Paper Reading #6: Blowtooth: Pervasive Gaming in Unique and Challenging Environments

Commentary

See what I have to say about Ryan's and Chris's work.

References

Linehan, C., et al. (2010). Blowtooth: pervasive gamine in unique and challenging environments. Proceeding of the Acm conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 2695-2704). Atlanta: http://www.sigchi.org/chi2010/.

Article Summary

Linehan and his associates studied the concept of pervasive gaming, in which one utilizes the real world to fuel interactions in a virtual environment. In specific, they tried to map the success of pervasive games and their applicability to various environments. They created a game called Blowtooth, a virtual drug smuggling game in which players dumped virtual contraband onto unsuspecting "mules" in international airports to get their stash through security, only to meet up with the mule once past security to retrieve the stash. An airport was chosen for the context of the game because it is a readily accessible real environment to which the concept of the game relates well. For this reason, Blowtooth is also a critical game, one which encourages the player to think critically about the ethical and societal concerns of the game and its implications.

The game works by searching for the unique ID of discoverable Bluetooth-enabled devices, storing them on the player's device, and then enacting a wait period before the player is allowed to "retrieve their stash," i.e. rediscover previously discovered devices. Non-players have no other role in the game than to possess a discoverable Bluetooth-enabled device. The players were later questioned on how appropriate they felt the environment was to the game, their level of satisfaction, increased levels of awareness of security and other passengers, and anxiety. The concept of "it's just a game" influenced the low levels of anxiety and concern for security, but the game did succeed as a critical game as reported by the players.

Discussion

Mwahaha! I love this game! Seriously, I want to play it myself. I feel that this game has very subversive undertones, regardless of whether or not they were addressed, but I understand that subversion isn't the point of the game. Anything that integrates a virtual world with reality so well is an immediate success in my book, especially as far as HCI is concerned. I would think that the recent focus on cloud computing will be the next big widespread pervasive technology advance, and this game really brings to light some of the implications of pervasive technologies. How easy it is already to drag-and-drop a file on your desktop into your Dropbox and then pull it up on your mobile device which is attached to a projector in a presentation, and then send the file out to everyone in the room with basically the click of a button. What's next?

Games, like art, serve no practical purpose, other than to provide a tangible link to ideas, emotions, history, and the like. I mean, clearly this is not the first time that this idea has been explored:

Image courtesy of Alidade Incorporated

But it is the first time that the pervasive, real world element has been included in the mix. This does not mean that the importance of art can just be discounted; on the contrary, more care must be taken to create and preserve representations of the intangible than the tangible. Physical devices are tangible; our interactions with them can be tangible and intangible; how we are engaged and affected by those interactions is intangible.