Cyberpunk Street Games

September 24, 2006 6:51 PM

"The streets of 2030's New York remain the only venues not under the thumb of the monolithic corporations. Manhattan’s three major hacker gangs have developed black-market technology that enables them to jack into the phone network though the payphone nodes, and redirect the payment deposited into that phone into their own coffers." The premise of a new cyberpunk novel? Nope. A new street game you can play with your friends.
posted by maniactown (16 comments total)

There's payphones in 2030?
posted by stammer at 6:57 PM on September 24, 2006

"The draconic dismemberment of cellular service providers, and the outlawing of private satellite services, revived the landline phone network, making it a rich resource to plunder." Of course!

The cnet story mentions that this game was played this weekend in NYC as part of the Come Out and Play Festival (previously discussed here).
posted by maniactown at 7:00 PM on September 24, 2006

lol payphones.
posted by keswick at 7:02 PM on September 24, 2006

Ha, that's pretty neat, although from the description I can't quite predict if actually playing this this would be fun or extremely boring.
posted by stammer at 7:06 PM on September 24, 2006

Payphones jumped the shark in that movie Phone Booth.

In the future, there will be phone booth-esque kiosks on the streets that have internet connections. You'll be able to surf the net or check email for a nominal fee, or plug in a USB dongle and make VoIP calls. You heard it here first.
posted by danb at 8:11 PM on September 24, 2006

Won't large parts of New York be underwater by 2030 anyway?
posted by clevershark at 8:14 PM on September 24, 2006

This has to be the most brilliant piece of viral marketing the telcos have come up with yet. ka-ching!
posted by DesbaratsDays at 8:21 PM on September 24, 2006

You hooked it up to the phone again didn't you?
posted by Demogorgon at 9:20 PM on September 24, 2006

In the future, there will be phone booth-esque kiosks on the streets that have internet connections. You'll be able to surf the net or check email for a nominal fee, or plug in a USB dongle and make VoIP calls. You heard it here first.

I thought I read that in Snow Crash?
posted by carsonb at 10:22 PM on September 24, 2006

In the future, there will be phone booth-esque kiosks on the streets that have internet connections. You'll be able to surf the net or check email for a nominal fee, or plug in a USB dongle and make VoIP calls. You heard it here first.

Um, don't we already have these? It's late and my sarcasm-sensor is low, but I know when I visited Ireland that phone-booth internet kiosks were ubiquitous (and very helpful!).
posted by Zephyrial at 10:40 PM on September 24, 2006

It looks fun, but I see two problems:

1. Playing the game involves spending money.
2. You need to set up some kind of central Asterisk-based point-tallying phone number for all the teams to call.

Finally, this line is ambiguous:

However, the guarding gangers can be chased away by a larger group of rivals.

Is this one of those friendly 'in-game' chasing aways, where it just automatically happens if you turn up with more people, or do you actually have to beat each other up? 'Cause if it's the latter, now that's a game.
posted by chrismear at 11:00 PM on September 24, 2006

There's payphones in 2030?

Yeah, no shit. I just went a week without a cellphone, and I'm here to tell you there aren't payphones in 2006.
posted by Ian A.T. at 12:44 AM on September 25, 2006

You idiots - those are prototype suicide booths!
posted by Smart Dalek at 3:52 AM on September 25, 2006

Just when pay phones were set to vanish from the streets, someone comes up with a game that makes them pay for themselves.

What happens when someone who just wants to call home comes upon some dork guarding a phone for the sake of a game?
posted by pracowity at 5:25 AM on September 25, 2006

somebody set us up the phone!
posted by snofoam at 5:41 AM on September 25, 2006

I thought I read that in Snow Crash?

I thought the net was all wireless in Snow Crash, except for the terminals that made you into a black and white person, which is to say poor.
posted by illovich at 12:39 PM on September 25, 2006