Mediascape in a Ski Resort
My boss came up to me a few weeks ago and say, "Hey you're a skiing man, aren't you? Do you fancy being flown off to a ski resort to build a game to present to a bunch of female lifestyle and fashion journalists?". My answer of course, was "YES PLEASE!!"
The event had been put together by HP and Rossingnol, a french ski equipment maker, and was called 'Quality Me Time'. The idea was that the two companies would tell the press how they were specifically targetting women's needs for technology. HP has a series of very nice design-centered new laptops, and Rossingnol have a new range of skis and boots designed to work better for women's body shapes.
My part in the event was to entertain the journalists in the afternoon after the main presentations from the two companies were over. The first thing I was told by the PR company was "we have put a lot of work into this event, and you are running the whole afternoon - so don't screw up!".
Luckily it actually all went rather well - you could see the collective sigh of relief among the assembled HP and PR people when my game actually worked and the journalists actually enjoyed themselves.
What I did was to create a located quiz game which I called 'Snowball Challenge', based in the town of Charvet in the ski resort of Arc 1800. The journalists had a HP iPAQ rx5935 Personal Navigator device between two of them, and would walk a route around the town shown on screen, thanks to the onboard GPS. At certain points, the device would ring (I chose a 1965 British Telecom phone ring sound, for a bit of a retro ambience) and a multiple-choice question would pop up. These questions be carefully placed in the real world so that the answer was close by.
There were some great moments wondering around the town watching people playing the game - my favorite being 15 journalists crammed inside a tiny ski school chalet all enthusiatically counting the number of teddy bears inside (19) while the staff looked on in utter confusion.
Susie Weaser from ShinyShiny.com (a non-pink technology digest site for women) did a little video spot on the game.
I've uploaded the game I created to the mscapers.com website (http://www.mscapers.com/msin/ABA0000244)
so if you happen to be in the area you could try it out yourself. I also made the located quiz game engine I created available for anyone who wants to create their own located quiz games - there's a tutorial on how to use it available here
