Viking Ghost Hunt – a ‘hyperlocal’ Dublin-based game

While down at the National Digital Research Centre last week, I saw a brief presentation from two Dutch guys, Soren and Mads, who were making an iPhone game which overlaid a game on top of reality using GPS and cell tower triangulation.
From NDRC:

Viking Ghost Hunt will capitalise on location based gaming. The interactive game will require the user to travel around Dublin city to advance the game, incorporating physical exercise into traditional gaming, and experiencing new combinations of storyline and game play activities.

I’ll be asking them for a demo I will.

A hyperlocal game is essentially using the GPS built into the iPhone to do some GeoCaching – except that the reward is ‘virtual’. Otherwise the principles are the same. The software links into the web site rather than having you dig for a prize and then delivers a preprogrammed message. A little like “Help Me Obi Wan Kenobi” if you think about it.

The concept of this is very simple. The execution shouldn’t also be too hard.