ZouMa 101, a mobile photo-shooting competition
Abstract
Zhouma 101 is a pervasive and mobile photo-shooting game designed for the citizens of Taipei, Taiwan. The game platform blends advertisement service, mobile photo service, and interactive reward system to create a public competition that brings the display of Taipei 101 an interactive light box.
About S.E.R. Pervasive Game Workshop
Pervasive entertainment is emerging to our lives by means of various new media such as interactive art, gesture-based TV game console, and mobile application. In this workshop, we examine from a system and interface design perspective how advertising elements can be applied to a pervasive game to the daily life. S.E.R. Pervasive Game Workshop took place in Taipei in January. The workshop, organized Dr. Ding Zhao Chen who currently teaches at Beijing Tsinghua University, is financially supported by Shih Chien University and sponsored by Nokia. During a week of intensive workshop period, two invited professors – Steffen Waltz and Tico Ballagas – from ETHZ and Aachen University were conducting the entire teaching sessions of filed study, spatial theory, strategic design, paper prototyping, and video prototyping. There are total thirty participants include tutors from Shih Chien University and guest consultants who comes from both administrations of National Palace Museum and Taipei 101.
One of the most noticeable projects with the theme of Taipei 101 building is called Zhouma 101. It is an interactive pervasive and mobile game designed to enhance the exposure of Taipei 101 and the advertisement sales at the same time. Taipei 101, served as the backdrop for the game, is currently the world highest skyscraper and the 21th century’s symbol of Taiwan. The basic premise of the game is to make the building top a light box that display game participants’ photo works. During the gaming process, everyone is entitled to select the favorite photo and the photo gets the most votes wins. The game is to help generate a regular outdoor event while helps Taipei 101 boost the sales of façade advertisements.
Zhouma 101 Details
Created by students of Wu Yi-Wen and Li Chi-An, Zhouma 101 is targeted participants at all ages. It is a weekly prize give-away event. The target group can be everyone in the city – it is assumed average Taipei citizens will like to commit to a game experience, primarily because the game experience will cover their prior expectation of “winning a prize”. Each Friday evening at 17:00, the top display of Taipei 101 will begin showing a game registration ad. Everyone who has access of camera mobile phone are able to dial the instructed number form the ad for participating the game. Two types of game participants are involved, there are player and voter. Player participants are limited no more thirty people, however voter participants can be as many as possible. Whoever entered the game will download custom software with instruction and photo-uploading capability. A SMS “keyword” will be sent after all the player participants are ready. The goal for individual play is to find an appropriate photo that “matchs” the theme of the keyword. As they move throughout the city, the players perform photo shootings by the way of the phone camera. A photo is to be uploaded to the game server with the players’ choice. The uploaded photos will be displayed on the screen of Taipei 101 in a rotate fashion similar to traditional Chinese Zhouma lamp. It is a game that player participants fight against others in terms of word comprehension and photographic quality to achieve the highest score. The play whose submitted photo gets the highest score gets a grand prize. The rest of game prizes come from draws out of all voter participants. Since the game is a weekly event, it can be incorporated with various advertising campaigns that have the theme related to the advertisers. Taipei 101 generates more advertisement revenue. More importantly, the display on Taipei 101 will become more visible and attractive than ever before. Zhouma 101 is under development. It is backupped by Taiwanese players who are virtually absorbing every new thing yet expecting the infusion of crazy ideas. As Taipei is well covered by 3G and Wi-Fi network, Zhouma 101 is simply a start for the emerging of new pervasive games.
Zhouma 101 can be seemed at HERE.
Note: Pervasive Games def. a tangible game experience that includes both physical (real world) and virtual game elements, so that gameplay becomes pervasive, and extends the „magic circle“ of a game socially, temporally, and spatially, integrating, for example, mobile / wireless, vision, sensor, or geo-positioning technologies, and convergent media.
Tags:
game,
pervasive game,
shih chien,
taipei,
workshop
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