NFC at Sundance: Pandemic 1.0

Pandemic 1.0 NFC game at Sundance

Interesting head line from Nearfieldcommunications world – “NFC will catch on ‘like wildfire’ says Sundance festival game creator.” The digital agency Vectorform created a NFC game for the Sundance attendees that used Nexus S phones and NFC tags to let users play a game based on Pandemic 1.0, a film by Lance Weiler.

That seemed unusualy to me until I saw that Google provided the 50 phones and NXP provided the 600 NFC tags. I guess its a small audience but a well connected one. The game let users participate in discovering information via swiping NFC tags to help prevent the spread of the epidemic. Oh yeah, and there was a Microsoft Surface too.

From NFCWorld:

Vectorform's Alison Weber

“Speaking to NFC World, Vectorform’s Alison Weber said this was the first time the team had worked with NFC and they were very impressed with the ease of integration into their existing areas of expertise.

“It was magical to watch people and how they responded to using this ‘secret’ media,” she said. “NFC is going to catch on like wildfire from watching people interacting with the technology at the festival.

“With NXP Semiconductors combined with Google, we were very well informed. We didn’t run into too may walls — the technology was easy to integrate with what we are already experienced with. The whole process, which only took three weeks for us to develop, was pretty seamless, and we are already seeing the next phase of NFC. There’s plenty of potential!

“The technology is an innovative way to engage users, at trade shows for example. And there is such a seamless interaction to it. We are very excited at the way NFC brings our day-to-day analogue transactions — such as using cash — directly into the world of digital.”

From Vectorform:

“Joe Engalan, Executive Director of Vectorform’s Game Studio is equally enthusiastic about the future of NFC. “In order to integrate the user as a part of the experience we connect with them and their mobile devices–seamlessly. Using NFC allows us to present an unbroken user experience. We don’t have to prompt users to do anything, type anything…they stay immersed in the experience, whatever that is.”