Street Players search for Uncle Roy through the back streets, the tourist traps and the leafy boulevards of Westminster using a handheld computer. Online Players cruise through a virtual model of the same area searching for the Street Players and looking for leads that will help them find Uncle Roy. Using web cams, audio and text messages the players have to work together. Uncle Roy was developed by Equator and the artists group Blast Theory with collaboration from BT Exact and support from Microsoft Research and the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Uncle Roy All Around You sent the public out on to the streets of London equipped with handheld computers in search of the elusive Uncle Roy. These street players followed a series of clues that led them through St James park and the city streets of Westminster to Uncle Roy's office in Piccadilly. From there they were directed to a nearby telephone box, and from there to a waiting limousine that drove them back through London to the ICA, during which they were asked whether they would be willing to commit to help a stranger if called upon.
At the same time, online players were exploring a parallel virtual model of London, also in search of Uncle Roy's office. Once they found it they could then help (or hinder) the street players by sending them instructions and directions as text messages, to which the street players could respond with short audio messages. Online players were also invited into Uncle Roy's office - via a webcam - whenever a street player entered inside and were asked the same question - would they be willing to commit to help a stranger if called upon.
At the end of the game, we paired up street players and online players who had made such a commitment and passed on their contact details. Uncle Roy was staged in central London for two weeks during late May and early June in 2003 during which time it was played by nearly three hundred street players and a similar number of online players. Studies of Uncle Roy, drawing on ethnography, feedback from players and analysis of system logs have revealed design tactics for creating successful mixed reality experiences and have also shed light on how people use position information within mobile experiences. In particular, Uncle Roy exploited a technique called self-reported positioning in which street players would report their won position, either explicitly by declaring their position to Uncle Roy or implicitly by their PDA sending information about which area of the map they were looking at to remote online players. Our analysis of this technique shows they humans may generate and interpret positional data in subtle ways that go beyond understanding exactly where someone is and that raise implications for the use of automated positioning systems such as GPS.
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