I saw this really cool looking web game / competition for Uncarted 3 recently. The idea of the site is to ‘Grab the Ring’ which involves you holding your hand in a certain place for the longest. If you move – you lose. Oh. If you win, you win $10,000.
Simple idea. Sort of relevant to the game. Pretty neat.
So I tried it. I saw the site was built in Flash and well I started to wonder, are they using face tracking with some sort of blob detection to check if your hand is in the right place. Well. Possibly no. The game is using some sort of background difference check to figure out if your hand has moved. So I starting thinking and I tried a test. Could I trick the system into thinking I’m ‘there’.
Well yep I could. All I needed was a water bottle in the frame when I started the game and then I left it there – the game thought I was still playing. I then wondered if the game moves the ring around the screen to stop someone doing this. So I left the game running.
As you can see I clocked up 4 minutes and I could have left the game running for days. If the game had moved the ring around every ten minutes, or used face tracking (which still could be gamed) then this game could have been less open to a hack. I also wonder if pictures of what I’m doing were being sent somewhere for someone to check (but this feels highly unusual as it would break privacy rules).
So just a thought. If you are going to make a game with a brilliant prize – people will ‘game’ your system.
You can design your way around that but ultimately people will do it.
Whilst doing a little research for a project, I was pondering over some influences and I started to realise that many of the films I was referencing had ‘game’ themes as major parts of their plot. Thought it might be fun to list them – Would love to know what other people like. P.S. I am being a little tongue in cheek with this post.
I love so much about this film – Arnie at the height of his rubbish quips, trapped in a dystopian future where entertainment shows are now live executions (if only XFactor would do this…).
A really interesting satire on the media but Robocop and Rollerball are more successful.
That rubbish GAMER film and some other ‘Big Brother murder everyone game show’ mercilessly ripped this off. When they remake this, I hope they nail it.
Another dystopian future and another satire on media and corporation culture. I watched it again the other day and yes it has dated a bit but it’s really quite funny how it all came true (not the blood sport bit obviously but the rise of disgusting corporations). Some great funky moments in the soundtrack also and I now realise I need that poster.
They did remake this didn’t them? I’m too scared to watch it.
A little tenuous on the ‘game’ element but it does have levels (West World – Medieval World – Roman World – it does have a ‘boss’ (a rampaging and brilliant Yul Brynner’) and er yeah OK. It is a fab film. P.S The belgian poster is the one to get.
It make phone phreaking well cool AND it made tic-tac-toe really really cool. One of the most influential films for me in shaping my misspent youth. I so wanted to hack into the C.I.A after seeing this.
An alternate reality game in a film? Who would have thunk it. I’m dying to rewatch this now to see if it has held up (I have a sense it hasn’t and I’ll be shouting at all the plot holes).
I’m a huge Cronenberg fan and I remember this film being really interesting. One of those ‘is it real / is it in my head’ films that ‘The Matrix‘ and more recently ‘Inception‘ have trodden down. But ExistenZ has a character who is a game designer – A game designer! How many films can put that one down. Again Inception borrowed from this by having an architect / level designer.
I remember this being a hyper violent ‘Lord of the flies‘. Incredibly dark, quite sick but a great film. A game where children are forced to kill each other. Not a date movie.
Jean-Claude Van Damme + John Woo. This is going to be an action masterpiece right? Sadly, I’m wrong. Way wrong. An incredible plot where very rich people round up homeless people and then kill them as part of an urban safari game. Not even the talents of Lance Henriksen can save this.
This really interesting mixed reality game for MINI came out a few days ago. You use your iPhone to virtually steal the Mini and if you are ‘holding’ onto it at the end of the game you win it. For real.
Check the video.
They’ve also create a neat little google maps mashup showing the location of the Mini and where the players are.
On the surface it sounds like loads of fun, and I wish I could play the game to try out the design as I’ve got quite a few questions on how it plays out.
I can’t help wonder that they might have got the game mechanic slightly wrong. Basically this game is Halo Oddball played out in the real world but there is one key difference. In Oddball, the winner of the game is the person who has held onto the ball for the longest.
When you have the ball you can’t fire so you have to run like a headless chicken away from the hordes of people after you. When you don’t have the ball, everyone is piling in to get the ball. It’s a really skillful and tactical game and one you can be winning and losing every other second – This game is just total carnage.
With the Mini game, as the winner is the person who is holding onto the car at the end, there really isn’t any gameplay advantage for me to go get the car until near the very end. They’ve made the game area quite small and the prize large, so people will be stealing the car off each other but I just think if they’ve used the Oddball scoring system the game would have had a much better game dynamic.
You could argue that by making the game the way they did, they made it easy for new players to join at any time. Pro’s and con’s to both but I think the game would have relied on a lot more skill and cunning the Oddball way rather than just being ‘lucky’ to be the person who has the car at the end of the game.
This isn’t a criticism of their idea as it is brave, on brand and on strategy. Big plaudits to everyone who worked so hard on it as we need more of this type of work.
Gaming is hot again in advertising. I’m not talking about making online games (that is soooo 2000) or even building on top of Foursquare, but taking elements of gaming (achievements, rewards, levels) and applying this in other ways. The recent Nike Grid project was a great example of how these gaming structures could reward realworld participation.
What if we can extend a realworld participation back into videogames.
The brilliant Nike78 project has a film by Nick Marsh where they have hacked a Wii controller into a pair of running shoes. By running on the spot you control the game.
This is genius but restrictive. Could you do this in the real world?
Well actually – possibly yes. Nike+ is out there. By running you accumulate points.
In Grand Theft Auto your character gets fitter and can run further by running more in the game.
Could we combine Nike+ with Grand Theft Auto so that by running in the real world makes your gaming character fitter?
If there was a clear Nike+ API and the developers of GTA chose to implement this feature then it could be possible.
What other physical or social choices could there be to create this same offline/online reward structure?
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Can shopping create points to spend in Farmville?
Again probably yes. There is a Tesco.com API and a partnership with Farmville could be thrashed out.
So can videogames influence our behaviour? I believe we could be at the point where they actually could.
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