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| Lakeland Boating's Guide to Geocaching |
New to Geocaching? Looking to find out more? Read all about it in the newest issue of Lakeland Boating or simply click here to download a .pdf version of the story.
What if you could take video games outdoors?
In late 2001 after running Geocaching.com for over a year, Jeremy Irish and Elias Alvord came up with an interesting challenge: How could they take their favorite adventure games and bring them outdoors with GPS technology?
If you are familiar with adventure games like Zork, Myst, or the Secret of Monkey Island you can think of Wherigo as an adventure game construction set for the real world.
You don't type north or click your mouse to move your character around a screen. Instead you literally move yourself in the real world and interact with objects and characters using a handheld interface. Currently you can participate with a Garmin Colorado or most GPS-enabled PocketPC devices. The plan is to make the Wherigo Player work on many other platforms - including mobile phones.
If you aren't familiar with adventure games, the idea is that you can move around in the real world using GPS and a handheld device to experience media-rich content relating to your location. The experience can be a tour guide, an adventure game or anything dreamed up by an author.
How does it work?
There are two sides to Wherigo: Building and Playing
Building
Using the Wherigo Builder application, Wherigo authors can build interactive adventure games, tour guides and other innovative activities for Wherigo players to enjoy outdoors. The Wherigo experience combines physical and virtual elements, overlaying engaging story lines and useful information onto a real-world background.
The basic building blocks of Wherigo are zones. Zones are areas on a map that represent locations in the real world. Zones can be created to be any shape an author chooses and are usually dependent on the type of experience the author desires to make and share. For instance, if an author wants to develop a tour, a zone could be created around a specific landmark.
Once the author is finished creating the experience, it is uploaded to the Wherigo site as a self-contained Wherigo file, called a cartridge. The published file is made available at www.wherigo.com to be downloaded by players equipped with the Wherigo Player application.
Playing
Using the Wherigo Player application and a GPS-enabled device, participants can visit physical locations, take and use virtual items, interact with virtual characters and solve real-world puzzles.
As a player enters and exits a zone using a GPS-enabled device, the players experience what the author intended for them, including viewing media, receiving directions or tasks and hearing sounds on the device. For instance, when a player walks into a zone, a player could "talk' to a virtual character, "pull" a virtual switch or "give" a virtual item to a character. As the player continues to move from zone to zone, an author's fictional story, tour or adventure game can be experienced using Wherigo.
How and when did you come up with the idea?
Wherigo was conceived during the early days of Geocaching.com as an alternative experience to finding geocaches in the woods. Groundspeak's founders had a rich experience in adventure games and these experiences greatly influenced the evolution of Wherigo.
It took a lot of work to determine the best interface to create a broad set of experiences - from tour guides to games. It also took some time for the GPS market to mature enough to have media rich devices that would work well with the concepts around location. High sensitivity GPS units like the Garmin Colorado make for a much richer experience than earlier devices.
Creating Real-World Adventures
Groundspeak's goal is to reintroduce the adventure game genre through the use of our Wherigo applications so that individuals will be able to create and play location-based adventures in the real world. Using the Wherigo tools, locations will become the background for engaging story lines that authors will use to construct their own location-specific entertainment, from simple points of interest tour guides to interactive games.
From a Geocacher's Perspective...
The evolution of geocaching inspired early pioneers to develop "puzzle caches," or geocaching experiences that contained puzzles to locate the final container. Sometimes using math, often using multiple containers and even combination locks to immerse the geocacher into a new experience.
Place has been an important factor in each unique geocaching experience. Adding objects, characters and tasks through the Wherigo toolset now gives geocachers a broader palette to build more engaging puzzles.
It's also a good excuse to buy a new tech gadget.
More than Just a Game...
Location-based cartridges are not just for those who love adventure games. The toolset is designed to be open-ended so cartridge builders can create any number of interesting experiences for a player. Here are a few general examples:
- Walking tour of city sights.
- Neighborhood scavenger hunt.
- Innovative marketing proposal.
- Pub crawl for your friends.
- Interactive fictional adventure.
- Alternate reality game.
...and a few specific ones:
- A Civil War history cartridge with rich media history. Players can travel throughout the park and reference points of interest defined by the cartridge builder.
- A garden tour that guides the player along a predefined path, pointing out the different flora and landscape architecture.
- A college campus new student orientation cartridge that contains necessary stops to register with the college, and other points of interest around the campus.
The ideas for content are endless.
Where to Begin
WikiHow: "How to Go Geocaching"
Camp/Hike Expert Advice "Geocaching- Get in the Game!"
A Geocaching Primer
The Online Magazine for Geocachers Everywhere
Geocache- A Documentary by David Liban
Geocaching Vacations
Geocaching Tourism
Cottage Link - Geocaching Weekends
Summer Vacation Idea: Ohio - Geocaching & Great Outdoors
"Geocaching - A New Sport for Families" by Kimberly L. Keith
Black's Cliff Resort in Hazelhurst, Wisconsin
Geocaching Terminology
The Lexicon of Geocaching
Geocaching Glossary
Geocaching Organizations
Geocachers of Northeastern Illinois
Ontario Geocaching Association
Geocaching Associations in the Midwest
Northern Michigan Geocachers
Related Articles
"Geocaching growing in popularity" by Meg Vanek
"For treasure hunting, all kids need nowadays is GPS" by Colin Mc Donald
"Fun in the Geek Outdoors" by Andrew Engelson
"High Tech Hide and Seek" by Alan McDonald
Purchasing a GPS
"What to Know When Buying a GPS" by Chuck Fitzgerald
Garmin
DeLorme - Mapping, GPS, and GIS Technologies
GPS Visualizer: Do-It-Yourself Mapping
GPS Terminology
Events
Geocaching Woodstock May 24,2008
Midwest Geobash August 7-10, 2008
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