Game Doc v1
Off The Menu – Game Document
• Game is played on an iPhone with an application that must be downloaded.
• There is no time limit on the game.
• Players earn points by visiting Hot Spots, which are designated restaurants and food establishments, and completing challenges, interviews, and questions. Point values vary based on difficulty.
• Players can also earn points by creating new Hot Spots and accompanying challenges
• The players have a map of the Hot Spots on their phone, but will also receive alert messages, similar to a text message, when they are near a Hot Spot. This allows players to play deliberately or unintentionally (casually.)
• Intended to be a single person game, but could be played by a group of people acting as a team.
Learning Goals
• Level 1: Awareness of location and significance of restaurants/establishments. GPS triggered brief history or intro when a challenge is accepted on-site.
• Level 2: Engagement. Interaction through challenges, on-site learning from the people and place. Techniques for approaching unfamiliar people. New ways to explore an environment.
• Level 3: The role of the restaurants/establishments in the neighborhood, thus a better understanding of the neighborhood. When challenge is complete suggest Hot Spots that are near-by or related.
• Level 4: Player as designer. Through the user generated content of Hot Spots players take another level of learning through the creation and feedback.
Website
• Media collected from challenges is archived online
• Players can blog about specific experiences and interviews
• Showcase leader boards of overall game
• Show Hot Spot ownership
• Players can decided if they want their stats to be public or private
• Players can check their progress in the game and the progress of others
• Create new Hot Spots through a form like interface, precedents whrrl.com, wikibivouac.org
User Experience – Unintentional, push
• The application is always running in the background of their phone.
• The user is reliant on GPS to receive updates at unanticipated times of the day.
• As the player travels about the city they receive a message when they are near a Hot Spot
• The player can choose to ignore the message and ask to be remind at a later time or accept it and seek out a challenge
• If challenges are completed the user can upload or blog results on the spot or wait until later, possibly at a computer terminal
• Possibly used by tourists to point out significant establishments while traversing the city
User Experience – Intentional, pull
• The application map is used to seek out Hot Spots in a specific area.
• Possibly played when the player has a few minutes of free time, maybe waiting for someone, or when the player is deliberately looking for a place to eat
• The GPS is still used to verify that the user has visited the Hot Spot, but the user is not reliant on it to find them.
• The user can manually request challenges or wait for the application to suggest based on location
• If challenges are completed the user can upload or blog results on the spot or wait until later, possibly at a computer terminal
• Can see this scenario of the game being played by multiple people acting together
• Possibly used by tourists as guided food tour
Creating New Hot Spots
• Roughly based on a Parking Wars mechanic of owning a spot and putting time limit on ownership
• To help populate the database with Hot Spots, players can earn points by creating spots, when a player creates a new spot (i.e. is the first at the location) they own the spot
• Spots can only be owned for 30 days, after 30 days, option 1: the owner needs to change the challenges associated with the spot to retain ownership, option 2: the spot becomes open for someone else to grab
• The owner of a spot receives points for each visitor to their spot, thus making it more valuable to own more popular places and create enjoyable challenges at the site
• Need a feedback model to encourage good challenges and learning on both sides
Challenges (method of archiving/proving)
• Challenges would vary from 5 – 15 minutes challenges and points would be awarded accordingly
• Try the food (photo)
• Interview (blog post summarizing the exchange)
• Find the answer to a question in a physical place (photo, fill-in-the-blank)
• Find the answer to a question from a person (blog)
• Collection (photo)
