Asphalt Games

I found the quote, "The guarantee that we will not die of starvation has been purchased with the guarantee that we will die of boredom," this is interesting to me especially with all of the discussions we have been having in class about the expanding technology and the rate at which we consume this new technology keeps growing and we want the newer better thing faster and faster. Asphalt Games is a location based game in which players vie for territory on an online map of New York City. This game was designed to encourage ordinary New Yorkers to share responses to a public sphere, they wanted a connection to the physical and online world by attaching the game to actual physical public locations. These games have developed into many different hybrids. With the ability to link locations to digital devices allows people to use the physical location in their game or event. They use the example of Flash Mobs, with out the internet the location of the mob would be harder to plan and the spread of the location would take longer. These Flash Mobs depend on a critical mass of people to be successful games, I mean can you imagine seeing a Flash Mob of five people? It really wouldn't have the impact that a Flash Mob of two hundred people would have, plus it would just be more fun, leading back to the game aspect of these asphalt games. As games like these develop many different location based games or social media have sprung, the Facebook check in, when people tweet the location they are at, people are finding different ways to play location games and also share their location with their friends.

Question: Do you think this game was helping bring back playing outside or do you think it was adding to the online use of games?