Speaker: Jeremy Irish, Groundspeak<\/p>\n
Entertaining, with a lot of very small anecdotes, but nothing non-obvious in this talk. Everything he gave as advice you’d probably work out for yourself within your first project without losing time from doing so.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You are unable to control many of the environmental factors (e.g. weather (!)) in location-based game-design.<\/p>\n
[Adam: …then he explained GeoCaching<\/a> for newbies, not going to re-hash it here…]<\/p>\n The reward for people doing the hiding was the logging aspect: seeing people visit your cache.<\/p>\n Seeding a critical-mass of locations AND players to interact with seems to be a very good way to get a game running early on.<\/p>\n Multi-caches and puzzle caches: used a sequence of caches that you have to go to one to find the address of the next, etc. Or puzzles to give you intermediary co-ordinates.<\/p>\n [Adam: like TreasureHunt, or PerplexCity<\/a>‘s use of puzzles\/interactions (those as very distinct types!) to allow web to become a more interesting game. Lots of common-ground with Alternate Reality Games<\/a> here; not q required part of ARGs, but something that several of them have done in the past, like I Love Bees<\/a> using GPS locations of payphones for players to find and answer]<\/p>\n Waymarking, as a differnt kind of geocaching: mark something interesting or valuable in real life which isn’t a cache, but instead is something interesting in the world.<\/p>\n Using polygons to map areas of real world to places in the game<\/p>\n [Adam: like an HTML image-map?]<\/p>\n Zork shows the value of “location” as a tool in game-design<\/p>\n You become a lot more reliant on the game-logic to provide the gameplay experienece [it’s the only thing you really control, in fact]<\/p>\n Avoid relying too much on the visual aspect (e.g. of the in-hand game-client)<\/p>\n Can’t control player movements, can’t control time flow, etc<\/p>\n Uncontrollable, unpredictable factors: – reward the player often to keep them moving, to keep them bothering to go outside – pick elements of the physical location to guide your game-design; use what’s available – 2 hours was way too long for a gameplay experience – Combine with virtual items Make players look up – Making people walk back \/ backtrack physically is the nastiest punishment of all Create real-world timers Challenges Alternatives to GPS – NMEA output faking [Adam: very powerful for selling the increased footfalls to e.g. a particular shopping mall]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Summary Speaker: Jeremy Irish, Groundspeak Entertaining, with a lot of very small anecdotes, but nothing non-obvious in this talk. Everything he gave as advice you’d probably work out for yourself within your first project without losing time from doing so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,13,7,9,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/new.t-machine.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Wherigo<\/h4>\n
Location<\/h4>\n
Embrace the chaos<\/h4>\n
\n – weather
\n – time (roads, shops open and closed at certain times)
\n – detours and barriers (often unexpected \/ unknown in advance by designer)
\n – other people (obstructing the gameplay accidentally)
\n[Also deliberately, if your game becomes popular!]
\n – environmental disasters
\n[this should include political instability in regions, etc]<\/p>\nMotivation is key<\/h4>\n
\n – eing lost takes n the original meaning – player cannot just “eject” the game and be back home, they may really be stuck in the middle of nowhere<\/p>\n“Junkyard Wars” game-design<\/h4>\n
\n – blend physical themes with your game-design ot help suspend disbelief<\/p>\nKeep games short<\/h4>\n
\n – 15 minutes is about ideal, it seems
\n – Serialize your game into 15-minute chapters if you want long games; gives players convenient stopping points
\n[Adam: the save-point equivalent for an LBG]
\n – simplify at all costs
\n[Adam: good advice for an ARG, actually…]<\/p>\nUse local-environment\/physical elements<\/h4>\n
\n – use codes from placed or existing items [Adam: e.g. text on a plaque as part of puzzle solution]
\n – Interact with real-world people, not just objects
\n[Adam: That’s just standard ARG event stuff]<\/p>\n
\n – i.e. get players to look where they’re walking, i.e. straight-ahead, not literally “up”
\n – Use vibration and sound as notification tools
\n[Adam: – Too easy to walk around staring at your palm, where your device is]<\/p>\nReward and punish users<\/h4>\n
\n – Grading, giving a score based on time-to-complete is a more gentle punishment \/ risk\/reward item<\/p>\n
\n – Game can’t stop because the real world doesn’t start
\n – Players will happily pause \/ exit the app, to then cheat
\n – But also powerful for plot advancement, and for increasing the sense of a “world” taking place in-game<\/p>\nGPS<\/h4>\n
\n – some GPS phones require cell phone signal for GPS to function (argh)
\n – GPS signal-bounce can make the client suddenly report instantaneous massive jumps – must be careful not to dump them out of interaction by taking the reported signal literally
\n – Bugs can include e.g. infinite loop that had players run back and forth between two spots. They weren’t impressed
\nPhysical
\n – physical game-pieces can be moved unexpectedly: even massive statues get moved
\n – geocaching after 9\/11 met lots of societal problems
\n – Marketing campaign for Aqua Teen Hunger Force caused fears of bombs<\/p>\n
\n – Wi-fi positioning
\n – cell towers
\n – [+ a bunch of others that weren’t worth mentioning really]<\/p>\nCheats<\/h4>\n
\n – Physically moving Wi-Fi hotspots
\n – “Dark” areas
\n – …some of these may be UNintentional
\n[Adam: you need to recognize early on that the player has primary power, you do NOT: the player may choose at any time not to play, and anything you do to try and prevent that is doomed to failure and also a really bad idea from game design perspective. c.f. Majestic and some of the scathing criticism]<\/p>\n