What is Tourality?Tourality | Tourality. Tourality, as a location based game (LBG), is a novel kind of game. Your real environment such as a urban district, some park or even a wood serve as a virtual playground, where your location and movements are identified via GPS-signal emitted from your cell- or smartphone. Your target is to reach certain predefined spots in the game set by moving towards them with your mobile device. Challenges You can battle other gamers in the multiplayer mode, join forces in a team or even compare your highscore as single player with other gamers in the Tourality-community.
Unlike Geocaching, Tourality focuses on time, your aim is to be faster than the other. In doing so it is your very own choice whether you play the game sets by feet, use inline skates, a bobby car, or even motorized vehicles. Game Sets The game sets are being generated automatically for you via an OpenStreetMap interface. Goodie Spots In a game set, so called “goodie spots” can appear, conceiling something special. Gadgets Gold. Analysis: With Facebook Places, Location Based Social Gaming Mechanics Offer Broad Opportunities. Facebook Places was released two weeks ago, potentially allowing every Facebook user to make location-based check-ins.
What does it mean for game companies? Many of the stories on Places so far have discussed its potential uses as a marketing tool, doling out coupons, promotions and incentives to users who visit real-world businesses at the right time. There’s obviously a lot of potential here. Every physical business wants better ways to promote locally, and will happily pay location-based companies that are capable of bringing customers through the door. However, game developers should think twice about trying to beat marketers at their own business. While game companies might benefit from partnering with marketers, their internal creative energies can be better spent on what games are all about: fun and engagement. Integration with Facebook The first step is getting connected to Places. The read API essentially offers access to Places’ own data on user check-ins. Locating the game. SF0 / Gamers turn cities into a battleground - 12 June 2005. Read full article Continue reading page |1|2 Matt has been abandoned on Tower Bridge, London, with nothing except his clothes and a mobile phone.
A woman dressed in black walks past, and Matt receives a text message to follow her. He doesn't know who she is, or where she is going. All he knows is that he must follow her if he is to find Uncle Roy. Matt is playing Uncle Roy All Around You, where for one day he is the main character in an elaborate experimental fantasy game played out across the streets of London. Urban gaming started in the 1990s with the advent of "geocaching", where GPS is used to pinpoint exact locations. "The limitations of physical space makes playing the game exciting," says Michele Chang, a technology ethnographer with Intel in Portland, Oregon. Game evolution While many of the first real-world games involved using separate GPS receivers and handheld computers, mobile phones and PDAs that integrate such technology are catching up. Treasure hunts More from the web. Quick, After Him - Pac-Man Went Thataway. By WARREN ST. JOHNPublished: May 9, 2004 ONE recent sunny morning, in the student center overlooking Washington Square Park, four New York University graduate students wearing brightly colored sheets and sneakers and carrying cellphones gathered for a mission.
Somewhere out there on the streets of Greenwich Village, a fellow student was running around in a yellow Pac-Man suit. His four pursuers, code-named Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde, aimed to track him down and snuff him out -- the sooner, the better. ''Our strategy is a dragnet to block all the roads Pac-Man might go down,'' said Michael Olson, a k a Clyde the ghost. So began a test run for a game of Pac-Manhattan, a real-world version of the 1980's video game played on the streets of New York and the latest example of a so-called ''big game'': a contest that uses wireless devices like cellphones and global positioning beacons to track players as they move through the urban grid, turning cities into vast game boards. Quick, After Him - Pac-Man Went Thataway.