Ere be dragons

We had what I thought was a really interesting seminar today. A woman had come in who used to go to Nottingham Trent Uni who started a company with her friends and are currently creating an interactive game called Ere be dragons which uses a mobile device (currently PDA but lookin into smart phones now) with a GPS adaptor to show movement and mapping out a world with different scenery of which the appearance changes depending on the heart rate of the player (measured using a plug in heartbeat sensor.

Although I thought some imporvement were needed to the game (such as improved graphics and sound) I thought it was a very good idea and got me thinking of games in a new way relating it to real life and got me thinking of different ways similar technology could be used and is something I find very interesting and would enjoy looking further into and possibly working with in the future.

I think a good direction to take such a project into would be to make the game more cartoony to appeal to kids more and this would help getting younger people out and about instead of sat infront of the TV or computer screen all day. The game could use elements from games such as pokemon and other games where some sort of collecting takes place to collect different objects/find different characters by exploring parts of the real world and finding characters in the virtual world.

The Role Play Game style of random battles would work very well in this sort of interactive game. You walk around in the real world until you face a battle in the game and must win that battle to continue. This is an interesting new way of looking at computer games integrated with every day life.