CitiTag is a wireless location-based multiplayer game, designed to enhance spontaneous social interaction and novel experiences in city environments by integrating virtual presence with physical. In the first version of CitiTag you roam the city with a GPS- and WiFi-enabled iPaq PocketPC in search for players of the opposite team that you can ‘tag’. You can also get tagged yourself if one of them gets close to you. Then you need to find a friend to free you. Urban space becomes a playground and everyone is a suspect.

Yanna Vogiazou, OU (Game concept, visual design, user studies)
Bas Raijmakers, RCA (Game concept, user studies, documentary production)
Josephine Reid, HP (Project management, user studies)
Erik Geelhoed, HP (Research methods consultancy)
Ben Clayton, HP (Mobile Bristol system implementation, technical support)
Marc Eisenstadt, OU (Research Mentor (Synchronous Social Software))
Kevin Quick, OU (Multiplayer server implementation)
Jon Linney, OU (Flash client programming)
Peter Scott, OU (Project management, consultancy)
Lewis McCann, OU (Infrastructure support)

Phil Stenton, Richard Hull, Paul Marsh, Rachel Eardley

The CitiTag game is being developed to explore social experiences and emergent behaviours in public spaces through playful interaction, based on the awareness of other players’ presence. The project is motivated by the hypothesis that very simple game rules based on presence states (e.g. I am Green and ‘tagged’) can result in an enjoyable social experience, stimulated by real world interaction among players. The aim of our studies is to identify the design implications for future technology mediated social experiences and how such experiments can inform the experience design process.

The project involves the collaboration between HP Labs and the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute (KMi). KMi’s Centre for New Media is developing the client software and multi-user server. The user trials will provide data for Yanna Vogiazou’s (OU) and Bas Raijmaker’s (RCA) PhD work.