Books are great tools to aiding learning and imagination, but is it possible to use technology in such a way that children might actually experience something like the African savannah for themselves? Savannah, a strategy-based adventure game mapping a virtual space onto a real one, was developed with just such an ambitious aim.

The understanding that game- and role-play can be effective educational tools has long been accepted, but in coming up with the idea of Savannah, a game in which a virtual space (the African savannah) would be mapped onto a real space (a Bristol school’s playing field), research and development organisation Futurelab aimed to take the concept to new levels, ones that would incorporate a number of new and unproven objectives.

As Jo Morrison, creative director at Futurelab explains: ‘We were very interested in whether the appealing and motivating aspects of computer gameplay could be harnessed and transposed into a mixed reality experience. The initial concept was developed in-house, then conversations took place with the BBC’s Natural History Unit and staff at Hewlett Packard working on the Mobile Bristol Initiative to see if they were interested in developing the notion of an augmented reality game where children collaborated when role-playing lions in a savannah.’

In the game, children move around a real space with GPS-linked PDAs, pretending to be a pride of lions which has to survive a year in the savannah. As they move around, the children/lions encounter hotspots where they can smell, hear and see objects (prey, predators etc) on their screens, and the computers link them to each other so that they can work together and communicate information both to each other and to an interactive whiteboard in ‘the den’ which monitors their progress.

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Players equipped with a wearable computer, headset and goggles can physically enter a real world game space by choosing to play the role of Pacman or one of the Ghosts.

A central computer system keeps track of all their movements with the aid of GPS receivers and a wireless local area network.

The Human Pacman was developed by Adrian David Cheok and his team at the Mixed Reality Lab, National University of Singapore.

Merging different technologies such as GPS, Bluetooth, virtual reality, wi-fi, infrared and sensing mechanisms, the augmented reality game allows gamers to play in a digitally-enhanced maze-like version of the real world.

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Pac-Manhattan is a large-scale urban game that utilises the New York City grid to recreate the 1980’s video game sensation Pac-Man. This analog version of Pac-man is being developed in NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications graduate program, in order to explore what happens when games are removed from their “little world” of tabletops, televisions and computers and placed in the larger “real world” of street corners, and cities.

A player dressed as Pac-man will run around the Washington square park area of Manhattan while attempting to collect all of the virtual “dots” that run the length of the streets. Four players dressed as the ghosts Inky, Blinky, Pinky and Clyde will attempt to catch Pac-man before all of the dots are collected.

Using cell-phone contact, Wi-Fi internet connections, and custom software designed by the Pac-Manhattan team, Pac-man and the ghosts will be tracked from a central location and their progress will be broadcast over the internet for viewers from around the world.

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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.

(via we-make-money-not-art)