Street View Narrative/Game

After using and thinking a lot about the "Street View" feature on Google Maps, we've come to the conclusion that it's a uniquely compelling feature - not just in its scope, but also in its interface and functionality. Clicking through Street View, we get a series of images that retain the authority of the map - the linking of image and location lends the photos an instant veracity.

Sites like Street View Fun and any number of "Top x Street View Sightings" blog posts show that images that wouldn't be even vaguely interesting if discovered as a random assortment of jpegs on Image Search take on a new, thrilling life when they're tied into Google Maps.

Additionally, the interface is also structured in a kind of narrative - it resembles nothing to much as the game "Myst" (The Washington Post agrees.

We want to replace certain Street View images with ones of our own making, and embed a kind of narrative into the interface - playing with the assumptions that images are glimpses of an un-retouched reality. Additionally, we might insert element of 'alternate reality gaming' - making interventions in the real world, and having these reflected on our Street View hack.

The only other project we can find that seems to do something like what we're proposing, is StreetViewGame. While an interesting concept, this quickly becomes boring, and we've been thinking about why this doesn't work.

Firstly, the connection between the images and the narrative is weak, with only a couple of lines of text above and below the geo-photo to convince you that you're in some kind of altered narrative space, and not just browsing random areas. There also needs to be some tension between freedom and constraint - I think the game gets boring quickly because after you've walked a couple blocks in a random direction, you know you're not going to find anything new - if you came across a boundary or an obstacle, you'd have some cues/clues about how to proceed. Additionally, all the shortcuts are right next to you from the get-go, so there's no real sense of intrigue or unexpectedness.

Our audience right now is the stationary screen gazer, but if we decided to develop this into a full ARG/'big game' experience, perhaps players could be alerted when they were near something in the real world that would give them clues or information about how to proceed in the narrative world. If this was the case, we'd probably go with an opt-in GPS or Loki service.

Elevator pitch:

Street View Stories.