Hitchers

Description

In Hitchers, the streets are full of people who are trying to hitchhike their way across the city or up and down the country. Hitchers are trying to find their way home, reach a specific destination, carry out a mission, or just share a journey with a stranger.

Players can:

- Summon hitchers, giving them tasks or missions. Examples of missions might be: find your way home; find your way to a given place and deliver a message; or find your way to a given place, take a photo and send it to me. Hitchers might also be programmed with questions to ask the players who pick them up, and might even ask them to take photos or record video on their behalf so that hitchers acquire memories as they travel.

- Pick up hitchers. Players are notified about nearby hitchers and get the opportunity to pick them up as they pass by. Hitchers might be found at well known hitching-points, where they were last dropped, or may even jump from phone to phone as people pass each other.

Phone retrieves a list of nearby hitchers		Hitcher asks a question

- Interact with hitchers. Players can carry hitchers with them for a while and interact with them as they go, answering questions, taking photos and maybe even modifying them, for example giving them new questions to ask subsequent players.

- Release hitchers again. Players can release hitchers at a new location, leaving them to wait for the next player to come along. However, the hitcher leaves them with a memory – its card – when it goes.

- Follow their progress and share their memories. A central web site tracks the progress of all hitchers. All players can get some background information about hitchers who are out there – their names, goals, personalities and importantly, how long they have been hitching and where they have been. Beyond this, a player who has obtained a hitcher’s card; ie. has spent some time with it – can access more information, learning about who it has met and tapping into its memories of conversations, photos and video clips. A player might even be alerted when they are near other players with whom they have shared a hitcher or hitchers might send them text messages informing them about their progress.

Hitchers might simply provide a moment of distraction during a journey. However, a more complex experience could be layered on top of the basic Hitchers framework.