On campus in college played humans vs zombies frequently. It's one of the most fun sports I've ever played. The magic really came from two directions. The first was being a human, where you've got a nerf blaster that fires nerf darts. If you hit a zombie, they are frozen for a few seconds, usually between 6 and 15. A decent human could manage 5-on-1 attacks. Its a blast to be charged by 5 opponents and to come out on top. But you only had one life.
As a zombie, the fun came from having unlimited lives. You grab 2-5 friends and you charge a group of humans. And then you spend minutes wearing them down, taking their ammo, waiting for a mistake. Occasionally you'd dodge a shot or two and then you'd be close enough to tag them. It's very rewarding when you finally do get the human, because they are so much stronger than you. The infinite lives means you don't get discouraged, and it also means its okay to make risky attacks.
This game looks like fun, but a few mechanics worry me. The first is dying. If your opponent is a lot better than you, can you have fun? How long do you stay dead? You are almost certain to have interactions that you aren't prepared for, or you drop your phone, or some set of frustrations happen. Is the game built to prevent frustration?
The second is that having to hold your phone with two hands seems really clunky. In HvZ, the (for many players anyway) blaster is everything. It has to feel good in your hands, you have to trust it, you have to be able to sprint while firing. You can't sprint and aim with two hands. If you stumble, having two hands out means you have nothing to help you hit the ground smoothly. You can't grab a tree and use it to turn faster. You can drop a nerf blaster because they are tough and cost $5-$20 for the small ones. You can't drop your phone unless you really trust the case. You have to be a lot more careful, and you have to trust your grip. Phones don't have handholds the same way that blasters do.
Cool idea, but not excited by the current demo video.
The guy who started the club was very proactive about talking to the administration. I think that nerf blasters (we were not allowed to call them guns, they are "blasters") were originally allowed by campus policy, which made things easier. But there were many strict rules. No black, no silver, had to be a brightly colored "blaster" firing brightly colored ammo. No playing in the streets, no interacting with non-players.
We were very aggressive about complying with the administration. Any request was immediately honored, and if it was unfair we'd request a change in policy on a later day. We were very diplomatic and worked very hard to be on the good side of the administration. I think this helped a lot.
I'm not sure how that would scale to a city. Trying to be compliant with many police forces in different residential areas sounds a lot harder than trying to be compliant with a single college campus administration. Especially because it's a lot harder to enforce a diplomatic attitude among thousands of random players than it is among 50 people who are all either friends, or friends of friends.
I'm really split on this. The gamer in me thinks this looks like great fun, but I just can't see myself running round the streets of London shooting people with my phone, mostly because its likely to result in either ridicule, or stepping into traffic.
If you'd try to pull off stunts like ones presented on that video, you'd smash your phone into million pieces in the first 30 seconds. Twice I almost dropped my phone while playing Ingress, and that game doesn't make you run or react to events instantly.
I was thinking the same thing. I would run into a wall or a car as I fight someone. I can see the game being successful at someone's house with a decent size property. However, why not just grab a paintball gun instead?
When playing hvz, stumbling was pretty common. Out of 40 players, one or two would get scraped up on the concrete per game. Running into walls, poles, and trees pretty much never happened.
The streets were very strictly off limits. And if there was a car (like a Public Safety vehicle) patrolling the campus sidewalks, all play stopped until the car was a certain distance away. No running, tagging, or shooting on the streets or by a moving car (parking lots were okay IFF there were no moving vehicles). Anybody in violation was immediately thrown from the game and banned from the next.
Safety under these conditions was not ever a problem. A sprained ankle was the worst injury we ever had, and that's going to happen in all sports.
Considering that you can be arrested for playing paintball out of restricted areas in germany, I would avoid this.
"simulated killing" can be banned by communities here, the european rights court found that legal about this 10 years ago (C-36/02). Laserdrome was the game in question back then. The decision goes down to §1 of the german grundgesetz (our constitution), which is the inviolability of human dignity.
While Laserdrome and Paintball is rather commonplace nowadays, often, one of the provisions expected to open such a space is the exclusion of anyone not involved in the game.
I don't want to know how the reaction to people running around town "shooting" at each other will be.
I can understand banning paintball. Paintballs can cause bruising, blindness, and stain clothes and walls. I don't think paintball is a fair comparison here.
