Uncle Roy all around you: mixing games and theatre on the city streets

Abstract

We describe Uncle Roy All Around You, a mixture of game and theatre that took place in central London in late May and early June of 2003. Street players, equipped with handheld computers and wireless networking, journeyed through the streets of the city in search of an elusive character called Uncle Roy, while online players jour- neyed through a parallel 3D model of the city, were able to track their progress and could communicate with them in order to help or hinder them. We describe how Uncle Roy All Around You mixed elements of pre-programmed game content with live performance and behind the scenes orchestration to create a compelling experience, espe- cially for street players. We suggest that finding ways to scale this approach to support larger numbers of par- ticipants is an important challenge for future research.