ephemerology - n. - the study of the unreal

So, this weekend I went to MagiQuest, a chain that bills itself as the ‘largest live action role-playing game’. There are several around the country and a few in other places, like Japan. Some are stand-alones while others are parts of bigger resorts. For example, the one we went to is at the great Wolf Lodge, a family-oriented resort in Grand Round WA (80 miles south of Seattle). I’ll sum it up, give a review and then talk about where it sends my thoughts.

First off, MagiQuest is a live action game aimed at kids. You buy a wand, which has an IR emitter and a motion sensor in it, and you use this wand on what is essentially a series of fantasy-themed scavenger hunts throughout the facility. You go to a Quest Tree to get quests from a screen embedded in a tree which sends you looking for a specific set of things, like crystals, gems, treasure chests, paintings, etc. You come up to you, flick your wand to activate the IR emitter and the item lights up or moves or talks or something.

This is all tracked in a database somewhere as having come from your wand, so your progress is saved. When you finish the quest, you are granted a rune from a character in a video screen. You collect the runes which lead onto ‘adventures’ which are a little more complex and have a simple story line. All along, you are gathering XP and gold and little bits of info about the MagiQuest universe. Later one there are some more complex challenges. We didn’t get to those, but I heard there was a team-oriented quest where you and others fight a dragon together, using the runes you have collected.

You take your wand home with you, and you bring it back next time. Or take it to another MQ somewhere else. Your name and progress are saved and follow you with your wand. And if you want to trick out your wand, the gift shop has toppers (screw-on ends for the wand that make noise and/or flash when you wave it), style accessories, wand holsters and other assorted magic-y swag.

So, now let’s review. I went with my family, which is me, geeky father, my wife, lovely yet geeky mother, and my kids, 19, 15 and 9. This MQ is part of the Great Wolf Lodge, so it’s integrated into the first five floors of the place. These consists of the lobby and a few halls, the second floor which is also home to an arcade, small food court and has the entrance to the hotel’s indoor water park. The game areas on the other three floors are limited to the foyers around the elevators, and the stairwell which connects them all.

The wand itself is about a foot and a half long. It comes in five varieties (three classic – black with gold trim, brown faux wood and silver, two ‘dragon’ wands – ice and fire). These range from about $15 – $20, but are a one-time purchase. The end is bare so you can attach a topper. There were around a dozen styles of toppers, from gems, to wolf’s heads, to orreys, to balls with skulls in them. These are almost as much as the wand and can add another 4 inches to the wand. They flash when the wand is waved and some make noises (lights and sounds can be turned off). Ad they have places to attach things. If you don’t choose one, you just get a basic gold ball (which does not light up) on the end for free. You can also buy ‘style’ packs, which are ribbons and chains and little medallions to hang off your wand. These are about $9.

The wand is plastic with an IR emitter in the business end. It’s bulkier than I expected it to be, but it’s not really awkward. The toppers seem pretty well made and if you want to get fancy, they are fun. They ARE spendy, however. And the person at the store mentions that if you hold the wand by the topper and not the handle, they’ve seen kids break the toppers. So now you know. The style packs are pretty much a waste of money – don’t bother. They are just some colored chains and cheap ribbons. You can also pick up knick knacks, like copies of the runes, keychains, etc. There are costume bits. The wand holsters are kinda cool in that cheesy Halloween-costume way. They seem well-made, but sized for kids. If you are a crafty sewing type, you’d have no problem making your own, though.

Oh, and you can choose to have your wands as individual games or linked. Linked wands mean that the progress on one wand is recorded for all of the wands. So you can do it in ‘teams’ if you like. Or you can just buy one wand and all walk around together. We chose individual wands because we are all gamers and all wanted to play.

Now for the gameplay. You go up to one of several Quest Trees, flick your wand at it and it detects who you are. You then use the touch screen to choose a quest, and you get a little video of the Questmaster or another character telling you what to do, usually with a little poem describing it. Luckily, you can skip through this if you have multiple people wanting do the same quest and you don’t want to hear the quest video 4 times. And if you miss things, you are given a pamphlet (the Book of Wisdom) which lists all the quests, their clues and important info, like the fact the fifth floor is actually the Twisted Woods, etc.

By the way, getting the wands to work consistently is a bit of an art. You have to move the wand to activate, but keep it pointed at the object’s receiver (usually obvious) after wards. It can be a little frustrating.

