What is TechWalk? / FAQ

Frequently Asked Questions:

• What is TechWalk?
  TechWalk is a large-scale urban game using the physical world of a 6x6 block area of downtown Birmingham, Alabama as a virtual game board. Using wireless technology teams of people will compete in games of Othello, capturing grid intersections by completing a film-themed challenge with a camera phone, by uploading the images to a centralized server. Challenges will be in the form of performance art using a combination of noun, verb, and adjective randomly assigned to the team when they arrive at the intersection. The game will be time-limited so that an overall winner can be determined before the evening's screenings at Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival. The public is invited to observe the game in progress but can also track the progress online via the web.
• How Do You Play?
  16 teams of between 4 and 6 people each are expected to be accommodated in our game. The game board is made up of 36 blocks of downtown Birmingham (2nd Ave N to 7th Ave N and 17th St N to 22nd St N). Using a PDA, the team will determine where they wish to place their virtual token. They will quickly move to that location and request a challenge from the server. Together, all but one of the team members must act out the challenge sequence and the remaining team member will use a camera phone to capture the image and upload it to the server. A moderator will visually inspect the uploaded photograph and award the team's token to that location. The game is over when all intersections are claimed or if a prescribed time limit has been reached. The winner of the round is determined by the total number of colored tiles placed/captured according to the rules of Othello.
• Technology to be used:
  This game will make use of a wireless network, digital capture devices (camera phones), display devices (PDA), and personal cell phones (for communicating between team members if they send out scouts).
• Challenges:
  Obviously, this is our first attempt at running this game. Wireless network latency may be an issue, but we don't expect to have to share this network with many others during the event. While we can accomplish the effort with nothing more than walkie-talkies and marshals, we'd like to play the game totally electronically... which will allow us to scale to virtually any number of groups that wish to play the game.
• Why Play?
  This should be a fun, fast-paced game on the city streets. Teams will be pitted against each other in a random manner, intersections on the grid must be claimed within a prescribed time limit, and your team will have to move quickly and travel across up to six city blocks to position your team for the next challenge. What could be more fun?
• Who's behind TechWalk?
  While TechBirmingham is the lead organizer of the game, several other groups have been engaged to help out. ITAC Solutions is a sponsor of the event and will be helping to manage the logistics. Auburn University's Urban Studio students and instructors will be studying and documenting the game as part of their assigned curriculum this semester. And, UAB's GameDev group is creating the Urban Othello game itself.
• Who Created TechWalk?
  This effort is being led by Curtis Palmer of TechBirmingham. It is actually a blend of several different similar efforts undertaken over the past few years primarily in New York City (see our blog posting about large-scale urban games for details). However, none of this could be accomplished without the steering committee members and other volunteers.