GO: Offline

Explore urban space and scan barcodes on bikes with blue front tires to collect as many critters as you can!

GO: Offline is a game by Dutch playful media artist Leon van Oldenborgh.

It is a completely offline critical response to common practices employed in the location based AR games market, especially the gathering of player geo-location data, and artificially incentivising players to visit paying physical locations.

It challenges the usual server-side calculated placement of collectible agents by appropriating the barcode system that is used by the Dutch lease bike company Swapfiets to identify their bike frames. In this way the main gameplay element of exploring an urban environment with friends stays intact, while also foregoing the need to collect any geo-location data whatsoever.

By making the explicit game design decision to use the swapfiets distribution, this game also gives up any control over the placement of the collectibles, instead relying on the organic movement of these bikes. This approach results in a designed incentive to visit places like big bike garages, a place where you normally wouldn’t really hang out.

GO: Offline is built to create awareness that companies in the location based AR game space are profiting off of both user geo-location data and artificially incentivising players to visit paying locations. It hopes to contribute to the development of new and more ethical gaming practices.

This project was co-produced by Leon van Oldenborgh and V2_ Lab for the Unstable Media as part of the Realities in Transition residencies.

The game is currently only playable in areas where Swapfiets is active. The countries include:
- Austria
- Belgium
- Denmark
- France
- Germany
- Italy
- The Netherlands
- Spain
- United Kingdom

Check https://swapfiets.com/ for more accurate information.