Part 1- Concept
“Here you are in Amsterdam but what do you really know about the city? How long has it been here? Why does it have so many canals? Which economic activity made the Golden Age so golden? What is unique about its history of governance? Where there castles here in olden days? What connects the towers that still stand around the city? What happened here in WW2?”
In this modern day Mystery Game App, based on the rich collection of the Amsterdan Historic Museum (AHM), you will use GPS coordinates and Augmented Reality, your eyes and your ears to help you dive into the hidden history of Amsterdam. You will explore the streets, follow clues, solve puzzles, and meet challenges. All to the end of solving a mystery, and finally bringing 18th the century Orphan Dirkje back to her family, unlocking the fascinating tales that Amsterdam has to tell you and having a lot of fun along the way.
Genre
“Bring DIrkje Home” is a location-based game[1] that places an old-fashioned treasure hunt in a modern-day mystery solving context. Treasure Hunts are games where players try to find certain objects by unravelling riddles, solving clues and/or meeting challenges. Using maps, GPS coordinates and Augmented reality [2] the players will travel to different locations in Amsterdam that have a connection to objects in the AHM collection. Using treasure hunt techniques the players will have to find all the exact locations and solve its puzzle or challenge. Each successful solution will be solve a piece of the final puzzle about Dirkje’s past, helping her to find her family and leave the orphanage.
Although there is a mystery to solve and the players may feel like detectives or explorers there is no real manifest role playing. People can move in the streets without being indentified as “tourists playing a wierd game” which will give them freedom to engross themselves in the city wide game environment whilst just being “themselves”.
Target platform
This game is an Iphone and Android app that will also have a game community on the AHM website.
Target Audience
This will come from the potentially 2,000,000 visitors that arrive yearly in Amsterdam. From this group it will target the tech savvy segment that is interested in an active, adventurous city trip. That is still a wide audience that can include families, young adults as well as the more mature audience, perhaps an audience that otherwise wouldn’t be visiting the AHM. Curiosity, the desire to explore, and to be part of the game’s community will be the motivating factors.
There will be research done in the first year to explore further who the audience is and how there needs can be further addressed, as well as to develop new strategies for widening the audience.
Legal Background
This game and all the objects involved are copyright of the AHM. The game will be distributed through the Iphone and Android channels, thus being subject to the relevant terms and conditions inherent to these channels.
Game description
Dirkje Sluis?
Dirkje Sluis was an orphan in the 17th century at the Burgerweeshuis in Amsterdam. This orphanage was housed within the walls of the present day AHM for more than 450 years up until the 1960’s. Because she was found at the locks on the Amstel (sluizen in Dutch) she was given this as her last name as was the habit in the day. But Dirkje is more than a former orphan, dead and gone; she is still a spirit roaming the halls of the old orphanage. Why is that?
Although Dirkje was taken care in the way of the time, she always had a strong feeling that there was still family out there somewhere. In a recurring dream she saw a large canal house somewhere in Amsterdam with vague images of faces looking down on her. In her dream there were always 10 faces, people well- dressed and healthy, old and young, all of them happy and calling out a name they she was never able to remember. She was sure that this was her family that would take her out of the orphanage and into their home, restoring her identity and her real place in the world, if only she could discover who they were…
The game
That’s where you come in. By diving into the hidden history of Amsterdam, exploring the streets, making connections between the past below the surface and the present, solving a series of clues, puzzles, and challenges you can help unlock the secret of Dirkje’s origins. The Burgerweeshuis has moved to modern quarters and the original building has become the Amsterdam Historic Museum. It is their rich collection of 7 centuries of Amsterdam history that will provide the clues you will need.
Why Play?
Get it right and Dirkje can go home. And you can have a great time exploring Amsterdam and finding out more about its stories, past and present, in addition to feeling really good about helping her get back to her family, finally finding peace.
But there is more. You will also become a part of the AHM game community where you can share your experiences online and actively engage in giving new meanings to the museum’s great collection. You can also play for a high score to give the game a more competitive edge.
If you are successful in your quest you will have free access to the museum for a whole day and a free coffee in their restaurant. High scores will win you something extra.
What Is Your Goal?
