Exploring Mediascapes
By Hope Needles
Last week, the LoJo team began exploring a fairly new technology developed by HP Labs called Mediascapes. Mediascapes, a game-based application, incorporates GPS motion-sensing technology to tell a story that is often directly linked to its location. Recently, I had the opportunity to test this program and to learn about its latest developments from HP Labs in Bristol, England, at the second annual Mediascapes Conference in December 2007. The two-day conference helped me consider some of the applications that can exist for Mediascapes and that extend well beyond the gaming industry.
At the conference, I met Web designers, game developers, filmmakers, geography teachers and conceptual artists who were all interested in finding practical applications for this technology. Most of the participants seemed to be familiar with the technology, while others, such as myself, had never tried it out before.
The conference began with a detailed overview of Mediascapes and the two main formats that are used for storytelling — anchored and portable. HP developers explained that an anchored Mediascape is a story that is linked to a specific location (such as a public park), while a portable Mediascape (such as an interactive treasure hunt) is a game that can be played anywhere in the world.
At the conference, I found it interesting to learn about the different considerations that go into designing a Mediascape, particularly with respect to location. For example, I learned that some Mediascapes can be independent of specific locations, while others are completely tied to their surroundings, such as the Mediascape that I experienced on the first night of the event.
I tested the Mediascape Musical Labyrinth, created by a group of participants from Spain, which was a virtual treasure hunt through a park in Bristol. The game prompted me to travel along designated paths in the park in order to access objects in the game. This Mediascape used icons of musical instruments as destination markers for the user to follow, and upon reaching a specific instrument, a different song would play on the portable device. My observation was that this type of Mediascape, which was designed around a specific location, was more effective and interactive than the games that were not tied to places. I was, however, introduced to some interesting concepts for Mediascapes that do not rely on location, such as a game that could be designed to track your heart rate. The more optimal your heart rate is as you play the game, the greener and healthier your surroundings will appear on your GPS portable device.
Experiencing a location-based Mediascape in the park helped me to appreciate many of the factors that go into the story design of digital media. For example, I realized the importance of deciding early on whether the story will be presented in a linear or non-linear way, and whether the game will guide the user throughout the location, or leave this to the user to decide.
As team LoJo considers different story ideas for Mediascapes in the next few weeks, we will likely have to work around some of the common GPS control issues that can make this technology unreliable. Some of the issues that I experienced at the conference included atmospheric conditions, signal multi-path shadows, timing errors and GPS drift. Our team discussed these issues in a conference call last week with Ben Clayton, an HP Developer in Bristol. He explained to the class that the Mediascape technology is still being finessed, and that the common GPS issues, in addition to compatibility concerns, will hopefully be addressed in the near future.
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