Can you only play your game in one location (because specific points of geography trigger clues, media or interaction) or can you play anywhere? Portability means scalability but magic moments are created when game and location seamlessly collide.

Manipulate interactions
How do you want people to interact with the experience? Change could be triggered by movement, button press, screen tap, gesture or length of time spent in a particular location. Make sure people are clear on what they are supposed to do and how to re-set/get help if things go wrong.

Refine production
If your experience is rich with video and audio, you need to decide how you want it to look. Not everything needs to be broadcast quality, especially with a small screen, but effects like 3D/binaural sound can be particularly effective if you want to create immersion.

These design dimensions are inspired by work undertaken by The Digital Cultures Research Centre. Read more case studies, tips and guides at pervasivecookbook.com

Image: The Bloop at the Hide&Seek Weekender / Nikki Pugh / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Source: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2012-09/24/how-to-urban-gaming-tech

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