Paper Reading #6 - Blowtooth: Pervasive gaming in Unique and Challenging Environments

Reference Information

Title: Blowtooth: Pervasive Gaming in Unique and Challenging Environments

Names of authors: Conor Linehan, Ben Kirman, Shaun Lawson, Mark Doughty

Presentation venue: CHI 2010, April 10–15, 2010, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

Summary:

The paper talks about a cellphone game called Blowtooth. Blowtooth has been developed to explore the limits of pervasive gaming in public spaces where the constant surveillance of law-abiding and innocuous behavior has become the everyday norm.

The game is specifically designed to exploit the affordances of a particular class of public space - namely international airports - in which people are subject to particularly high levels of intrusive surveillance and security monitoring. Even in everyday experience (i.e. outside of a game) such surveillance can be both simultaneously thrilling and frightening; the possibility of harnessing these sensations in a game - or indeed any other art form - has great potential.

Blowtooth is further designed with a fictional narrative theme that is deliberately provocative given the environment in which it is set i.e. the game-play involves the covert smuggling of drugs through airport security checks. In reality, of course, no drugs are involved and the game simply polls a player's vicinity for Bluetooth devices, produces a list of these devices and allows the player to conceptually dump or retrieve contraband on or off one or more devices in the list. No interaction with the other devices - or their owners - is made other than to discover the anonymous and factory allocated hardware addresses. Usage of Bluetooth in this way is common - even in airports.

Discussion:

Initially I thought that the idea sounded very lame. I would rather prefer to play other FPS or racing games on my cell phone, listen to music or read a book while I am at the airport. However, the idea of making it multi-player using bluetooth is very creative. It definitely adds excitement to the game. I guess, I won't realize how fun the game is unless I play it for myself but I can see how it can add adventure to the boring experience of air travel. I checked out the blowtooth game website and many people world wide are already playing this game on their phones and setting new records, so I bet it must be exciting.