Love City is a new text game, created by Nottingham based company Active Ingredient, which will be shortly spreading the love, via text message, in Nottingham. Creators Rachel Jacobs and Matt Watkins from Active Ingredient tell us what it's all about. Love by text "The incentive to play the game is to send and receive love messages from anonymous people. "You will never know their identity but they might be in your town, in your region or even standing next to you. How to play the game "The game merges Nottingham, Leicester and Derby together to create a virtual city, the Love City. "It doesn't use normal SMS text messages but uses a game interface and you never have access to the other person's phone number. "It relies on where you are when you send your text message, this is located in the mobile cell you send the text from (that we are currently mapping). Each mobile cell in each city corresponds to a virtual area in the Love City. "You send a message from your phone to another player who is in the same area as you in the virtual Love City.
 | | Love City on your phone |
"The player who receives the message has the option to accept or decline, if they accept then you score a point, if they decline then you don't. "People can see all the messages sent and accepted on the Love City website, from here they can vote on their favourites, which will add to player's scores. "Players will be able to view their up-to-date scores on the website and on their mobile phone. "The messages will be filtered for offensive words but the players decline any messages they deem offensive, unseductive or not appropriate, they can also decline messages as part of their game strategy (e.g. if they know that player already has a high score). The winners "The person with the highest score at the end of the two months will win the game, players also register via one of the three cities and so the city with the highest overall score will also win. "We hope it can bring together a feeling of connection between the people who live in the three cities of Nottingham, Leicester and Derby and give people a sense of community. Inspirations "We have been working on interactive artworks and mobile gaming for the last 10 years, we wanted to create a game that people could play as they got on with their everyday activities using technology most people use every day. "We are interested in how people are connected together through where they live, the technology they use and how they communicate. "The brief for the project was Create and Connect so we felt that a game that asked people to create love messages to connect to each other fitted nicely. "We also like the idea of different types of seduction and love, how can two strangers fall in love? It is a universal story… Target audience "We hope that a wide age range and a diversity of people living in the three cities will take part. "Anyone with a mobile phone or access to the Internet can play. "I am sure teenagers and regular 'texters' will be most interested but I also know that people of all ages fit into the regular 'texters' bracket, I certainly often have text conversations with my parents who are in their 60s. "During April we toured Nottingham, Leicester and Derby encouraging people to take part in the development of the game.
 | | Love City poster |
"We have already had 40 people sign up to receive updates and help with testing, which will be happening from September this year. "We also had volunteers from the three cities going out in their cars and mapping the mobile cell areas in each of the three cities, which will be merged to create the different areas of the virtual Love City. "We are hoping that there will be enough participation that when you are standing in a mobile cell in the city centre of your town there will be at least four other players to play with in the corresponding area in Love City. "We will be marketing it in the run up to the launch on Valentines Day 2007 and have a film promo that will be shown at the beginning of next year in all the art cinemas in each city (Broadway, Phoenix and Metro). Uniting cities "This is at the heart of the project, the idea that you are part of a community, that can be as small as your friends or family or as large as your city, or region. "The idea that you can make a bond with anyone without knowing what background they are from, where they live, which gender or what they look like… University links The project has been working in unison with various Universities in the area, and their role has been hugely important. "They support the project through regular meetings, making contact with students to help with the development of the game and providing resources. "Other partners include Broadway, Phoenix and Metro the arts/media venues in each city who provide audiences, and a space to present the project. "We are also working very closely with the Mixed Reality Lab, Nottingham University on the development and technologies within the game. "We first started work with them on our previous mobile game, 'Ere Be Dragons last year, they are some of the top people working on pervasive media in the world. "It is very exciting to have this department in Nottingham and also as artists to be able to work with them. The next big thing? "Already mobile gaming is one of the fastest area of growth for female gamers (alongside web based gaming). "I think this is important as traditionally it is young men who play computer games and have been attracted to this type of technology. "The technology is still quite slow to catch up with the potential but I think in the next five years there will be more and more communication based and creative gaming happening on mobile phones." | 
