Scotty Hoag
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PokerWalk Logo
Berkeley Center for New Media
February 2011 - Social App Lab @ CITRIS - for Android

In this GPS-based multiplayer game for Android phones, players race each other around their neighborhood in search of virtual poker cards. The player with the best hand when time is up is the winner.

GPS is used to locate players and distribute cards. A dedicated server coordinates all of the interaction between players and deals out the cards to the players using PHP scripts and a MySQL database. Game logs are used for city planning research to observe how players travel through urban areas.

I wrote this game for a new division of the Berkeley Center for New Media originally called the Mobile Game Research Lab, now known as the Social App Lab @ Citris. Funding was provided by the Doreen B. Townsend Center for the Humanities as part of their G.R.O.U.P. Summer Apprenticeship program of which I was awarded a position for the Summer of 2010. It is the first mobile game that I have publicly released, so feedback is greatly appreciated. 		   


Gameplay Screenshot

Gameplay screenshot. When players are close enough to a card, they can add that card to their hand.

GPS Research Data. Click for larger view.

GPS "Breadcrumbs" are collected from each game and can be used to reconstruct the paths taken by all of the players and displayed using Google Maps scripts.


 


Above Left: My research professors Greg Niemeyer (Art Practice) and James Holston (Anthropology) testing my PokerWalk prototype on Market Street in San Francisco.

Above Right: Me presenting PokerWalk and my STARMAC drone research at the UC Berkeley Undergraduate Research Poster Session. I'm wearing multiple badges because I was the only student on the campus to present more than one research project at the event.