e370 – Driving with the Queen | Games At Work dot Biz

London streetscape with taxi and double-decker bus — Photo by Sabrina Mazzeo on Unsplash

Driving with the Queen: stories about maps – custom @Waze voices, @geoguessr & an open source generator, LARPs (#StarWars & more), #metaverse PvP, #WWDC22 and @DiabloImmortal

Michael and Michael start their engines (and navigation software) with a story about how Waze is celebrating the Queen’s platinum jubilee with a special Waze Voice. While reportedly only available to users in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, it appears also in the options for US users as well! Of course, no story about driving with the Queen would be complete without the Wayne’s World clip of driving with Queen. Party on, Garth!

Next up, an article on the best icebreaker games for groups highlights some great ways to generate engagements with large virtual groups. One of the games is called Geoguessr that teleports you to a place on earth and has you discover where you are. Staying on the map theme (with Waze and Geoguessr), the next link is a free and open source tool that allows you to create your own fantasy map, or configure a map with specific names, like adjacent technologies.

An article from the New Yorker discusses LARPs – live-action role-play games, starting off with the Disney Star Wars experience in Orlando on the Galactic Starcrusier. While this example of a LARP has garnered a great deal of attention in the past couple of years, due to the Star Wars theme, as well as the cost, LARPs are not new, and the article gives several examples. A key takeaway is the value that people are placing on experiences versus things, and as entertainment, LARPs are extraordinarily immersive experiences that allow those being entertained to lose themselves in the story.

Then Michael and Michael turn to an article from The Next Web where they explore rights in virtual worlds, specifically what legal actions could be imposed based on interactions between people in the metaverse. PvP and PvE games are debated, as are geographic and country level laws. While the co-hosts did not address the similarities and differences between interactions between people in a LARP and people’s avatars in a virtual reality space, this could be an interesting discussion to explore.

WWDC looms large – it’s next week – and there are a couple of articles in the show notes below about what people are hoping to get from the upcoming conference. Michael and Michael wrap up with the excitement about the Diablo Immortal game being live (for some!) on iOS.

Have you played in a LARP? Do you have concerns about digitized harm? Are you starting up a Diablo game? Drop us a line at @gamesatwork_biz and let us know!