Stage Two's blog

So the secret is finally out. The hours of playing Call of Duty have finally paid off. Today, Stage Two Labs is absolutely jazzed about the release of the world’s first augmented reality first person shooter for the iPhone – aptly titled “Gunman”.

We’ve been playing for hours around the office, hiding under desks and popping around corners – basically acting like kids again. Gunman combines all the fun of real-world games like paintball and lasertag, without requiring people to carry around any special equipment other than their iPhone.

The result is a laser-tag style game that takes the fast-paced multiplayer action of popular online and console titles and brings the war into the real world by allowing players to target their friends and see who *really* has the most skills.  Once a target is hit, players can save or Tweet “scoped” pictures of their favorite hits to the world – making the target’s shame eternal and proving their dominance as a Gunman. In addition to the local multiplayer version, players can “go Pro” in a solo mode by collecting bounties on celebrities appearing on the Gunman “Hit List”, and even track their prey via location-based service Foursquare (Ashton Kutcher, MC Hammer, Shaq, and 50 Cent should watch their backs). Of course, this is only the beginning, Gunman will receive regular updates such as team-based tactical missions (like capture the flag mode), an arsenal of new weapons, an international leaderboard, and more.

The game uses a variety of high technology services to create a fun and engaging experience for the players.  Some key components include:

• Gameplay involves “augmented reality” by adding layered services on the iPhone’s camera
• Detecting “hits” is done through a proprietary new color detection system.
• Local multiplayer gaming includes automatic peer discovery of other players.
• Sharing one’s accomplished shots incorporates the popular Twitter and Twitpic services
• Finding targets on the leaderboard is integrated with Foursquare for location lookup

Download the game here

Check out the Gunman website here

• Engadget says Gunman “finally makes augmented reality awesome”

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.