(credit: PG/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images)
Way back in the autumn of 2004, I may have invented the world's first GPS-based augmented reality game. In light of the stratospheric success of Pokémon Go, I'm wondering whether I should have perhaps attempted to patent my invention.
My game was called Augmented Reality Multi-User Dungeon, or ARMUD for short, and it was the topic of my university thesis. The idea seemed quite simple to me: I started with a text-based MUD, and then layered a real-world positional element on top of it. As you walked around the university campus you would move through the MUD's zones. In the real world you might be standing in the student union bar; in the game, reading the zone's description on your mobile device, you were actually inside an uproarious tavern full of stereotypically angry dwarves, behooded humans, and trixy hobbits.
If you bumped into another player, you could trade or fight or talk, or send in-game whispers if you didn't want to talk to the person in real life.
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