Logan Olson

I had trouble with the file that Will posted, so I just went through the first stages of the BIT-101 tutorial. I replaced the ball's constant motion with random x and y values. When the user touches the screen the ball's random location is reduced to a 20x20 area around the touched area.

Here is a .zip of the project: Download file

I initially tried to grab values from an XML file, but it just wasn't panning out. If anybody has any good tutorials/resources, it would be much appreciated.

I started with two objectives:
1. Force players to draw strangers into the game and directly interact with them
2. Make it a promotional game for a website/movie

It became a game about wrangling strangers and photographing them with promotional materials for a friend's website, 5secondfilms.com.

PDF of the real-world game prototype, "Wranglers": Download file

Document text without the nice formatting:

Wranglers

Wranglers is a location-based promotional game in which teams of players move, or “wrangle,” strangers into pre-defined areas and take pictures of them holding promotional materials for points.

This promotion will be for the comedy website, 5secondfilms.com.

Goal

Earn the most points by taking photos of strangers holding your team’s 5secondfilm cards in your team’s designated area.

The more strangers you photograph at once, the more points. Players earn additional points by convincing the strangers to pose like a raptor.

Setup

At least six players are needed.

The players divide into three color-coded teams—red, blue, and white. Players are given colored armbands corresponding to their team.

The game should take place in a heavily trafficked area such as an outdoor mall or shopping center. Three circles—one for each team—are drawn in chalk 10 feet apart in an open space.

The players are given two items:
1. Two identical instruction cards
2. One-hundred identical color-coded promotional cards per team to be used in the photos with strangers for points

Instruction card text:
1. Get strangers into your team’s colored circle - the more, the better.
2. Take pictures of the strangers holding your team’s promotional cards.
a. Each stranger is worth 1 point times the total number of strangers in the picture → if you take a picture of 2 strangers at the same time, they’re each worth 2 points.
b. Make them pose like raptors for double points!
3. Team with the most points in 15 minutes wins.

Tips:
1. Keep one teammate near the circle ready to take pictures
2. Spread-out to grab passer-by’s as well as groups farther away
3. Try to convince strangers to stay in the circle until you’ve got a bigger group to photograph (3 people in one photo is worth 9 people in 9 different photos)

To win more prizes after the game:
1. Friend “5secondfilms [team color]” on Facebook
2. Post the photos on Facebook and tag them with your new friend, “fivesecondfilms [team color]” the same week you’ve played the game
3. The team with most points on Facebook wins [insert prize]

Promotional card description:
Cards are color-coded by team and contain a graphic and web address for 5secondfilms.

Tallying Points

The moderator who drew the circles and passed out game materials does an initial point tally. Moderator takes back leftover materials and erases circles. After one week, moderator logs on to the three Facebook accounts 5SecondFilms Red, White, and Blue and tallies points again for the official score.

One photo’s points = (number of strangers in photo) per stranger. Strangers posing as raptors are worth two times the numbers of strangers.

Potential Directions

Facebook friends of players will be exposed to photos from the promotional game and have an opportunity to click through to the 5secondfilm profiles. The use of Web 2.0 extends the game beyond initial participants to the social network of each individual.

The promotion can be made even more effective by adding a broader game in which the recruited strangers can participate. The promotional cards the stranger holds in the photos could include unique codes that can redeemed online for a chance to win prizes or to sign up and participate in a meta-game. By taking a photo and receiving a promo card, strangers can join afterwards online and follow the larger progress of their team as the location-based game occurs multiple times in different locations.

Formatted PDF version: Download file

Two playtests of Wrangler’s first iteration were conducted with different rules and settings. Eight people organized into three teams participated both times.

The first 5-minute session took place at The Grove and required players to move strangers into circles. The second 10-minute session was played at an adjacent park and eliminated the circles with player’s able to take pictures of strangers in any location.

Results

Players noted that strangers were more receptive to participating at the park as they were not traveling to a particular destination. Players also mentioned that moving into the circle “freaked out” targeted strangers. In both locations, there was concern from strangers regarding their photograph being taken. In an instance of emergent gameplay, one team had concerned strangers cover their face with the flier while another team only took pictures below the neck.

Beyond these stranger-player dynamics, players commented that there were only one or two tactics in approaching strangers. There was no variation in their contact strategy. Furthermore, each team has the same bonuses (more strangers at once is better and raptors for double points). There is potential for different bonuses that could alter play strategies beyond canvassing crowds of strangers

While two of the teams were successful, the third team gave up early and got a fraction of the points of the other two. Afterwards, they mentioned a sense of shame in approaching strangers. This needs to be dealt with, as one of the points of this experience is to create a fun motivation for talking to strangers and remove that shyness. While variations in bonuses and tactics could help this, it is worth looking at one of the most minor rules of the game, but one of the most popular—the raptor pose.

Making strangers pose as raptors for extra points was an afterthought, but the two teams who saw the rule heartily endorsed it (in fact, the team that gave up early didn’t even know about that rule). Players suggested adding more poses as different bonuses, but this comment could be extrapolated to a more generalized mechanic: making playful requests of strangers that make them active participants in the game. The circles was a location-based way of doing that, but posing as a dinosaur is a lot more fun than walking into a circle on the ground (and a lot less foreboding).

Other points of note:
• Parties were interested in seeing their pictures online
• Players would point to other teams to look legitimate
• Strangers were more apt to hold on to the flier if they knew the game rules were on the back (a serendipitous printing mistake)

Planned Changes

The second iteration will replace the circles with new, more playful tasks like the raptor pose, which the strangers must do for the players. These different tasks will result in different point multipliers and unlock new tasks.

Potential tasks include new animal-based poses, action shots (e.g. the strangers must be photographed in mid air), or convincing strangers to take pictures together with the players. The original core mechanic—taking pictures of as many strangers at once as possible—will be downgraded to be one of these tasks. These tasks make the game similar to a photographic scavenger hunt in which players must interact with their subjects.

By focusing on creating a more playful dynamic between strangers and players, the game will deemphasize shameful soliciting and highlight the players’ duty to bring strangers into the magic circle.

Minor changes:
• Intentionally printing rules on back of fliers
• Shorter game time – approx. 5 minutes
• Locations must focus on recreational areas such as parks