Live Action Scotland Yard (L.A.S.Y.) is a game created by Canadian designer Joel Friesen. The scenario is pretty simple: a 'Mr X' dresses in a bright yellow t-shirt, and then takes to the public transport systems of Toronto, Canada, pursued by three more people, 'detectives', in red shirts. The 'criminal' has to give clues to those chasing every third stop he makes.
One guy named Mr. X runs around Toronto’s transit system in a bright yellow shirt, while three or more guys in red shirts try to find him using the clues he gives at every third stop he makes. The three detectives are coordinated by dispatchers who tell the detectives where they think Mr. X might be and how best to block him off. Mr.X’s dispatcher is relaying information about the detectives whereabouts and tries to keep him away from them. The game ends when a time limit has been reached or X is caught. You need:
- A fully charged Cell phone with unlimited weekend minutes
- A Monthly or Day Pass for the TTC
- Sunscreen
Here are the rules: Scotland Yard is played by 6 or more people, half of the players are in the field, and the other half are dispatchers. Teams are paired up, one dispatcher with a field agent. Each pair is in contact with each other using a cell phone. One agent in the field is chosen to be “Mr. X” while the rest are detectives. (...) More about the rules here
Why do I blog this it's somehow like a hide-and-seek/treasure hunt/first-person shooter with a bit of technological flavor (a cell phone). I do think this sort of game is ten times more funny than crappy mobile games already on the market. In this context, the technology is just used to 'support' coordination among teams. This is exactly the kind of situation I would like to study (comparing for instance situations with location-awareness tool and situations without). It's cheap, doable, what if we do something like this on the EPFL campus????
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