Just found wonderful news on the world wild web: An augmented reality kit is available for the Android. You can download it from github.
This means that even more applications using augmented reality will be out there soon for even more users!
Looking forward to see what is coming!
Follow the developers on twitter: http://twitter.com/androidarkit
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Do-it-yourself pervasive game
If none of the movies running are worth seeing, if you know every video game on your shelves by heart OR if you simply feel like getting outdoors and like creating an interesting game - then what about building your own game, even one that lets you use the physical environment as a playground. Yes, you can built your own pervasive game.
There are various options if you have the right mobile phone with a decent GPS unit built in.
These platforms all allow you to make your own pervasive game:
* You can download a kit with LocoMatrix
* Orbster also has a pervasive game engine
* Finally you can try out your game creating skills through the services offered at Cipher Cities
Get some inspiration playing some of the games already there - some of them are beta, others have been played a great deal. This is a nice opportunity for creative minds and academic bodies to get a hands on experience creating games that use location aware technology. And hey it might even be fun!
If anybody got a great game to recommend please write a comment!
There are various options if you have the right mobile phone with a decent GPS unit built in.
These platforms all allow you to make your own pervasive game:
* You can download a kit with LocoMatrix
* Orbster also has a pervasive game engine
* Finally you can try out your game creating skills through the services offered at Cipher Cities
Get some inspiration playing some of the games already there - some of them are beta, others have been played a great deal. This is a nice opportunity for creative minds and academic bodies to get a hands on experience creating games that use location aware technology. And hey it might even be fun!
If anybody got a great game to recommend please write a comment!
Friday, September 18, 2009
The High Line Park (New York) - a gem
In 1980 the last train loaded with a load of frozen turkeys rolled down the High Line in Manhattan. High Line is freight train lines, which for reasons of security was raised above the ground. Or it was The High Line, because after the frozen turkeys have long since been thawed, deep fried and digested, nothing has been transported on the tracks, that have existed since the 1930s.
A demolition has been planned ever since, but prevented the train enthusiasts, as in 2002, was the city's support for pooling resources, building plans and transform the track into a public park.
The old railway High Line has not only been preserved, but opened in June 2009 as a recreation area where pedestrians can stroll along, over and under the old track from the former railway. "The High Line" park has preserved traces from the previous use, providing a unique sense of history and atmosphere! Along the paths wild grass and flowers are planted, giving a sensation of being in a park, just that it is several meters above the ground. Along the track you can find loungers, which can be moved along the track still remaining - as a reminder of what was and giving a function to what is. Along the way, we also find a station where the platform is converted into a café and meeting place. From the High Line, you can also enjoy the view over the Hudson River on one side and Manhattan on the other.
I can highly recommend the "park"! It is a gem - a beautiful example of how cultural history is preserved for and serving the people.
I 'blog' about this - though it has nothing to do with pervasive games - because it has everything to with opening our eyes to how space can be used differently, in a more playful way.
Park(ing) Day DC 2009
Just came back from a day of Park(ing)!
http://www.nbcwashington.com/around-town/events/Artsy-Activists-Create-a-One-Day-Park-on-14th-Street-59760177.html
http://www.nbcwashington.com/around-town/events/Artsy-Activists-Create-a-One-Day-Park-on-14th-Street-59760177.html
Friday, August 28, 2009
Pervasive games on speed - who's the rabbit?
Pervasive games - digital game that uses the physical world as a playground - is often a game-play, reminiscent of a treasure hunt combined with orienteering and adventure games. It does certainly not have to be this way. In Germany you will find this new adventure and award winning game:
The game is strategical, uses the possibilities of technology to give a classic game of tag entirely new dimensions. There are ethical or at least security issues associated with the game as I could imagine that when players become engrossed, they would tend to forget about safety in traffic and being considerate of non-players who come in their way. But these are speculations, the fact is that the game offers interesting opportunities for more action packed pervasive gaming.
The game was developed by Fast Food Challenge and you can download the game from their website, where you can also see if your mobile can run the game.
