Uncle Roy All Around You: Implicating the City in a Location-Based Performance
Steve Benford, Adam Drozd, Duncan Rowland, Nick Tandavanitj, Matt Adams, Ju Row-Farr, Blast Theory, Amanda Oldroyd, Jon Sutton, Adastral Park · 2004
Uncle Roy All Around You is an experience that mixes online and street participants, physical and virtual worlds, and programmed game-play with live performance. Street players journey through a city following clues on a handheld computer in search of the elusive Uncle Roy, while online players follow their progress in a parallel virtual model and try to help them. Analysis of the premiere performance suggests that it was a compelling experience for street players, but less so for those online, leading us to propose several design changes. We also draw out broader design strategies including implicating the surrounding city in the game, creating appropriate ambiguities, enabling safe crossing of boundaries and encouraging social gameplay.