practicum #2-Molly Bennett

Since yesterday it was beautiful outside I decided to go on my first quest with Aris. I chose to start out with the UW- Campus Tour quest. I didn't have a lot of time and figured this would only take about an hour. So as you can see in the picture I had to start my quest at the entrance of Memorial Union. So when I got there I was waiting for the game to begin. I tried pressing different buttons on my phone seeing if the game would start as well as pace back and forth in front of the Memorial Union Steps. Finally my phone vibrated and Aris told me the game would begin. I could either watch a video or read the text which would inform me of my next destination. I tried listening to the video but realized that it would not play aloud you need to have your headphones to actually listen to it. So for the time being I just read the transcript of what was on the video. The language was a bit strange and had some words like "lorries" and "berk". So I went to my next location which was the Red Gym which they had hinted at. They told me to follow the GPS on the map and there was a little note symbol by the Red Gym. When I got in front of the Red Gym I had the same issue that I had to walk all over to get the exact location of where the game wanted me to be. This as I went on I found to be a tad frustrating like when I got to the Library Mall Fountain I had to circle it several times before I was given my next clue. Each location that I essentially went to would provide me with some history. I learned that climbing Bascom for four years is like scaling Mt. Everest. The first issue I encountered with this game is the accuracy of the GPS, I almost felt like a freshman who was lost on campus trying to pace back and forth until the game gave me the next clue. Another issue I had is the game eats up your battery pretty fast due to the GPS tracker so next time I know to fully charge my phone before going on the quests. The last problem I encountered was you need to have full internet service for the game to work. As I continued on my quest my 3g connection became weaker and a message saying "network warning--your internet connection is slow or unreliable" which is something I couldn't help and the game kind of stopped working. So a suggestion I would have for the developers is to make sure there is service by the places they would like you to explore. I tried to walk to the top of Bascom and my GPS still wasn't working because the internet connection was not strong enough. So I decided to end my quest early and will complete it using their simulation cheat codes. So we shall see how that goes!