This game will undoubtedly make you break a sweat! Who would lake to join me? Man overboard!
The game is strategical, uses the possibilities of technology to give a classic game of tag entirely new dimensions. There are ethical or at least security issues associated with the game as I could imagine that when players become engrossed, they would tend to forget about safety in traffic and being considerate of non-players who come in their way. But these are speculations, the fact is that the game offers interesting opportunities for more action packed pervasive gaming.
The game was developed by Fast Food Challenge and you can download the game from their website, where you can also see if your mobile can run the game.
This game will undoubtedly make you break a sweat! Who would lake to join me? Man overboard!
Thursday, August 20, 2009
The spaces we inhabit
Art is not about decorating world, but to take responsibility and move the world, says architect Olafur Elisson.
Eliasson has created many works around the world. In one of them - Green River - where he poured green paint in a river in Los Angeles, Stockholm, Moss (Norway), Bremen and Tokyo to give the inhabitants of the town a sense of space, its dimensions and what time and motion means for space. In that way the inhabitants can experience how their body is a part of the given space and that there is a consequence of their presence. According to Eliasson, this give people a sense of the materiality of space and thereby the knowledge that they can actually change space. It makes space available to the public.
If you go to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (with I highly recommend!) You can experience
The Matter of Time , which is a work by Richard Serra. It consists of huge rusty iron plates, which stands on the floor and form corridors that the audience can explore and get lost in. Some of the corridors are shaped like ellipses, some are parallel. The great thing about the installation, is that while walking through it you can fell how the surroundings affect your body. You may actually find that you begin to tilt to one side, with the walls - or that you get the feeling of being crushed when the walls lean inward and closes at the top.
Richard Serra describes his work like this:
"The sculptures are not objects that its separately in the space, actually quite the opposite is true, they engender a spatial continuity with the environment In which they exist."
Serra and Eliasson alike are working with something I am very interested in, namely: How do we experience the spaces we inhabit, how do we influence on space and vice versa; and what does this mean for design of art installations (landscape) architecture, and games (pervasive games) that are set in physical space? The spaces we engage in is created and shaped by the way we use it, and it affects us even more than we sometimes realize.
Monday, June 1, 2009
You Mean It’s Only a Game?
In the article “You Mean It’s Only a Game? Rule Structures, the Magic Circle, and Player Participation in Pervasive Mobile Gaming” (2006) Alison Harvey brings ethics in pervasive games into focus. In game theory there is an implicit agreement that when playing the players find them in a magic circle, which makes out a conceptual and symbolic structure that surrounds the play world. Within this magic circle it is clear who is playing and who is not according to Harvey. In some pervasive games this divide is not fixed, which means that people can be part of the game without their consent.
The concept of the magic circle has to do with the rigidity of boundaries in games. Harvey quotes Huizinga for writing that rules are vital to a game as they create the play world by setting its boundaries and they determine what is acceptable inside the boundaries of the game.
The pervasive games can make the player aware of things in their environment that they normally would not notice. In this way, Harvey writes, pervasive games actually shift the boundaries of the real world for the players. This shift and lack of clearance of boundaries raise ethical questions when for example a non-player is integrated in the game due to the shifting boundaries. Harvey quotes Benford et al 2006 that makes a distinction between the primary user (player) as a performer and the spectators (secondary users). The secondary user is not only a person who watches the game, but also persons who have an indirect influence on the game as they can be asked for directions or even have a defined role in the game according to Benford and his co-authors. They refer to a framework “The frame of the game” that is pushed through mobile gaming. It is this framework that settles the roles of the users – primary and secondary. Within the framework there is a transition between being a primary user and a secondary user. The primary users have an unspoken contract with the secondary users that they confirm continuously through rituals, conventions, and both physical and intellectual structures. In this setting the performer – or primary user – is the frame constructor and the spectator – secondary user – is the frame interpreter.
