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So the object of the â€˜gameâ€™ is to find and record as many Dan Smith posters as possible. The player will take a picture using their cameraphone, and then send it via MMS or email to email@example.com, including the location of the poster. They will then receive a response indicating:

The user can also send a text message with the word â€œstatsâ€ to find out their ranking, based on the number of posters theyâ€™ve discovered, including total number of posters theyâ€™ve tracked.

Another option the player might try is to send the word â€œchallengeâ€ — they will be MMSâ€™ed a message back that will challenge them to find the same poster location. If they find the same poster location and send back a photo with the correct address, they will get bonus points to increase their ranking. The challenge will remain active until they text a message â€œI give upâ€.
Users will then be able to visit a website from their computer (or mobile browser) to see the complete collection (or just their own) of Dan Smith poster sightings plotted on a Google Map.

Ultimately this is more of a collaborative art project than a game, because Dan Smith will keep putting up new posters in new locations — the goal is to collect as many as you can, sharing with other New Yorkers the secret community built around your awareness of the city you travel in.


The query language is quite simple:
send a message to firstname.lastname@example.org


Users will enter their location using a street address and location; we will then scrape either a Google or Yahoo map query for the geocode and store it in the database. Since the game will be Manhattan focused, we will default to Manhattan searches (see GarbageScoutâ€™s implementation).
We will store the geocode in the database to allow for later mapping on the accompanying website.


click to enlarge: PixTrak: Dan Smith Tracker pdf
