Richard has been working hard and finally there it is: a great website to a great event: www.bogfest.org.uk! Everyone, check it out! Get the latest news on our games, team, pictures, times… ! And now there’s already a logo to the Bogfest 09!!!
Archive for the ‘general’ Category
www.bogfest.org.uk
Tuesday, April 21st, 2009BOGfest
Monday, March 16th, 2009
LocoMatrix is initiating BOGfest (Brighton Outdoor Games Festival) , a day of fun and frollicking as part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. You will have a chance to play our LocoMatrix games plus a variety of new games from a number of different organisations. More details to follow, but just make a note in your diaries of Saturday May 23rd. Games will start at LocoHQ and at a number of other locations throughout Brighton. More details here and on the main LocoMatrix website.
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Year Past, Year Ahead
Saturday, December 20th, 2008Highlights of the year included a wealth of publicity including BBC TV and Radio, New Scientist, Sunday Telegraph, Guardian and on the web – Springwise and Escapist magazines.
We won the Most Awesome Use of Digital Media (thanks BAHBAS and Nixon McInnes), and a GBP50k award from the TSB for our schools project (more in a bit).
The TSB award was granted in conjunction with Brighton Uni, and we have made links with other universities, most notably Sussex (who we are about to start a post-graduate project) and Portsmouth (had been looking forward to some degree student projects but sadly nothing came of it).
Our treasure hunt game was launched and has been around the country and at some outdoor game festivals, particularly igFest in Bristol.
And so to 2009. Some secrets to be announced soon, but look forward to seeing us on the Gadget Show, and in Revolution Magazine. The schools project will be developed – expect to seeing something with MIT Scratch. Plus, we may be going to Where 2.0. We will be running a round table on the theme of children/games/mobiles/health.
And expect to see a Brighton Games event – details soon
And more phones, something in geocaching, and some new developments in team-building.
And more games – expect a big multiplayer event in various locations over an extended time period.
A new glass-topped desk means …
Thursday, October 2nd, 2008…. that you have to revert to a mouse mat, and carry a hanky 
Comments on TechGutter post
Wednesday, July 30th, 2008TechGutter recently reviewed LocoMatrix and a number of interesting points and criticisms were raised which I thought needed challenging. So here goes:
- The £30 price tag for a GPS unit will put people off – maybe put some people off, but others spend far more on other gadgets (Geocachers seem prepared to pay a lot for handhelds). The price of GPS is coming down – the ones that I have been buying recently cost around £25 including postage, and you can now buy them sub £20. The price will continue to fall. Also as I have said elsewhere, there are advantages to a separate unit (as opposed to built in phone) – better accuracy, longer battery life, and you can turn it on and put it in your pocket. As to large groups playing LocoMatrix: it will depend on how much fun the games are. There are plans for games where not everyone needs a gps unit. We are at an early stage still – and hoping that dads (and mums) may enjoy playing games with their children.
- Long time before every phone has GPS. Agreed, but we are not expecting everyone to start playing LocoMatrix today, or even tomorrow.
- Manufacturers will make their own GPS games. Agreed, but our games are cross-manufacturer meaning that you don’t have to have the same make of phone to play with you friends. We see LocoMatrix as more social – where you can compete against rival teams and play games over longer periods of time where the website side of things will come into play. Also, we may be creating games for the manufactures (watch this space!) – and expect to see our platform used by other very soon.
- Levels of games will always be available for free – users will be asked to pay only if they want to compete at the higher levels. It may be that we will have games funded by advertisers – would rather see an Innocent Smoothie than a Big Mac (but that’s another story).
- My quote – “I think this is the next logical stage, rather than manipulating the character on the screen, to go out and become those characters in your own real life adventures” was meant less about creating a real life GTA (this exists quite happily in many areas without LocoMatrix) and was a genuine belief that people could get more fun from playing computer-type games outdoors.
As to who is right – we’ll just have to wait and see. Early days yet.
GPS and the iPhone
Wednesday, July 9th, 2008For those of you getting excited by the prospect of the GPS-enabled iPhone, here’s a quote from David Pogue of the NYT: “Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do with the G.P.S. According to Apple, the iPhone’s G.P.S. antenna is much too small to emulate the turn-by-turn navigation of a G.P.S. unit for a vehicle, for example.”
Will be very interested in the feedback we get as users start to try to use iGPS. My point that a separate Bluetooth unit is a better option (better accuracy, better battery life, small package, cheaper), may still be valid.
Panic Button
Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008Years ago I was researching alarm systems for the elderly (in fact my Masters thesis was on this topic). We built small radio transmitters that our subjects would wear around their necks on a ribbon. In the event of difficulty they would press a large red button which would activate an auto-dialler attached to their telephone and call for help. Our very first incident taught us an important lesson – the subject who was wheelchair-bound had ventured into the garden and toppled over, chair and all. Unfortunately he ended up trapped by the neck – the ribbon from the transmitter (and the transmitter itself) under the fallen wheelchair. Luckily he was spotted by an neighbour shortly afterwards and was none the worse for wear.
I mention this now as one of the things that we are considering with LocoMatrix (following discussion with CEOP and others)is whether to have a “panic button” as a feature. If youngsters playing a game (or at any other time) got into difficulty, they could press a button (or sequence of) to send out an alert which would show up on our servers. What has come up in our discussions is whether this would be a good idea or would it be subject to abuse and false alarms (do youngsters abuse the emergency services with their mobiles?) and if we were to implement this service, who would we alert – police, parents, our own monitor? Or are there unforeseeable outcomes such as we found with our system for the elderly.
Touch Wood
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Am pleased to say that we have made a number of changes to the code behind LocoMatrix both from the server side and the phone application and it now seems to be running fine. If you have already downloaded the app then please go and get the new version, which is, amongst other things, better.
