Seamful Games 2

The Seamful Games experience stems from the conceptual treatment of Seamfulness, which itself was derived from reflection on the City and Citywide user experiences. Those earlier experiences relied on uniformly accessible use of wireless networks and positioning systems. In user trials, participants were often either constrained in where they could go while still taking part in the experience, or had to handle features such as network disconnection and variable positioning.

One traditional response to such issues is to ‘design out’ such gaps, breaks and seams, but we are exploring a new approach inspired by some of Mark Weiser’s early writing, and also by established media theory and design practice. In Seamful Games, we aim to accept or even take advantage of the characteristics of technological media, as perceived and used in users’ experience. This means selectively revealing aspects of system infrastructure that are often hidden or ignored, such as where wi-fi is (and is not). To use the example of wi-fi, a place with net access may offer connection to useful services and information tailored to that place, but also may bring issues of unwanted observers and prying programs. Other places may have no net access, and offer no such context-specific information, but will have other useful or interesting things to do and see – and offer people privacy and safety from net-mediated observation.

We have chosen the application area of mobile multiplayer games to take advantage of the creativity and stress-testing that occurs in such systems, especially when used outdoors. We initially created the game Treasure, which was a simple ‘treasure hunt’ game for players using PDAs with 802.11 wi-fi and GPS. Players chase, collect and steal ‘coins’ appearing on their PDA maps, all the while maintaining awareness of other players, of people and objects beyond the game, and also of the distribution of the wireless network used in the game.

Since then we have extended the scale and variety of seamful games. Feeding Yoshi is a game that let us explore issues of inconsistent state and ‘ad hoc’ networks among mobile devices as well as, like Treasure, wi-fi distribution. It can be played worldwide but, in our trials, four teams were based in three UK cities and ranged further afield as they wove the game into their everyday lives. GSM cells and their distribution are the raw material for another game, Hitchers, in which digital characters try to hitch rides on players’ mobile phones in order to traverse or document the network of cells. In the Castles game, the assemblies of software components that make up the game are themselves part of the material of game play, as players battle not only to win points in a strategy game, but to obtain new components that they may use to improve their play. We have also begun to explore playful social interaction that supports fitness and health, for example in the Shakra application that tracks and shares activity modelled via fluctuations in GSM cells and signal strengths.

Apart from revealing ways in which people accommodate and appropriate ubicomp technology in their everyday lives, and how to design for that process, these games have led to new technical developments in such areas as using mapped layers of ‘seamful’ data to author interactive content, the dynamic sharing, recommendation and integration of software components on the fly via mobile ad hoc networks, and the visualisation and analysis of system usage logs. They have also given rise to conceptual work that goes beyond ubicomp’s traditional goal of ‘invisibility’ of everyday use, to how people occasionally have to break such invisibility in order to make systems useful, understandable and contextually fitting.

Binaries and Source

Feeding Yoshi

A Windows installer for installing Yoshi on PPC2003 and WM5 mobile devices is available here. Alternatively, a CAB which allows you to install Yoshi directly on your mobile device can be found here. The Visual Studio 2005 solution containing the Yoshi source code can be downloaded here.

Castles

The Castles game, for PPC2003 and WM5 mobile devices, can be downloaded here. The Visual Studio 2005 solution containing the Castles source code can be found here.