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NEWS : STORIES
As a child, Adrian David Cheok played his fair share of "Pac-Man," steering the hungry yellow sphere through mazes, vicariously eating dots and gobbling ghosts. But only recently has he been able to see the world through Pac-Man's eyes.
Conceived more than two years ago, and refined several times since by Mixed Reality Lab, the game will be on display in Chicago at this weekend's Wired NextFest, an annual festival focused on the futuristic. It will go on display alongside other experimental games such as "Kick Ass Kung Fu," a game that puts players inside a martial arts video game environment, and "Brainball," which straps players to a monitor that rewards whichever player is less stressed. "Human Pacman" isn't a game for couch potatoes. Players strap on computers as they take on the roles of Pac-Man or a ghost, playing out the classic arcade game by racing through the real world. Ghost players chase virtual-dot-collecting Pac-players, trying to tag sensors that disable their prey. But, as in the original game, the Pac-Man players can turn the tables by collecting super-pellets — realized in "Human Pacman" as digitally tagged real-world objects. "It was just one of those sparks you have," Cheok said from Singapore while pulling an all-nighter before the long flight to Chicago. "There's very little social interaction with present computer games, and even less physical interaction. And you often have parents saying to their children, 'Go outside and play in the sunshine.' " "Human Pacman" is Cheok's attempt to address those concerns. The game also has its roots in the military. A little over five years ago, Cheok received a grant from Singapore's defense department to develop technology to help train troops. He and his fellow researchers set to work on wearable computers and goggles that soldiers could use to see virtual objects overlaid onto the real world. That same technology would help fuel the more playful "Human Pacman." According to his corporate parents at Namco, Pac-Man turns 25 this month, an age that has helped make the character an easy fit for an increasing number of unconventional video game experiments. "I decided to choose 'Pac-Man' as a first example, because 'Pac-Man' is fun and nonviolent, equally attractive to young people and old people like me," Cheok said. That easy familiarity also helped inspired last year's "PacManhattan," according to Frank Lantz, creative director at the game design company area/code. Last year, Lantz's students in his interactive technology class at NYU created "PacManhattan," a real-world game that sent cell-phone-armed players racing through the grid of New York's Washington Square Park. The past two years have produced other Pac-experiments, including Nintendo's "Pac-Man Vs," an experimental multiplayer version of the classic game that is played simultaneously on a TV and a Game Boy, and "Pac-Mondrian," which combines the game with Piet Mondrian's modernist painting "Broadway Boogie Woogie." None of the experimental games were conceived with the help of Namco. At Cheok's Singapore lab, the focus on Pac-Man is likely at its end. His team is developing a wide array of projects, including a high-tech jacket for pet chickens that allows a distant owner to "touch" it through the Internet. Cheok wants to weave the material into children's pajamas so that traveling parents can hug their kids from afar. They've also worked to create a real-life version of one of Cheok's favorite scenes from "Star Wars," when Princess Leia appears as a hologram, asking Obi-Wan Kenobi for help. Cheok's version uses nine cameras to make a 3-D image of a person visible to users wearing "Human-Pacman"-style goggles. A version of this will also be on display at NextFest. Called "Magic Land," it allows people to move real-life cups containing shrunken, recorded 3-D images of themselves, across a projected fantasy landscape that can only be seen while wearing the goggles. Think of a high-tech version of playing with dolls. Excited about these and other projects, Cheok said he's reached the end of the road with "Human Pacman" but is open to others coming along and making it a commercial product. However, considering it costs $7,000 for the hardware required for two people to play, you might say the game stands a ghost of a chance. To see videos and images of "Human Pacman," visit the Mixed Reality Lab. This report is provided by MTV News
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