SCOOT CAMP - web tools for SMS game design
Interfaces and workshops (2004):
main aim: to facilitate on-site group cooperation to design a mixed reality experience
First trialled with artists at the New Castle ‘ElectroFringe Festival”.
The initial idea was to describe the potentials of location-based gaming and then provide the processes and resources that may be required to:
a. analyse a site to identify candidate nodes of interaction for game play
b. design a mission/narrative experience for navigating thru the space with an alternative ‘lense’
c. cooperate with other participants to link different nodes and interactions to design a broader experience
d. enter the data into a customised web app (see SCOOT CAMP) to trial their ‘experience’ on site using their own mobile phones (SMS) to navigate thru the space and interacte with the game narrative and other players.
It was our desire to get people interested in the online application we have built (SCOOT CAMP) so they would later attempt to use it in other environments. The online interface has been designed so that a participant could log in from anywhere to submit a customised game experience to be played out with mobile phones in their own local/favourite environment. The system can then be set to send and receive SMS ‘clues’ and ’solves’ from any location at any time.
more info on SCOOT CAMP | prototype interface
ElectroFringe Workshop Supported by dLux Media
Cipher Cities SMS game system
This project is based on the SCOOT CAMP system (engine and interfaces).
Cipher Cities Released Locally for Design Students in Australia
CIPHER CITIES offers a social online environment that provides accessible creative authoring tools for anyone, anywhere to compose and distribute mobile games and events.
Latest version (November 2008): http://ciphercities.com
Community Blog: http://blog.ciphercities.com/
Funded by: ACID The Australasian CRC for Interaction Design
Cipher Cities is an online authoring environment designed in the style of popular Digital Social Networks(DSNs) (such as Flickr, Last.fm, facebook etc). Cipher Cities offers new tools and processes for members to compose, share and broadcast both web and mobile content. Members can design mobile events using maps, SMS storyboards and MMS journals in real time in real space as well as participate in online community activities. Cipher Cities contains all of the similar tools for individual and group profile building and communications as other DSNs, but more significantly it gives everyday people simple access to a complex mix of technologies to create and collaborate in a new way. The design, delivery and maintainence of the Cipher Cities tools and community is sustained by a multi disciplinary team of researchers and practitioners.
Current Developments
Mobile Web versions: We are now working on mobile web versions including and iphone app. These will have slightly different interfaces and services that are more akin to onsite interactions
Mapping tools: for positioning games you are building and for searching for games you want to play. We are also experimenting with location aware technologies/services.
Inproved builders tools: Cipher Citizens are already demanding more complex tools to create more complex game events… such as multiple path design. We have some terrific ideas in the pipeline!
Keep up to date with developments on the dev section of our blog