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[degravedi]

EIF 2008: iPhone boosts Alternate Reality Gaming

[Euchre]

ARG fans are a tech oriented group, likely to have some sort of GPS capable device. I think iPhone use is probably much more highly represented amongst the ARG community than that at large. The game might have the iPhone's capabilities in mind, but you can bet if it's popular and strong enough someone will find a way to get things done on devices other than an iPhone.

[Rogi Ocnorb]

Definitely not speaking for everyone, here, but...
I'd suspect that those of us with GPS-enabled devices are much more interested in their use as tools to further the game by helping us in our search for information than as tracking tools giving away yet another part of who/what/when we are to a game developer and their marketing efforts.

HP's mscapes cpme to mind, here.

These guys seem all jazzed about the ability to track players. Maybe that's the future of the game, but I hope not. I do appreciate that it could add some cool aspects, but I'm not sure how it'll affect player participation, knowing they're movements are being monitored. Something of a temporary nature, like the tracksticks in the Lost Rings game seems benign enough, but I'm not interested, at all, in being LoJacked, 24/7.

And even if it's temporary, (you can control when the monitoring is active) I'd wanna be VERY certain that the designers consider player's safety above anything they're planning.

[jono]

That idea of tracking players reminded me of an article in Auto Express a week or so ago, about stuff you can downlaod to your sat Nav. The idea is of geo tagged media, so say you entered Miami your sat nav would detect this and the software would run something linked to Maimi. In an arg it could be used to give files, so you would have to go to a place to unlock a file. The same software is currently being used in Japan to warn people of high crime areas

[Euchre]

I don't think the intent is so big brother as you may think, although the potential to use it that way exists as a price of having a location aware game. The idea is that if you were close to a physical site which could be important to the game, you could be alerted to that fact. Referencing the time as well, you could be alerted to an event you could get to - which for such games would be a bit nicer than a notice posted about an event you could never attend because it's 3k miles away from you. It'd also make it easier to have events in more locations, as just information and player direction could create an event without much need for staffing or other expenditures. It would also encourage player interaction, because it would tell the PMs if you were close to another player - who wouldn't have to be aware they were close to you specifically. (Me, I'd make the players within hearing distance do something like cluck like a chicken - I think that'd be a hilarious way to have players identify each other as uninformed onlookers thought you were both insane. Imagine the surreal nature of it as two or more people start clucking like chickens then gather.)

[krystyn]

Hahaha, I remember walking past people camping out at payphones for the first ilovebees payphone enhottenation day, and making a buzzy bee noise to see if they would react/respond.

*is gigantic dork*

*notes that it sort of worked, though*

So, yeah, that would be sort of hilarious.