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Pirates!
fm6 writes: "Worried that too much computer gaming stunts your social skills? Try Pirates! You simulate a voyage of discovery, trade, and plunder by walking around a physical gaming area carrying a PDA equipped with a proximity sensor. Encounters with other players (including naval battles) happen when the two players actually approach each other. Here's an article on Business 2.0."
oh yes, and we all know how great lazer tag was.
somehow i think making it "geekier" and "tamer" are going to help.
Fuckin' A, man, it's gettin' so you can't run a Carracho server in this town without gettin' bitched at by the self-appointed warez hounds. I tell ya...
--hongpong.com
From the article...
Upon arriving at an island, a player might find something valuable, such as tobacco.
I get the feeling that the people who will be playing this game might need something more valuable...soap!
Stopping by the boss' office, and plunder him silly.. then kill him and sink his ship..
and o.. btw.. Can I have a raise?
- No tears, please! It's a waste of good suffering!
the game IS pirated and everyone who plays it actually ARE pirates.
Haven't you ever had a really good game of steal the flag? If this is done right, it could be like that, but with a high geek quotient.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
hmm. "low-range radio" transmitter/receiver pairs in a PDA. now what existing technology might replace their custom hardware?
Seriously, I think there is an interesting new genre of games that integrate PDAs and real world locations and/or real world people. Its nice to see others working in this direction.
There is another game based on mobile positioning called BotFighters in action since a couple of months in Sweden. Basically, a player may shoot at another player or attempt to take his/her weapons, but only if they are close enough to eachother.
Anyone with an ordinary mobile phone can play the game, as it uses the positioning information available form the cellular network. Using WAP or text messages may not really be as exciting as having a full-screen PDA in a wireless LAN, though.
I'm feeling generous, so here are some suggestions, free of charge:
AC's cheerfully ignored
I know that Scott said that we should 'Get over it', but anyway..
Anyone know the technical details on this stuff wrt 3rd parties getting hold of your location information?
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
It does sound pretty lame. Nothing wrong at all with saying so. The moderators shouldn't be so quick to jump the gun on a 'troll' moderation, just because it's negative.
(Or offtopic, for those who dare to continue to discuss it.)
Worried that too much computer gaming stunts your social skills? /. reader's social skills.
Somehow I suspect that interacting with the kind of people who would play this game would just further stunt
A fun game in which players are given PDA's with infrared transmitters, and MP3 copies of five popular songs, chosen randomly out of 100. Each person has to convince others to share copies of their songs, and whoever collects all 100 first, wins the game!
Sounds easy, right? But watch out! Hillary ®osen and her crack gang of ©opyright police are out in full force, posing as regular players, and whenever you try and share with them, they take all your songs and you have to start over!
It's loads of fun! And remember, sharing is stealing!
The article neglected to mention that this was a.) a technology demonstration and b.) an exhibit at the recent SIGGRAPH show in Los Angeles. Probably a reason why Business 2.0 is rumored to follow The Industry Standard into the grave.
That said, the game's physical game area supposedly took place all over the "emerging technologies" showcase, with low-power, short-range (1 meter or so) 802.11 access points that represented "islands". At each island, there were several "?" scattered about, which you could explore. Each "?" was like drawing a card--a random even could wipe out some of your men, or you might strike gold, for example.
It was well done, although it didn't strike me as any more interesting than those Japanese gadgets that supposedly light up when someone "compatible" is in range. A year ago, these guys would have probably tried to promote this as the next hip party game, tried to go public, and flopped like the rest of 'em.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Not in the WLAN, but in the WorldLAN. For years I experimented with real-time real space role-playing games, and in so doing I learned one absolute truth -- NOTHING IN THE GAME is more interesting to the players than the interaction with players and GM.
To walk up to a live person so you can interact moderated by a computer screen is the lamest, silliest idea possible. The human-human bandwidth is not for talking trash, but for making a real and dynamic story-telling occur -- let humans do what humans do well -- and get the machine out of the way as soon as the game mechanics permits.
I definitely think that there is much that can be done to enhance RTRSRPG using technology, but the trick is not to take a high-bandwidth situtation (human-human interaction) and cripple it to be mere color for the low-bandwidth moderated game interaction on a palm.
Nice use of the tools (Disney did this briefly a few years back with GPS-based palm-held machines running Squeak), but so far as I can tell, a lousy game design and story-telling concept.
So where can we pirate this game?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Is this based on the old Micro Prose game by the same name? That game could improve your social skills too, I mean how else would i learn to sweep a beautiful young heires off her feet with my pirate antics?
--aiee
I know some old school gamers will back me up on this.
Worried that too much computer gaming stunts your social skills? Try Pirates!
Worried that too much computer gaming stunts your social skills? Try socializing!
Bush's education improvements were
This looks good: http://pirates.devolution.com/
:)
Not as offtopic as the topic I hope
I myself never really got into computers or video games until I hit 13 or 14. I use to go outside and play like regular kids and I always felt great afterwards. It was only until I moved from a rural area to a suburb when I played games and got into computers because there was nothing to do. Play is essential in brain development and frontal lobe stimulation and helps children learn social and spacial skills when they become adults. There was an author (forgot the name)who did some research on this subject and it turns out engineering graduates from suburbs who only played video games for play were great in mathmatics and science but had trouble applying them when designing things. Graduates from area's like Montanna, Alaska, and Idaho who lived in rural area's and played outside regularly when they were children did alot better in designing and actual applying spacial skills. Auto repair shops notice a difference in young mechanics from those who played outside vs those who played video games inside.
My point is nothing beats learning social skills and eye-hand cordination then going outside and playing or hanging out with friends. Even as an adult I love games like UT or QuakeIII but I still prefer to find a few good buddies and some paint ball guns and head into the woods for a real fight. I also notice parents think the problem is kids have too much free time so they encourage their children to enroll in accelerated classes with hours upon hours of homework a night so they have no social life expect maybe an hour or two of video gaming. THis is bad and is causing more harm then good. For high school students its a little bit different because they are quite mature and might need extra education for college prep. Anyway their is a link between constant video gaming and lower social skills and frontal lobe stimulation and this game is not going to help. I think paint balling or sports with other peers is the only way to increase it. Its also alot more fun.
http://saveie6.com/
I was at SIGGRAPH (www.siggraph.org) this year where they were showing this off, very cool. I talked to the people there, and they can't actually use bluetooth because the bluetooth specs have some lowlevel protocol that prevents them from using bluetooth for what they wanted, so they had to go with shortrange FM transmitters.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
Sail to small island. Go to coconut tree. Turn right. Walk 10 paces. Climb out window. AAAAAHH........**SPLAT**.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?