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Tech Report kmi-04-07 Abstract


CitiTag Multiplayer Infrastructure
Techreport ID: kmi-04-07
Date: 2004
Author(s): Kevin Quick and Yanna Vogiazou
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This report gives a technical overview of the program logic and the architecture for the CitiTag game, a wireless location based game, developed by the Knowledge Media Institute's Centre for New Media in collaboration with HP Labs' Mobile Bristol team. CitiTag is a real-time multiplayer team game, played outdoors using GPS (Global Positioning System) and handheld, PocketPCs connected to a wireless network. CitiTag aims to encourage social experiences and group play in public spaces, based on the awareness of other peoples' presence.
 
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Social Software is...


Social Software
Social Software can be thought of as "software which extends, or derives added value from, human social behaviour - message boards, musical taste-sharing, photo-sharing, instant messaging, mailing lists, social networking."

Interacting with other people not only forms the core of human social and psychological experience, but also lies at the centre of what makes the internet such a rich, powerful and exciting collection of knowledge media. We are especially interested in what happens when such interactions take place on a very large scale -- not only because we work regularly with tens of thousands of distance learners at the Open University, but also because it is evident that being part of a crowd in real life possesses a certain 'buzz' of its own, and poses a natural challenge. Different nuances emerge in different user contexts, so we choose to investigate the contexts of work, learning and play to better understand the trade-offs involved in designing effective large-scale social software for multiple purposes.