mixed-reality games Archives - Sky's Blog

Bye Bye SMS

sky — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:15:47 +0000

My real-world mixed-reality games were originally built to depend primarily on SMS (AKA “TXT” in the US) messaging. As the years went on (I started this in 2002) I found that I had to develop the games further so they could be played by email. As they became more location-independent, playing by email made more sense, and people really wanted to play by regular email rather than just on phones.

Then came the iPhone. And rich (HTML) email entered the picture for mobile devices. And richer and longer in-game responses from players. (SMS is only 160 characters, while email doesn’t have this limit, and thus is so much more fun.)

Well, over time that changed. Sometimes text messages are delayed for a substantial time (can tale hours), and our games are real-time so any delay beyond say one minute is a catastrophe. And then more and more phones became capable of sending text messages to email addresses – it had only been T-Mobile at first, and now it’s most phones. Today, at least 50% of phones in the US are capable of sending/receiving email, even thru the SMS mechanisms (there is an SMS-to-email interface on all systems).

So we’ve made a number of improvements in our games that permit play from regular email as well as mobile email-capable devices like phones, PDAs and smartphones.

And it looks like 2008 may be the year that we’ll develop more of these new, rich street games based on HTML email, and still played from mobile devices like the iPhone.

Yesterday (July 31st) we sat down and planned the trajectory for the next few such experience for YBCA – this is going to be fun. Watch for more on this as we announce the next YBCA game (October).

The post Bye Bye SMS appeared first on Sky's Blog.

Faces of Happiness- more community-based art

sky — Thu, 22 May 2008 17:19:04 +0000

We launched a new activity a couple of weeks ago and we hope it will build up over time. Called Faces of Happiness, it’s an interactive process by which the Project Happiness community can create an online photo mosaic based on four key questions and on “your” reactions to them thru photography.

You play using email and your digital photos. We suggest that you play from a mobile phone, but you can use regular email if your phone doesn’t do photos.

Visit Faces of Happiness to play.

Or just go take a look at the photo mosaic.

Interactive Art-in-public-places

sky — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:57:09 +0000

In my “commercial” world, one of the things I do is related to art-in-public-places. More specifically, I create “games” that play out thru mobile phones and the Internet, and they are (currently) all linked to art that’s in public places.

So when Cory Doctorow blogged this event (which took place in October-November 2007) it immediately captured my attention. It’s an interactive light painting on the face of a cathedral where the color and patterns of light projected on the face of the building react to sound input from the spectators. “Usman Haque has created responsive environments, interactive installations, digital interface devices and mass-participation performances.” I hope you get as much of a kick from viewing the video as I did.

The post Interactive Art-in-public-places appeared first on Sky's Blog.