RFID gaming: La Fuga

La Fuga (by Négone) is a intriguing pervasive game in which players has to escape from Mazzinia, a futuristic high-security jail.

"Named La Fuga (The Breakout), the game opened this month at a former bank not far from the Real Madrid Stadium in northern Madrid. The facility can host up to 300 players at a time, each of whom tries to solve quizzes and pass through different obstacles in order to escape. Every player receives a console consisting of a specially designed PDA worn on the wrist. Between the PDA and its wrist strap is a passive RFID tag with a unique ID number used to locate and identify each player during the game. (...) "The game system activates the quizzes, the doors and the tricks in response to the detection of the tags. This allows the system to keep track of the gaming information of each player and generate each player's game individually," (...) RFID interrogators (readers) placed in doorways and in other areas of the game rooms enable the application to detect a player's location, and to use that information to drive the gamer's experience. For example, when the interrogator detects a person in a certain location, the system might display questions on the PDA screen that he or she must answer in order to progress. On the other hand, it might signal doors to open. "

(Picture courtesy RFID Journal)

Why do I blog this? yet another one on my list of pervasive game. The use of RFID tag/readers can be interesting to use in a location-based game; what is intriguing is the discovery of location on specific points such as doors and not on the whole field. That may lead to granularities that can be employed in specific gameplays.