Game day

Reading Adriana de Souza e Silva’s article From Cyber to Hybrid was a lot of fun. It made me wish I lived in an urban city with public transportation as my primary source of getting around town. As much as I love my Subaru, I miss the misty, overcast days in Seattle, sitting at the bus stop waiting for the #15 to take me down to Pioneer Square for my daily almond croissant and vanilla latte at Grand Central Bakery. Once aboard and settled into the pleather seat I would sit back, relax and let the driver worry about the traffic while I perused the pages of the latest copy of the Stranger. If only I had had a 3G cell phone back then. I have never been one to play video games. My past experiences playing them seemed to end in frustration; because I suck at it. However, my interest has been piqued and I found myself wishing I could once again relieve myself of the duties of driving and let someone else take the steering wheel so I could do something else…like play a game…on my cell phone…with other people…en route to work/home/school/anywhere.

This article was intriguing on many levels. But I was most struck by de Souza e Silva’s “Hybrid spaces as social spaces” part of the article. In this section, de Souza e Silva correlates hybrid spaces as social spaces where she regards “space as a concept produced and embedded by social practices, in which the support infrastructure is composed of a network of mobile technologies.” (The Cybercultures reader, pg. 766) Furthermore, she points out that “mobile devices bring actions formerly performed in specific ‘private’ places (homes or offices with desktop computers connected via cables to the network) to public urban spaces.” (pg 767) Examples she used to illustrate this concept were that of location-based games like Botfighters and Mogi. Each of these games uses mobile technology, ie cell phone, bringing virtual communities into hybrid spaces allowing players to interact with each other capturing creatures or trading “text” fire with another player within relative proximity of each other.

The idea of being able to do this with your mobile phone is a little mind blowing. When I first read this part of the article, I was immediately reminded of a game on a friends’ Android phone called Zombie Run! However, after researching what the game entails and after today’s class discussion, I realized it wasn’t a multi-user interactive game but rather fit more into the realm of augmented reality. I was a little bummed. The concept of a location-based multi-user interactive game for my cell phone just sounds so cool! Again, it made me wish I lived in a city where I could utilize public transportation, just so I could have the opportunity to try one of these cool apps out on my own phone. What’s even more exciting about the prospect of playing location-based games via mobile technologies is the opportunity to explore a city. One example I found that is similar to Botfighter and Mogi is an Android app called JOYity.



Needless to say, aside from the fact that I enjoyed reading the de Souza e Silva's article, I wholeheartedly agree with her perspective on mobile technologies bridging the gap between our ideas of space-cyber to hybrid and it's affect on connecting us socially.