Blowtooth is a unique game where players must smuggle virtual drugs through REAL airport security. Of course, no actual crimes are committed – the game uses bluetooth to store a list of nearby passengers during the airport check-in process. Later, players are challenged to find those same people in the departure lounges.

There is plenty more information on www.blowtooth.com. In addition, you can download the game for J2ME devices and play for yourself.

Research Focus

Blowtooth was developed to explore the limits of pervasive gaming in public spaces where the constant surveillance of law-abiding and innocuous behaviour has become the everyday norm.
It challenges passengers to reconsider their position and their relationship with the faceless airport security infrastructure. If you will be treated like a smuggler in the game of security, why not engage with that in your own, playful, way?

Also, Blowtooth acted as a response to the challenge that “Airports are not suitable places for games”.

Research Output

A pilot study of Blowtooth was carried out in several real world airports. The results were presented, and very well received, at alt.CHI 2010 in Atlanta. The paper is available free online.

Linehan, Conor and Kirman, Ben and Lawson, Shaun and Doughty, Mark (2010) Blowtooth: pervasive gaming in unique and challenging environments. Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems . pp. 2695-2704.