The 10 faces in Dirkje’s dream that call out a name have lead us to believe that her lost family’s name had 10 letters. Your goal is to retrieve all the letters and put them in the right order. It sounds simple but it may be trickier than you think.
What do you need?
You will need a smart phone with camera and audio, earphones and the AR “Bring Dirkje Home” app. (available for Iphone, Android ? ) If you don’t have a smart phone you can rent one from the AHM. You can play alone or in company. You can also compete against other individuals or teams.
How do you start?
Firstly you must register at the AHM website or via the “Bring Dirkje Home” app to receive the map with the approximate locations you will need to find and explore in order to solve Dirkje’s mystery. Each location will have its own challenge and set of rules. This could involve pictures, code breaking, suduko, or audio clues amongst other things.
The locations are numbered just to make it easy but you may play in any order you see fit.
If you are looking for others to play against you can connect here.
How to Travel?
You can walk, rent a bike, take a ferry or a tram. Along the way you can use the App to access other interesting stuff and places to have a break along the way.
How long will it take?
It is doable in a relaxed sightseeing pace in a day but as it is not linear you can stretch it out for as long as you want. On the other hand you can create a high score by setting a time or by competing against other players.
Key features
Participatory Museum
With more than 200,000 visitors the AHM counts itself amongst the city’s top 6 museums. But with more than 2,000,000 visitors per year to Amsterdam there are many more people that they would like to connect with to see the number of visitors increase. This game will not only help increase the number of visitors. It will also make (parts of) the collection come to life, establish new, meaningful connections between the collection’s objects indoors and the physical locations outdoors where the collection has its roots. It will also create a library of user-generated content giving a modern day perspective on the collection that has items dating back to the 13 the century.
Multi Media Immersive Experience
By using modern technology such as GPS positioning and Augmented Reality and smart phones in combination with a range of media: pictures that overlay the existing situation in the AR App, sounds that guide you to your location and give you a feel for times past, objects inserted in the surroundings, a compelling game environment will be created allowing for a great user experience.
Interact with collection
Once the game had been completed you will have ongoing access to the collection’s interactive metadata. You may call up objects, add relevant information, give them tags, and see what the take is of other community member on the collection, help bring it to life and connect it in creative ways to our world.
Community
Share you discoveries with other players at the game’s social network on the AHM website. See what fun facts, places to be or see, thoughts and insights, and/or images others have to offer. Make your visit to Amsterdam an engaging, connected experience.
Part 2
In the second and final part of this Design Document I will work out the game play in greater detail by using text, grachics, and movies to illustrate the game mechanics, the game play, the different scenarios, system mechanics, the interface, and the interaction.
[1] “A location-based game (or location-enabled game) is one in which the game play somehow evolves and progresses via a player’s location. Thus, location-based games almost always support some kind of localization technology, for example by using satellite positioning like GPS.” Wikipedia
[2] “Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or an indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input, such as sound or graphics.” Wikipedia
In responding to the post I’ve pitched the comments not only at what is recorded here but with a view to what might be included in the final games document.
Good colourful start, this is exactly the kind of phrase to start with, being exciting without being over the top. Followed by a good précis of what the game is about.
I think it is good idea to state the nature of the game i.e. that the players will not be identifiable to non players. Again setting out some of your key ideas early in the description helps answer questions for the reader and allow them to focus on understanding your core idea.
The idea of Dirkje Sluis and her story is brilliant! It smacks of originality with lots of depth and opportunity for a good story that lends itself to rich opportunities for game play.
I think it is a good idea to appeal to peoples sense of community in becoming part of the AHM community by playing, and a nice idea of a free ticket if you are successful. These are nice simple and understandable goals that the player can relate to. I think this is particularly good in this case as some people might not be comfortable with the game idea at the outset, but the reward will draw them in.
In the section concerning the participating museum you might consider expanding a little more how this type of engagement and participation will bring people in and engage them.
Again some expansion on your view of the user generated content and how that will form a lasting legacy/archive. Might it be used to develop other aspects of the game for instance?
For the technology and interaction section you definitely need an example here. Even if you do not put in technical details you can still indicate what your intended view of the activity is. This is an important aspect of the description and a strong description with visuals will serve to give the detail of the game.
Overall with such rich material and detailed setting (with great authenticity) this game cries out for further detail, and description of game play and mechanics.