‘Cat and Mouse’ Meets ‘The Lawnmower Man’
What happens when real and virtual worlds meet? It’s an intriguing concept – and one that’s explored by the creative collective Blast Theory in their latest project ‘You Get Me’. The interactive game, which was showcased at The Royal Opera House last weekend, took place in two London locations simultaneously, as well as in virtual reality.
On Sunday, eight players sat at computer terminals in Covent Garden while eight teenagers ran around Mile End Park in East London. Each player controlled a teenage ‘character’, with the characters inhabiting a satellite-image print of the park. Their mission? To track down one of the eight ‘runners’, who were transposed as characters on-screen, and running around in East London too. In the real world, the teenage ‘characters’ were equipped with hand-held computers, satellite tracking systems and walkie-talkies; the runners were then able to provide clues to their whereabouts, which the players in Covent Garden could hear through headphones. On screen, the runner’s locations were marked by small, white dots.
Taking my position at a computer, I eagerly entered the game. Each of our runners, I discovered, had a back-story. Mine was called ‘Rita’, and she had an unfortunate habit of getting into trouble but never asking for help. As well as tracking down my runner, I was challenged to answer a question by Rita.
“Why didn’t I ask for help when I was drowning?” she asked.
I didn’t have any idea, but set off anyway. It took me some time to locate her, mainly because she kept disappearing off my screen. I wasn’t sure if this was a fault with the game or if Rita was playing hard to get. Either way, it was frustrating.
Looking at ‘You Get Me’ as a computer game, it seems simple, childish almost. But as an experiment linking real and virtual realities it’s exciting. When I did eventually find my runner, she initiated a conversion, telling me more about the time she was drowning. I realised ‘You Get Me’ is about bringing people together as much as bringing worlds together. Here were patrons of the Royal Opera House, playing a game with a bunch of London teenagers – probably not their average Sunday afternoon activity.
Blast Theory has a track record for putting on this sort of thing; they’re known for engineering situations questioning how we live. In 2003, for example, they created the mixed reality game ‘Uncle Roy All Around You’, where players had to work together to locate the elusive ‘Uncle Roy’.
In the case of ‘You Get Me’, the meeting of real and virtual worlds was nothing spectacular. It was fun, but I felt the cross-over only took place on quite a basic level. Still, Blast Theory are not alone in their exploration of the real-virtual merge – earlier this year, the Guardian reported on a Playmobil experiment that again bridged the gap between real and virtual realms.
So despite being slightly underwhelmed by my experience of Blast Theory’s mixed reality, I’m definitely keen to see what happens next in this field. How far can the real-virtual merge go?
Posted by Ruth Stokes in Other | September 23, 2008 3:56PM |