July 02, 2004
Students and Scholars Take To The Streets - Mixed Reality Gaming
Recently, some NYU ITP students put together PacManhattan - a PacMan game played in the streets surrounding Washington Square Park. It was a fun stunt that got lots of media attention and for good reason: there's something compelling about re-imagining physical, lived space in such a way, especially if it's playful and pulls elements from resonant pop-cultural idioms like video gaming.
Curious for more substantive insights into why this sort of re-imagining has appeal?
The Human Pacman project, originally developed at the Mixed Reality Lab at the National University in Singapore, share their insights in a very cogent way. Their publications page indicates that there are (at least) 7 different audiences to which their Human Pacman project has something to say about mobility, ubiquity, entertainment, social computing and more. (By comparison, Pacmanhattan's Press page has links to 19 press clips, and no reference to the MRL's Human Pacman seems to exist anywhere on the site.)
The game is fun by itself, to be sure. Drawing out how the essence of this sort of activity lives beyond a press blip is the hard work of solid, collegial reseach+development.
Posted by jbleecker at July 2, 2004 11:23 AMComments
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