Project Title: The Big Apple, Empire, New Yorker..undecided
Being from New York, I feel that many New Yorkers don’t take advantage of the city’s rich culture, and tourists don’t know enough about that culture. I want to create a game where the goal is to become a “real” New Yorker.
Precedent 1: Stack the States
This is an educational game in which you have to answer a series of questions in order to collect each state. You acquire the states one at a time by winning the challenges and eventually acquire the whole U.S.
My game would have a similar concept of acquiring places in Manhattan to eventually build up the whole city.
Precedent 2: Manahatta The Game
This is a location based game developed by PETLab in which you have to go to locations and link them with the history and ecology of that location. This is to educate people about the rich ecology that one was Manahatta, in a fun and interactive way.
If you just want to play the game on your iphone, you basically travel to the locations you have to get to via subway, taxi, walking (however you choose). You actually have to navigate your way there, so if you know the subway to get you there then thats great, if not you have to waste your money on a taxi. This part would be replaced with physically going to the location as I will explain.
I would add another layer to this game, which is location based like Manahatta. Players gain more experience points if they physically go to these locations and then answer the questions about them. The app would have to have GPS tracking and would be able to tell if you arrived at the location.
Basically, players will be competing against other players to see who is the most knowledgable. The missions would teach about the history or current information about the place through answering questions. By completing these missions you acquire points, but traveling to them also brings down your income and your XP. Missions would range from going to the Statue of Liberty, to the MET, to the Theatre District, the WTC site, Central Park, Empire State Building, etc.
Ex: If you got to the Met, it might ask which artist you would find there (and then give you choices). If you go to the Theatre District, what is the longest running Broadway show?
This is a very big project to take on which I realize. I have to do a lot of background research first before developing the game, but I think for this project I can get most of the research done and visualizations of how the game will look and function.
Comments!