These Ingress-like type of games seem like a good trend, and this game too looks like fun. Just one thing - I probably wouldn't play this in US, certainly not if I'd have colored or black skin. Police there seems to be a little too trigger happy and tends to yell "he's got a gun" even when they don't even see the gun. That has happened a few times too many in US for me to comfortably play this game there. Just the more recent one:
Well it's a cool idea but I don't want any weirdo come over looking for me when I'm at work, right? ;-) And we both know that some people take their games too seriously, ja? ;-)
Especially if you have to attach the gun-barrel-looking thing. Especially if there are sound effects. Especially if people role play (yelling, pretending to be shot, or shouting about someone with a gun trying to shoot them).
Ingress is much more tame in comparison, and the forums are still full of people talking about being stopped and questioned by the police.
lol, cops :)
they have more important things to do!
and there is nothing illegal about running around playing. that's what children do. should we just arrest all children, then?
We're still dealing with the increased militarization of our cops in America stemming from 9/11. Here, if you're an adult and are running around in a city like that and pretending to shoot another person, there's the distinct possibility that a. people are going to report suspicious behavior and b. cops are going to come and tase you, maybe beat you up a bit too (especially if you're not white, unfortunately).
They also got the introduction site very right -- I was seamlessly pulled into learning about the product, no sroll-shenanigans, just a quick (and painless/not-awkward) introduction to the product
Looks interesting. I wonder how the hit detection works, I mean if there was some sort of way to boost the signal and just create device that would terminate every player in a given area.
I'm curious at the 'hitbox' of a person since it'd have to be based off the phone. If someone were to put their phone down on a table, is the table suddenly a valid target?
This is obviously the smart phone enabled version of the old 'Assasins' roleplaying game that seems to be common around my university. I know some people who would be interested in something like this whereby they could utilise it as a framework to setup their own games/rules.
Mostly a problem for people in countries where cops are allowed to carry a weapon. In other words, we Norwegians can play in public without running the risk of being shoot by a cop :)
Norwegian police officers do not carry firearms, but keep their Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns and Heckler & Koch P30 pistols locked down in the patrol cars.
Yeah, I am sure we will soon see hundreds of well-dressed, athletic people running around with their smartphone in camera position. Expect this to generate a lot of buzz, because virtual reality is a one way ticket to success these days. See you at the Series A, with neither revenue nor anything beyond a demo video.
The Columbine Trenchcoat Mafia tribute at the end was just adorable. I'm sure black and middle eastern people will just have a blast playing this game at the Walmart in Ferguson.
It's definitely ambitious and the tech is to be applauded. Just think it's lazy and dangerous to have adults in public spaces running around pretending shooting one another with gun-like devices and sounds.
That's probably fair. I should have not been so ham-fisted. I think you could probably eliminate the gun angle entirely to a game like this, but it's wholly necessary if the players opt to engage in responsible play like (presumably) paintball folks or airsoft people do (knows very little about either).
There is nothing new about the idea of running around shooting people with guns. And I'm sorry it doesn't seem irresponsible to you. You're a white male, correct?
I'd guess optical: the gun-barrel thingy emits some light pattern (or just flashes) and the timing is used to determine whose is it similarly to how bump.io used to work.
Anyone can make an open source game like this. I'd rather see a successful one.
Besides, what possibilities? I'm a huge proponent of open source but there's more or less nothing else that you would be able to do if it were. In an MMO, you abide by the rules of the central server, no matter how open its source is.
If the server software was opensource you could host one yourself and decide the rules, make custom game modes (capture the flag for example) and make the game work the exact way you'd like. For example, I could imagine this being very fun for disabled people in wheelchairs, but the default gameplay should probably be changed.
As a zombie, the fun came from having unlimited lives. You grab 2-5 friends and you charge a group of humans. And then you spend minutes wearing them down, taking their ammo, waiting for a mistake. Occasionally you'd dodge a shot or two and then you'd be close enough to tag them. It's very rewarding when you finally do get the human, because they are so much stronger than you. The infinite lives means you don't get discouraged, and it also means its okay to make risky attacks.
This game looks like fun, but a few mechanics worry me. The first is dying. If your opponent is a lot better than you, can you have fun? How long do you stay dead? You are almost certain to have interactions that you aren't prepared for, or you drop your phone, or some set of frustrations happen. Is the game built to prevent frustration?
The second is that having to hold your phone with two hands seems really clunky. In HvZ, the (for many players anyway) blaster is everything. It has to feel good in your hands, you have to trust it, you have to be able to sprint while firing. You can't sprint and aim with two hands. If you stumble, having two hands out means you have nothing to help you hit the ground smoothly. You can't grab a tree and use it to turn faster. You can drop a nerf blaster because they are tough and cost $5-$20 for the small ones. You can't drop your phone unless you really trust the case. You have to be a lot more careful, and you have to trust your grip. Phones don't have handholds the same way that blasters do.
Cool idea, but not excited by the current demo video.