fisharepeopletoo

The 8453

Our creative technology clan can beat your creative technology clan at any game you care to mention, from table tennis to World of Warcraft.

Academic Enquiry*

i/ We want to understand what might be effective tools and techniques
for creating satisfying location aware play/narratives** [and assuming our version of it to be
technologically enabled in some way]

ii/ From the run of Five Trees Forest events (in two office buildings and a sixth form college), start to isolate [in a repeatable and demonstrable way] what those tools and techniques might be.

iii/ Measure how effectively Five Trees Forest deploys those tools and
techniques.

iv/ use that measurement to inform new location aware play.

My guess as to what the effective tools and techniques might be (not
all deployed in Five Trees Forest), is some combination of:

location sensing technology (which technologies might be better or
worse? - is NFC better than GPS, is an SMS keyword better than NFC?)
shared public space
narrative
game play
rules
individual creativity and self expression
communal activity
real world identity/anonymity
presence
peer pressure
face-to-face interactions
web sites
printed paper
mobile phones
archives and databases
screens
sense of place
sense of belonging

which is the sort of list that includes just about everything, ever.

*We've been enquiring into this since 2002 if not before, but not academically.
** My half-arsed (though based on a great deal of practical experience) observations on "What is location aware play?" coming shortly. Whether it's a meaningful or valuable thing to try and create, I might skip for the time being.