Hybrid Reality and Location-Based Gaming

Per Adriana de Souza e Silva closing comments “The game arena is no longer confined to a board or to a computer screen.”

Hybrid Reality and Location-Based Gaming (HR&LBG) takes the online gaming to a new level of reality. For years the gamer has been trying to “get into the game” and now with mobile technology as advanced as it is the gamers are now able to interact with real life characters in realtime. CAN YOU SEE ME NOW? is a good example of how a good Hybrid Reality and Location-Based Game would work. According to de Souza e Silva, in the HR&LBG there are two components, a digital and physical component (de Souza e Silva 2008). The digital component is the online gamer that is logged in and is tracking and communicating with characters that are participating in the physical component, in real cities being chased or chasing one another around that city with mobile hand held devices such as cell phone and PDAs. Throughout the chase these characters are communicating with one another via GPS and text messages. The urban unknown variables such as bad GPS signal and red lights all contribute to the overall difficulty of the game. There are many different types of scenarios that could be manifested into an urban environment setting as a hybrid reality game such as a cold war spy game or the traditional cops and robbers.

Traditional video games and board games are confined to a defined space of the computer or the game board. Social interaction and space is limited and tied to the computer and physical game itself. Hybrid Reality and Location-Based Gaming redefines and bridges the space between two and three dimensional reality games using the advances in mobile technology and internet computing to take real time data such as climate, terrain, and other variables in the urban environment and used them to set up the limits of a hybrid reality experience.

Hybrid Reality and Location-Based Gaming is in it infancy, because many people still use their mobile device like a glorified telephone and not like a hand held global positioning computer. As mobile technology advances and the gamers reach further for that ultimate goal of virtual reality, hybrid reality gaming will become more of the norm. The integration of computer based technology and realtime data processing to set up a game based on reality has true potential for applications far beyond gaming for the fun of it. This type of integrated technology could be employed for social, economic, and military applications for training and problem solving for real world scenarios.

Notes

Blast Theory + The Mixed Reality Lab. Can you see me? (2001-2004). Nottingham, UK: Retrieved 23 April 2007 from http://www.canyouseemenow.co.uk

de Souza e Silva, Ariana, (2008). Hybrid Reality and Location-Based Gaming: Redefining Mobility and Game Space in Urban Enviroments. Retrieved from http://sag.sagepub.com/content/40/3/404