This setup challenges the concept of the magic circle according to Harvey. The players are running around in the streets without a clear demarcation of what is inside the game world and what is not. In addition non-players or spectators can be part of the game without their consent. Benford et al do distinguish between audience members that are aware that the actions they are observing are within a performance frame, and bystanders who has not got clue of what is going on. However Harvey notes that it is pure chance who belongs to which group as there is nothing in the framework that supports the difference. Harvey criticises both Benford et al and Montola and Waern for not having serious concerns for the secondary users. Montola and Waern write that a “very engaging experience” can be obtained through the use of “social expansion” which is expanding the game socially and including non-players in the game. Harvey notes that they neglect to mention who is experiencing is for. Benford et al do realize that there is a risk when including non-players in the game. They purpose designing a “safety harness” that protects the players – not the non-players according to Harvey.
Harvey concludes that there is a lack of discussion on the ethical questions that come out of playing with frames and boundaries in public spaces. Her opinion is that play is something that the participants have to enter explicitly. She acknowledges that when games are been played in public they will draw attention and players can interact with non-players. But this should not be scripted into the design as a part of the game according to her. Harvey states that the boundary between players and non-players must remain intact for ethical reasons. She points out that this might change later, when conventions on the area develop, as they can give the non-players a clue about what is going on.
Reference:
Harvey, A.: You Mean It’s Only a Game? Rule Structures, the Magic Circle, and Player Participation in Pervasive Mobile Gaming
; Proceedings of CGSA 2006 Symposium (2006)
The concept of the magic circle has to do with the rigidity of boundaries in games. Harvey quotes Huizinga for writing that rules are vital to a game as they create the play world by setting its boundaries and they determine what is acceptable inside the boundaries of the game.
The pervasive games can make the player aware of things in their environment that they normally would not notice. In this way, Harvey writes, pervasive games actually shift the boundaries of the real world for the players. This shift and lack of clearance of boundaries raise ethical questions when for example a non-player is integrated in the game due to the shifting boundaries. Harvey quotes Benford et al 2006 that makes a distinction between the primary user (player) as a performer and the spectators (secondary users). The secondary user is not only a person who watches the game, but also persons who have an indirect influence on the game as they can be asked for directions or even have a defined role in the game according to Benford and his co-authors. They refer to a framework “The frame of the game” that is pushed through mobile gaming. It is this framework that settles the roles of the users – primary and secondary. Within the framework there is a transition between being a primary user and a secondary user. The primary users have an unspoken contract with the secondary users that they confirm continuously through rituals, conventions, and both physical and intellectual structures. In this setting the performer – or primary user – is the frame constructor and the spectator – secondary user – is the frame interpreter.
This setup challenges the concept of the magic circle according to Harvey. The players are running around in the streets without a clear demarcation of what is inside the game world and what is not. In addition non-players or spectators can be part of the game without their consent. Benford et al do distinguish between audience members that are aware that the actions they are observing are within a performance frame, and bystanders who has not got clue of what is going on. However Harvey notes that it is pure chance who belongs to which group as there is nothing in the framework that supports the difference. Harvey criticises both Benford et al and Montola and Waern for not having serious concerns for the secondary users. Montola and Waern write that a “very engaging experience” can be obtained through the use of “social expansion” which is expanding the game socially and including non-players in the game. Harvey notes that they neglect to mention who is experiencing is for. Benford et al do realize that there is a risk when including non-players in the game. They purpose designing a “safety harness” that protects the players – not the non-players according to Harvey.
Harvey concludes that there is a lack of discussion on the ethical questions that come out of playing with frames and boundaries in public spaces. Her opinion is that play is something that the participants have to enter explicitly. She acknowledges that when games are been played in public they will draw attention and players can interact with non-players. But this should not be scripted into the design as a part of the game according to her. Harvey states that the boundary between players and non-players must remain intact for ethical reasons. She points out that this might change later, when conventions on the area develop, as they can give the non-players a clue about what is going on.
Reference:
Harvey, A.: You Mean It’s Only a Game? Rule Structures, the Magic Circle, and Player Participation in Pervasive Mobile Gaming
; Proceedings of CGSA 2006 Symposium (2006)
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