To show what is possible, we have paired three existing games by public libraries with new features in Hive Mechanic, on the occasion of the launch of Version 2.0. They include:

• Garden experiences that respond to the weather
• Walking tours that count which murals you visit
• Branching audio stories that guide you to secret corners of an exhibit

To imagine where things can go, read on…

Pairing #1

To begin, we pair an existing statue tour activity with the ability to count visitors. Many tours have been made by Hive users; a good example is the Haddonfield Statue Tour which takes visitors around town to various statues. But our partners told us that it was hard to count their impact without knowing how many people had visited each location.

Our new solution is the Summary Variable card (part of the 2.0 release). With this card, the Haddonfield team could easily track the number of visits to a particular statue, or the tour as a whole. This information can then be relayed to players, partner organizations or researchers. 

Pairing #2

Our second pairing: what if a garden tour responded to the weather?

For this example, we can look to The Milton Public library. In their story game, visitors can text one of three bird sculptures outside the library, each with a different personality. One of the ways we might want to expand this game is to add some responsiveness to the weather. One of the birds already tells visitors about a pollinator garden.

Now with our card that responds to the weather, the bird could give different dialog if there is more pollen in the air, or simply if the weather is rainy. The result would be more environmental and immersive storytelling, especially tied to weather and season.

Pairing #3

Finally, new support for Story Phone Calls allows for audio experiences tied to ordinary phones. Branching audio is a kind of storytelling that we demonstrated with the DC Public Library for their Black Feminist DC Exhibit. Already, pushing a number on your keypad can lead the narrator to guide you to a different corner of the exhibit.

We could go further by adding different community voices on request. The storytelling becomes more interesting when the results are not always the same, but vary with time of day, prior choices the player has made, or simply a bit of randomness. Read more about it in our description linked above.