Case I Insectopia Johan Peitz You suddenly realize that you are starting to recognize the people around you. There is that woman who always takes the same bus as you on Tuesdays; she's the one that walks down the slippery slope instead of taking the stairs. And later you bump into that guy from the office below; you know all about where he likes to have lunch but have no idea what his name is. No matter. It is only important whether they brought their insects, as you need to see them again. If you don't, your collection is likely to shrink and you'll maybe have to start searching again for other valuable collectibles. Maintaining your entire bug collection is not easy, even though you have spent quite some time finding out what kind of insects are associated with your colleagues, neighbors, and bus companions. Today something is different; searching through the bus you find a Divine Swallowtail, one of the most precious insects of all! Who might it belong to? Is the owner that smart-looking busi- nessman with the ridiculous tie, that woman in the green coat and mittens talking loudly with her friend, or perhaps that suspicious-looking kid in the back? In the days to come you will simply have to find out. Bluetooth devices are everywhere in the contemporary urban environment. They are in mobile phones, photo booths, printers, and photocopying machines. Insectopia 1 is a simple casual mobile phone game that exploits this property of our environment: Every device with an active Bluetooth connection carries a bug or a butterfly, which can be discovered by the player. The unique identification of each Bluetooth chip is translated by the game into an insect. Thus, every Bluetooth beacon is a potential resource, whether it is another player or not. A random person on the street could be carrying a valuable insect inside her cellular phone. The player of Insectopia looks for Bluetooth-rich environments and then enables the insect search on her phone (see Figure I.1 ). She finds out what invertebrates there are in the vicinity and chooses which one to add to her collection. Only one insect can be added at a time, and the player has to wait for a few minutes before another search can be conducted. By collect- ing rare and valuable bugs, the player increases the worth and size of her collection, even- tually competing against other players on high score lists. Insectopia is a global, open-ended game that can be joined at any point by players all over the world. Because of its environ- mentally generated content, the game is playable wherever the players go. A player who has explored her neighborhood can always make excursions in order to search for new insects to add to her collection: A player living in a sleepy suburb can visit the local mall, while a hard- core player could maximize her chances by hanging around business centers and airports. 175