On the Go: “Can You See Me Now?” at Come Out & Play 2007
by Josh Knowles 
Blast Theory demoed their award-winning game “Can You See Me Now?” at the Come Out & Play 2007 festival in Amsterdam.
CYSMN is a game of tag like most of us played in elementary school, except in CYSMN, the hunters run around in the city itself, while their targets are virtual avatars in a virtual version of the city.
The players in the real city carry GPS devices, which alert them to the presence of virtual players nearby. If they get within five meters of a virtual player, they must photograph the real location where they are in order to “see” their quarry and win.
I was in main festival tent at Come Out & Play and watched players control their virtual avatars. It felt like a lively LAN party. Computers scattered about the space had small clusters of people at them, talking and navigating virtual characters around a detailed Flash-based 3D model of Amsterdam.
Three large plasma screens mirrored some of these displays so other people in the tent could see the action. And the voice calls between the players outside were also broadcast into the tent, so one could get a sense of the energy on the street.
Blast Theory has tapped into a trend of mashing together the virtual and the real that is becoming quite popular with the rise of more powerful mobile devices and better (and more available) GPS.
MobZombies is another game that combines virtual and real spaces. And there are web startups, such as Socialight, which allow users to drop virtual notes and other media into real space for other people to pick up. What’s next?
Do you have any GPS games to recommend? Talk about them in the comments section.
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