I spent my entire winter break traveling, so a lot of the games I played over the break were portable (3ds). I spent most of my time in the extremely dense city of Hong Kong and decided to carry my 3ds with me to test out the Street pass features, which are a little less utilized in a city like Knoxville. What I experienced was a very odd, yet unique and interesting form of social gaming. We are all long familiar with online gaming, which allows us to play with both our friends and complete strangers. The experience I had using street pass was sort-of in between, blurring the line between friend, acquaintance, and stranger. After carrying it the first day I was overwhelmed with the number of street passes I had acquired. As I would continue playing through Super Mario 3d Land, a stranger's avatar (Mii) that I had passed earlier in the day would pop up and unlock a bonus level, or give me a "gift" of power-ups.
Although this had a very minimal effect on the gameplay, it was an interesting bonus nonetheless. What became more interesting about street pass was the fact that it was proximity based.
I found it very interesting when I would actually see someone on the MTR playing a 3ds in person and later recognize the same person represented as an avatar on my 3ds, and then proceed to race their ghost times on Mariocart 7. This social dynamic for "meeting" people's avatars is very unique and also a bit creepy. As I carried the 3ds around more, I would pass certain people again in similar locations, and could even begin to recognize patterns in the locations I was passing people for a second or third time. Perhaps I was over thinking all of this, but I began wondering about these people and why I had passed them more than once. Why in a city of full of millions did we come within close proximity of one another, multiple times? Was a particular train stop part of their daily routine? Did they live nearby? Or like the same bookstore? etc.
So what does this all mean? I'm not really sure. As of now, these features are still very raw and have minimal effects on most of the games. If nothing else, this proximity based interaction poses very interesting social questions. What if people exchanged more personal information this way? What if more wireless devices transfered information this way? What if people are able to more freely choose how they affect other player's games? And so on. Of course this also brings up the golden question. Is this feature gaming?
It's so interesting, the idea of proximity. Whenever I've driven to school in the last two years, I've seen the same people walking down the street or waiting at the bus stop at the usual time every day. Sometimes, I even notice the same cars. I wonder if they notice me.
ReplyDeleteAs weird as it sounds, I wonder who they are. All the time.
It seems even less likely to run into the same people in a place like HK. It's strange to think that people had been passing you multiple times in a huge city, but only through the DS do you become aware of it.
The way you can connect in Nintendo games is very interesting. One's ability to exchange information is always extremely limited, but it's just enough so that there is a presence. Like in the Pokemon games, you can only send letters constructed by a specific set of words. In most cases, exchanging friend codes only let you directly challenge your friends in games, but almost never has communication beyond that.
When I tried the dreamworld, I found it very frustrating that communication was so limited. The only way to interact was by seeing someone's Pokemon present. When you hover over them, it says the name and trailer. And that's it! What are you doing in my house, strange Pokemon? You're just standing there, staring at me!
For me, meeting people that you've originally met in the virtual world is strange, but when it comes to physical proximity, it's another story altogether. It's spooky to see an avatar, a marker of someone's presence, and not be able to communicate.
When I first heard about this feature on the 3DS, I was pretty impressed. I'm not too familiar with the device, so I always assumed the connection was completely anonymous (sort of like omegle? idk), so there wouldn't be a way to tell whether or not you'd encountered the person before. That there are distinguishable avatars and you can recognize their patterns of travel is pretty fascinating. I'm curious, did you and the street passes you encountered ever make eye contact or acknowledge each other?
ReplyDeleteAlso, I will second your question about Hong Kong and running into people. When I visited, I ran into my pharmacist in the middle of a crosswalk. True story.
As far as mutual acknowledgement, no that never happened. My 3ds was most often tucked away in my bag. So as far as I could tell nobody would have even been aware I was a potential street-passe unless they could recognize my Mii. There were a couple of times, however, that I alone was aware of a street pass (once when walking by a girl in the train station and noticing her playing Nintendogs on a pearl pink 3ds, another time seeing a child playing one in a restaurant.) I did not see or pass these people again. The repeats happened only a couple of times with people I didn't recognize. I can only guess at where they might have occurred.
DeleteDevices like the 3ds provide an interesting intersection of the outside gamespace and the game. It allows you to identify with another on a personal level without sharing much of the vulnerability associated with new friendships. With only a brief glimpse of synchronized game data, you get a picture of the similarities between a stranger and you.
ReplyDeleteAlso, in light of your questions at the end of the post, I've actually seen several smartphone apps emerge that utilize the same technology and idea of proximity-based interaction but take it to the next level. There’s a game for the iPhone called Shadow Cities, and its whole premise revolves around directly affecting the experience of others playing the game (who, like StreetPass players, are strangers). You defend your strongholds from the other players while also trying to take theirs. The really cool thing is that these strongholds are based on your actual location (i.e. streets, landmarks, etc.), and you defend it against nearby players in real time.
ReplyDeleteThere’s also an app called Grindr which is designed for gay men, and it lets the user see their proximity (in miles all the way down to feet) to another user, with whom they can also chat (I only know this because I have friends who use it, just to be clear, haha). It’s obviously for purely social purposes rather than gaming, so grabbing the goal pole probably means something completelyyy different than in Super Mario Land...
...(Sorry, for that.)
It reminds me of an airborne virus, something that transmits through human proximity. At the same time though, you aren't really "connecting" with another human being in regards to going up to them and talking, it's sort of under the radar. The absence of that is very interesting because it requires proximity but not dialogue or true interaction. It's like interaction through proxy, or your avatar, which acts like a barrier.
ReplyDelete