Mobile

Vis-à-Vis Games takes ordinary electronic gaming off your old-fashioned video game console and desktop PC and moves it out into the real world. This is the future of electronic gaming - pervasive, ubiquitous, in-the-world experiences. Imagine players guiding their favorite FPS game character, not with a mouse and keyboard, but with their actual position and orientation. As they turn, or look at the sky or ground, the game's first-person perspective does so as well.

These devices range in size from about that of a tiny laptop, to the size of a small book. These portable mobile devices are configured with a GPS sensor that measure the player's location in the real world, and orientation sensors that can tell precisely where they're looking.

Arguably the most compelling experience provided by a Vis-à-vis game is that it not only requires the player to get off their couch, but to literally become physically active. The criticism that electronic games compel people to stay in their living room does not apply here.

The first game developed is a Vis-à-Vis version of the children's game "Red Light, Green Light, Go". Requiring a minimum of two players, the "Runner" player (along with 7 AI characters) tries to sneak up on the "Traffic Cop" player. That "Traffic Cop" starts and stops the approach by yelling "Red Light" or "Green Light". This scenario plays out as a sort of reverse Turing test as the "Traffic Cop" spins and tilts their view in an effort to decide which of the approaching characters is indeed the human player.

Other possibilities range from numerous versions of playground games, roll-playing games, and location-based games. The multiplayer functionality provided through the Torque Game Engine allows up to 32 people to play in real-time from anywhere in the world.
Vis-à-vis games made its first appearance as part of SIGGRAPH's Guerilla Studio on August 2nd 2005.