How Fast Are You?

Wired 17.09 contains an article about MagiQuest, a LARP-like product that can be installed in a physical facility like a hotel.

Invented by Creative Kingdoms, a company that designs theme-park attractions, the game is built around infrared sensors embedded in the wands. “It’s like having a joystick that controls a 20,000-square-foot facility,” cofounder Denise Watson says. After paying $14.99 for a wand (plus more to soup it up with fantasy bling) and a $10-per-hour activation fee, players begin a scavenger hunt for Tolkienesque paintings, sculptures, and installations scattered throughout the hotel. Video kiosks of wizards and maidens dispense clues and track your progress by picking up your unique IR signature. Guides in Elizabethan garb roam the grounds dispensing advice. Victories and discoveries trigger up to 150 visual and audio effects, and frantic kids drag weary parents to and fro until they catch them all.

The franchise has 15 installations in the US and two in Japan. I can only echo Pat Cadigan’s sentiment: “If they’d had this when I was a kid, I’d have *killed* to do it.”

Read the whole article at Wired.

Via Cadigan.

Here’s a commercial for MagiQuest, which is strongly (and, one supposes, intentionally) reminiscent of a Saturday morning toy commercial: