So, the last post I made expressed my extreme frustration with my inability to partake at all in ARIS. I decided that I needed to speak with Danny and Liz in order to figure out the problem. We realized that although it says on the website that ARIS is accessible through an Ipod touch, it appears that not all Ipod touch’s have 3G or GPS capability… which is a necessity for ARIS to work. So now having figured this out, I was presented with my next challenge. I needed to get my hands on an Iphone, and this proved to be a little more difficult than one might think. All of my friends have Blackberrys and it’s not exactly normal into today’s society to ask one to borrow their cell phone for hours on end. I did manage to convince a friend to lend me his phone, but he only complied to lend it for a half hour on Thursday and another half hour on Sunday.
So, Thursday afternoon I grabbed his Iphone, quickly downloaded the app, which was extremely easy and began the UW campus tour quest. I only had about a 25 minutes so I really raced through the quest; however, my hands-on experience was extremely helpful in my understanding of ARIS.
It seems that the UW Campus tour is exactly as it sounds: A virtual tour of the campus, which provides history of the buildings and monuments as you physically move from place to place throughout. The tour is virtually guided in a scavenger hunt type fashion. The quest opens with an audio introduction of a man explaining how the game works. He also says that he will remain anonymous because at the end of this “hunt” we will find this mystery man. The audio gives clues for each quest about each place users physically encounter. For example, starting at Memorial Union, the voice told me to look for a red brick building … I looked left and right and saw both the Red Gym and Science Hall. The voice noted that I might see both of these buildings, but then told me to go to the building that looked like a castle. When I walked to the Red Gym, the Iphone vibrated and acknowledged that I had completed the quest. Then, ARIS proceeded to offer me a history of the Red Gym and finally presented me with clues for my next destination. I played for about 20 minutes and went from Memorial Union to the Red Gym, to the fountain in Library Mall, to the base of Bascom hill and finally to University Ave. I wasn’t able to complete the quest but the game did in fact save, so I will be able to continue the quest when I get my hands on an Iphone again.
This brings me to another point. Because I have a user name and login password, I can play ARIS on any Iphone that has the app downloaded.
Finally, before I gave the Iphone back to my friend, I took a peak at the three other games on the App. There is Dow Day, which appears to be a situated documentary type game about a historical event, Sing Along! And Steel. I haven’t explored these games enough to describe them but I plan to do that the next time I get my hands on an Iphone.
I know I said that I was supposed to borrow my friends phone on Sunday as well; however, the weather proved to be another challenge in the frustrating struggle of understanding and experience ARIS
Anyways …until next time!
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