Today I met Jani Korhonen and Heikki Tolonen from the MediaTeam in the university of Oulu. We had a nice meeting and they showed me their ubiquitous ‘capture the flag’ game. The design concept is based on a series of rules that the user has to evaluate to decide to which point in space to move before actually moving. This reduces the speed of the interaction, overcoming also some problems related to the refresh speed and the positioning accuracy.

Heikki promised to send me some screenshoots in the next days.

Capture the Flag game is played in teams. The idea is to capture and defend virtual flag zones. Game is played with a mobile handheld device, in which player’s position and the flag zones are shown on the screen. Cooperation within a team is emphasized: players are forced to play as a team. Capturing flags is much faster, when it´s done as a team, but also flags situated nearby have effects. Players must also pay attention to the flags positions in their strategy and their affect to the game itself.

The game was tested on 12 – 16 May 2005 at the University of Oulu with some about thirty students.

Tags: ubiquitous game, urban exploration