Now that you have your quest, you go looking. The things you need to find are scattered around and usually have little MQ symbols on them. It’s all pretty obvious. The clues in the Book tell you where to look, and you spend a lot of time running from one end of the place to the other. Note for the mobility challenged – you’ll tire out quickly. Take a lot of breaks and learn to love the elevators. Luckily, most of the things you can wave your wand at have variations of responses for if they aren’t a part of your current quest or don’t react. The correct ones will react in obvious ways. In about 10 -15 mins you’ll get the hang of it. Also, there are several video boxes around that have video characters on them. If they are not for the quest you are on, they will tell you where you are on your current quest and what you need to find. Useful and easy for the kids.

As the quests go on, they get a bit more complex. But you get a good sense for the layout and often remember where you passed that giant ruby while you were looking for the tree slime earlier. Some places you have to cast several times in a row. Another thing I found suddenly told me I had 30 seconds to find the next item, which was unexpected, but a nice change. There was a room with a video projector that had several objects and was used as the end point for several quests. It’d change the video for each person that activated it. The frustration here is that it was a bit of a bottleneck – we often had to wait in line for it. And since we all had our own wands, people had to wait for us as we all went through it. There didn’t seem to be a way to skip through the end of quest videos.

I’ll get this out now. The acting and writing isn’t going to blow your socks off. It’s obviously aimed at kids, and comes across like a public-access kids’ show. It doesn’t really have the ‘wink wink nudge nudge’ quality that a lot of modern kids TV has to entertain the parents who have to listen to while their kids watch it over and over. But they obviously aren’t trying to be anything more than something cool for kids, and they do that well. Your kids will like it, and you’ll like it too as long as you aren’t expecting something that was made for you. As far as story, you only get hints of it early on. But the adventures take you through a simple story. And you get hints of a background, which includes several clans of Magi. Once again, it’s far from intense. Also, I get the impression that not every MQ place has all of the same quests, so you’ll get a different experience at each place you go to.

Overall, it was a fun time. There’s nothing mind-blowing here. We do weird stuff in video games all the time. But it’s surprisingly satisfying about waving a real physical wand and seeing something light up in response. If you come just to run around (with kids or without) and have a good time, you’ll have a good time at MagiQuest. If you want something serious or intense, this isn’t it.

Admission was $10 per person. That’s for the length of your stay at the Lodge, or 4 days, whichever is longer. I’m not sure what it is at other facilities. This isn’t a bad cost for what you get, once you’ve gotten the wand. You could easily spend all day there. Or several days playing if you are staying there for a weekend. In the three hours we were there, the 19 year old had gotten through most of the quests, the 15 year old about two-thirds, and the parents with the highly-distractible 9 year old got through about half.

The biggest drawback is the cost. The wands are a little spendy, and if you tack on the swag, the price goes up really quick. Also, going to a MQ is out of the way, travel costs and food (very spendy at the Great Wolf Lodge) will stack as well. But it’s definitely as fun as a trip to an amusement park. If you travel a lot (or take your family on trips a lot) and like this sort of thing, then you’ll get your money’s worth. If you plan to go to to a lot of them, or the same one a few times, the cost of wand isn’t all that bad. And it’s cool to have around the house. I hope to go again, with and without kids.

*whew* Okay, that was a lot. Now, for my commentary.

A lot of gaming nowadays is removed from physical experience. MMOs are the epitome of that, especially things like Second Life. Virtual world and unreal things. MagiQuest shows that you can effectively meld the unreal into a real experience very successfully. It’s pretty much automated and computer driven, and it brings some unreal elements adequately into the manifest world. You could think of it as a sort of narrative cyborg – half fantasy, half technology.

Really, it reminds me of my first trip to Epcot Center when I was a kid (14 or so). We went through a exhibit that talked about the technology for running the animatronics and the rest of the park, all of the engineering, computers, connections, devices, etc. And it occurred to me that if you applied that to something besides just moving exhibits, you could do some really cool stuff.

MagiQuest reminds me of that. It’s a pretty simple concept, yet well-executed. While I’m sure that the technical hurdles have been significant, it shows that it can be done and done reliably. So, what could be done if we extend the concept into fuller gaming experiences? Could we have Myst-style adventures in this sort of environment? Could we make an immersive fantasy environment that is not just virtual, but physical as well? Think of what is being done with augmented reality. Now merge that with this concept.

When I was running LARPs in North Carolina, I thought it would be cool to have a LARP with everyone having a PDA and having those PDAs communicate as the game mechanic. Want to shoot that guy across the lawn? Plug it into your PDA and they work it out. Of course, that was before Bluetooth. Now, that’s realistic. What kind of immersive environment could you have with 30 people all with their iPhones talking over Bluetooth to do the number-crunching and accounting? I don’t know if anyone has gone there yet. But they should.

1. ephemerology – n. – the study of the unreal » Blog Archive | InnerFuns.Com says:

   October 28, 2009 at 5:28 pm

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2. Ephemerology says:

   August 4, 2010 at 6:08 am

   Ephemerology…

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