 What are the biggest challenges if you want to create a location-based story or a game? Actually, there are a lot of problems doing location-based games. I mean, one of the problems is that you have to decide if you want your story just to be site-specific. That means you can tell it only at one place, which means that you can make the story better because you incorporate the environment in a much deeper level than if you make a location-based game that can be played almost everywhere, which is also possible. So you have this whole continuum of things, but it might mean that your story can only be played in this place, in this park, in Berlin and nowhere else. So you won't have this huge number of players, of course. So what's so special about this place? Okay, we are here at the Miringplatz, which is an almost perfect circle. So it has a circular structure. And in the game, there is some quite secret structure below the ground. Okay, but only in the game. So it's a fictional place. There's something fictional below the ground. There's something real below the ground, which is the underground station where it just came from. And but in the game, you will find that you are interacting with something which is down there and which forces you to move in a different way. So in the first part of the game, where we saw, we were just walking and talking to some of the characters. And in this part of the game, it will get a bit more physical. But the principle is to put fictional content into a non-fictional environment. There are other things to consider. You have the weather condition. If it's raining, people don't go outside and play so much. If you have, if the game is too long, people get tired, as I already mentioned. The environment is changing. So if you incorporate the environment in your game, it might happen that your game breaks because something changes. I give you an example for I made a location this game called Tidy City. And I put one item into the game, which is fountain, which I thought was a very stable thing in the city. So fountains normally don't change, right? And half a year later, when I came to the place again, they had totally moved the fountain because there was a big construction site. So I had to change the game. So these kind of things like environmental relationship to your game is a big challenge in doing these kinds of games. Nothing is really permanent in your level, which is kind of interesting, I think, because you never have 100% control over your levels, over your level design. Your level is the city, your level is the environment. And the environment is constantly changing. And you have to deal with that in the game design. I wanted to make the game in an interesting part of the city. I didn't want to make the game in the most touristy part of the city. And the composite tour was for me a place that has a lot of energy and a lot of interesting past and present going on. And then I was looking at some structures that would be interesting for the game and for the for the protagonist. Like for example, in the Oranienstraße, you have a lot of restaurants and you have a lot of shops. So that would be because Lisa is shopping and Paul is eating at restaurants all the time. So this gives a connection between the environment and the story. It became the story that it is now after looking at the places. The other way around is totally possible, too. If you have an existing story, you could think about which place do I want this story to locate. And then you look at the places and then you try to find these correspondence of your story with the locations. Backyards are a problem. First, because of the GPS reception, it can be very bad because when it's surrounded by high buildings, of course. And the second thing is that backyards can be closed. And on the second test, we found out it was locked and we couldn't get to the location. In this case, you can do two things. One thing is you make the point optional. So you don't have to get this information or you don't put the most important information into this point. So it's like an extra bonus track or something like that. And the other thing which we did is we moved the point right to the gate. So the location is now at the gate. So if you're outside and the gate is closed, you can still get the part of the story. But if it's open, you can walk inside. And it's like the backyard atmosphere. It's more like what is told in the story. It's more interesting in the backyard. So it's kind of optional. Another major issue is the device that is necessary in most cases. For example, a GPS-ready tablet or a smartphone. Secret City, for example, is available on both Android and iOS through app stores. Other location-based stories or games might be restricted to only one system or to special devices. This automatically decreases the amount of possible experiences to those who have access to the devices. So keep that in mind. The classic adventure genre is used as a structure and rule-giving foundation for this location-based game. This is an important point when designing a location-based or absolutely any new media experience. Keep it simple. Keep the world easily accessible. If your way of telling the story is new and exciting, for example because you are using new technologies like Google Class, keep the story simple at first. You can compare the experience to you as a total stranger in a foreign town or universe. If you know the language and some of the rules, you might be able to adjust to others that you don't know. If you don't get the rules, if you don't get the language, then it will be really really difficult to feel at home in this new experience that might also be a game, for example. This is not to say copy and paste whenever you create. Please don't. Be creative with any rules, even break and bend them if you dare. But keep in mind that anybody you create a story or an experience for will need to understand your set of rules to follow this story. Make sure your audience understands you know what you are doing, otherwise you will not have any audience anymore. If you, however, want to tell a very complex story that uses completely new ideas of time and space, as for example Christopher Nolan did with his 2010 movie Inception, look at how he worked around this. Not only did he use film, a classic mainstream lean back medium, in the film he also explains his fictional world set of rules very clearly. He does so by even creating a whole character whose job basically is to make you understand, as was shown very well in a video linked below in our list. On the other hand, Nolan mixes these new creative ideas with story arcs and archetypes. We know, we already know, offering, for example, an epic love story between a man and a woman, a rather classic student-teacher relationship and several thrilling action movie elements like a car chase, for example. In other words, if you want to tell a really crazy story with really crazy ideas, that's totally fine. But then think about making the way to access the story, the technology, for example, to be used, as simple as possible maybe. On the other hand, if you want to use crazy technology, new technology, that's also fine. But then think about a story that is not too complicated to make it possible for any audience to get into this story, to understand the set of rules you are creating. Okay, in some sense, Chris, I think the future of storytelling is now. So we already have it. We just have to take the opportunities that are given to us by all this kind of stuff, all these interesting possibilities that we have to build new kinds of stories and do it. So we should get to work. And on the other hand, what I feel is hindering us is that we still need better tools to do it. I mean, many people are still using normal text writing software to write interactive fiction, which is wrong. I mean, we need better tools. And we should just start with our stories and produce them and let people interact with them and get further. Creative task of the week. You heard, Michael. Just start working on your own stories. For now, Word or anything other like writing software will have to do. Your creative task for this week is to watch your surroundings closely and pick three to five locations and possibly their GPS data that you know very well in a two kilometer or two mile radius and use them to tell a simple yet round story that other people will only get to listen or read if they follow your hints to get to those locations. Your task includes please create a story, which at least has one fictional character, a beginning and an end somewhere and use these locations to tell the story. So have fun and send in your concepts. I'm very much looking forward to your ideas. And now we're at the end of our journey here at Halle's Store. And I hope you liked our little presentation of Secret City, which is a location based game with augmented reality. I hope you enjoyed the tour and see you later.