Happen demo
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Happen happened (as I happened to mention previously) to have a meeting at James House last week and we gave them the opportunity to play LocoMatrix. Afterwards we were treated to some feedback which I blog here for your interest and posterity. They had no previous knowledge of LM and what I write is from the Post-It notes that they wrote their ideas on in this session (text in bold = the note – everything else my comments [a + is shorthand for a positive comment])
+ Loved the chase for the orange
Good, I knew people would like fruit games
+ Calorie counter for grown-ups
Interesting observation as we may collaborate with other organisations interested in the health aspects of LocoMatrix. Given the weight of the player, and calculating the speed and distance (from GPS) moved, one can get a pretty good indication of calorie consumption
+ Orienteering
Out now – our treasure hunt game – great for geocaching and also for orienteering. By saving map elements instead of pictures in the sequential clues, one can easily create a very interesting orienteering game. Try it now!
+ step towards real gaming / spin on virtual reality
Indeed and a step towards augmented reality
+ a screen per user
The Happen group played as 2 groups of 3 and as such were sharing a phone – there was a sensible request that the graphics be repeated on the phones for all players in a team
The Fruit Treasure – Hunt at Fruitstock in Regent’s Park
Shame, but there is no Fruitstock this year. We have been thinking about tie-ins with other companies and the Innocent Smoothie brand has been mentioned several times before.
More sounds and vibrations to celebrate point scoring
Keep following our research at Sussex University.
How to create a super fast ‘flash mob’
Using the power of knowing where the players are to get them to congregate – we have the platform so if any flash-mobsters want to get in touch.
How to shoot your opponent (lay mines, drop bombs)
We prefer custard pies and whoopee cushions – but one interesting aspect is to allow players without GPS to interact using their mobiles to help or impede a player who is
Alert when you are about to cross a road
Again this is a topic that comes up frequently. Because the GPS signal tells you where you are, it could be linked in to signal all sorts of dangers and places where play is not permissible, but would obviously require a lot of time and money to build up a database that could control this. We have had discussions with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) and there are various things that, knowing a child’s position, could be done to enhance safety (comments to follow).
How to – countdown
Must admit that I am not sure what this comment was about. It could be to do with the fact that at present Fruit Farmer only shows the players score. And it would be good to see the other players’ scores too. Something that we are having a look at. Also it occurred to me that it could be better if you play only until one player is bound to win – e.g. with 2 players – the first player to get to 51%. Of course this is a little more difficult to do with 3 or more players – is there a formula for working this out. Yes, subtract the combined score from the total possible points, and if the remainder allows the second placed player to equal or overtake the first place player then keep on playing.
How to – ideal route
This is the travelling salesman problem (see here – if you have a look, see also for interest sake the stuff about ant colonies) and would indeed be the basis for an interesting game – or even of use for salesmen or anyone else that wants to find the shortest route.
How to – do it on water
Again, we are already talking to people about LocoMatrix and its use in sailing. Rather than just sailing round bouys, how about a territory capturing game, or how about having to sail through virtual chicanes and slaloms.
How to have corporates use it for team-building and leadership
In the pipeline – we are in contact with a number of organisations who run team-building workshops. It requires little imagination (and hopefully you have a lot) to see the potential here. If you are interested in this aspect, then we would love to hear from you.
You could hook up with Walk & Talks around London
Link up with bars/restaurants as stop-off points
How to have tourist boards use it for city tours
Now we have the treasure hunt, this has become a reality. We are currently creating (obviously) some Brighton tours / London to come soon / and will also do an experimental pubcrawl too (which although it doesn’t really do much for the health aspect, is more than compensated by the fun – expect too a tapas crawl).
How to do it auditorily using Bluetooth headset
It’s going to be tricky to connect up more than one Bluetooth device at the moment but, as more phones get GPS, more opportunities to use Bluetooth for something else. And of course we have the research project at Sussex looking into games that don’t require the screen.
Hopscotch
Nice idea – a giant hopscotch on a giant pitch – anyone want to have a go at programming this one
I wish for the motorcycle game from Tron
Not too sure how safe this would be – maybe on mountain bikes first of all
How to – have some strategy
I wish for a virtual world (of warcraft) in the real world
Coming soon – well maybe not the warcraft bit, but certainly some games with interesting role playing and strategy games. One of my own particular favorites for strategy would be live variant of Socoban.
Games for the boys (and girls)
Wednesday, February 20th, 2008Here is a an interesting article written by Eric Nagourney in the NYT (Feb 19) – and particularly relevant as we will be starting a study to investigate what type of outdoor GPS games women might enjoy playing. More details of this to follow.
Why does it often seem that men enjoy playing video games more than women? Perhaps because they do.
A new study finds that when men play the games, a part of the brain involved in feelings of reward and addiction becomes much more activated than it does in women.
This may explain why men are more likely to report feeling addicted to video games than women are, the researchers say in an online article in The Journal of Psychiatric Research. The lead author is Fumiko Hoeft of the Stanford University School of Medicine.
For the study, the researchers took a group of 22 young volunteers — half men, half women — and had them play a game as an M.R.I. machine looked at what was happening in their brains. The study found that in the men, there was much more activity in the mesocorticolimbic system.
Given the abundance in video games of violence and other themes near and dear to many men, there may be a natural explanation for why their brains light up more. But the senior author of the study, Dr. Allan L. Reiss, said the researchers made a point of steering the game they used in a more neutral direction.
The volunteers played a simple game in which they were told only to click the images of balls they saw, with no mention of a goal.
The players soon figured out that if they kept the balls from advancing too close to a wall, they gained ground. Both the men and the women did well — but the men did a lot better and appeared more motivated to acquire terrain.
