I recently got back from a trip to Walt Disney World, where I was lucky enough to play a still-in-testing game that is unlike anything else I’ve ever experienced. The game is called Team Possible, and was at the EPCOT park at Walt Disney World. I was very impressed by the activities involved and the overall scope of the game. It’s not really a cell phone game -- it’s a game that uses a cell phone, in addition to many other physical devices, to create a real-world gaming environment hidden inside of a Disney park. I’ll explain below.

SPOILER ALERT: Below there are spoliers about the game. I’m not going to explain the game’s plot-step by-step but I am going to discuss some of it, and talk about the effects used and the experiences I’ve had with the game. If you want to play Team Possible yourself and remain spoiler-free, don’t read past this.

I’ll give a brief overview of the game before diving into the details: In Team Possible, you’re given the task of walking all over EPCOT completing missions using a special Kim Possible cell phone you’ve been given. The game actually requires travelling through the park and interacting with installations you come across.

Here it is in more detail: Team Possible is a secret agent themed game starring the characters from Kim Possible, which is a cartoon that airs on the Disney channel. Humuhumu and I were enlisted as Secret Agents and asked to rendevous at a covert location in Canana. Actually, it was the Cananda pavilion in EPCOT’s World Showcase, which is a World’s Fair-like collection of pavilions from various nations of the world, arranged around a massive lagoon.

Inside of an unassuming building in Canada sat Team Possible’s covert headquarters. We entered and were given our mission briefing, which was to track down and stop various supervillans from taking over the world. Agents disguised as Lumberjacks and Lumberjanes handed us a Kimmunicatior, which looked like a cell phone but was actually an advanced spy gadget with various uses. We were then sent off on our mission.

The basics of the game had the cell phone giving us mission briefings using full-screen animated characters and speech. The cell phone (a normal-looking Nextel) had the speakerphone option turned on so everyone in our party could hear it. The game instructed us to go to the France pavilion and find a lamp. The cell phone showed us a map to France from Canana and displayed a photo of the lamp in question. We were told that the lamp was actually a covert satellite communication station that would allow us to hook up with our informant.

This aspect of the game was incredibly fun. The whole game had us travelling around EPCOT and looking for thing, both high-and-low, and it was taking us to sections of the park that we had overlooked in previous trips.

When as we approached our target in a store in France, an antenna automatically rose up out of the lamp and our cell phone Kimmunicator began transmitting. I was quite suprised to see that the game knew we had arrived at our destination, and had triggered real-world effects. I didn’t have to do anything with the phone or with the lamp to trigger it; I just had to walk up to it. This turns out to be the heart of this game: interacting with inconspicuous real-world props scattered throughout the park.

This was the real beginning of the game for me. The game took us to many different parts of the EPCOT park, and every stop we came to had some unique effect. Heading to the next location created a level of excitement/antisipation in our group that I normally only get for E-Tickets. It was clear that Disney had put a lot of effort to include a very wide variety of interactions -- not just of the scavenger hunt variety.

In one part of the game, we entered into a walk-in old-timey phone booth, and the phone inside dispensed a golf ball to us out of it’s coin return. We were then instructed to take the golf ball to another part of the park, where a kinetic sculpture was. To everyone else in the park, it appeared simply as a neat piece of eye-candy for the parkgoer’s enjoyment. But as we approached, a secret panel in the sculpture opened up and we were able to place our golf ball inside. Our ball rolled through the machine and it lit up to reveal it’s true function. It was very inventive. Another part of the game had a hidden camera take a photo of us and transfer it to the phone. And in yet another section a toy animatronic came to life, greeted us by my agent name (Agent Hanford) and discussed mission briefings with us.

The game took about two hours for us to play and culminated in a multi-player interactive ending that was set inside of a show building that only Team Possible players could enter (in contrast to the rest of the game, which took place in public areas of the park with other non-agent guests milling about.) All in all the game had an incredible variety of things to do.

Summary

I was very impressed with this game on multiple levels. There is a lot I loved about the game, but I want to focus on a few key points:

Physical props and real locations vs. video screens and virtual environments. The game included a fair amount of cell-phone-based content, but there was a lot of interaction with real-world, non-video-screen-based content, most of which blended in inconspicously with the rest of EPCOT’s theming. Things like animatronics, statues, cameras, phone booths, bookcases, and even some face-to-face interaction. And this made all the difference in the world. I don’t go to Disney World to watch video screens. The 360 degree immersive feeling of a Disney attraction is unlike any video game, and the Team Possible game really exploited it.

A new level of interaction for Disney attractions. This is what excites me the most about the Team Possible game. Classic Disney rides er, attractions have been things you experience by sitting back and watching. In recent years Disney has dabbled in adding interactivity to their attractions like the various “pull me” gimmicks in the queue for Indy Jones; the Buzz Lightyear raygun rides, and Turtle Talk with Crush (although it’s basically a large video screen). But the Team Possible game really takes guest/attraction interaction to a new level where the old “rules” of Disney attactions don’t apply. This is what Disney attractions have been missing, and when it’s done well it something very special. The future of this kind of interactivity is really exciting to think about; the Kim Possible game is really just a taste of what can be done.

Hats off to the Team Possible team that made it possible. Several of the game designers/programmers are ex-coworkers of mine from my LucasArts days, and it was a pleasure to see them again. Jon, Chuck, and Jonathan: you guys did a fantastic job.

Links

Photos and guest descriptions of the game At Laughingplace.com
Photos of the game At Flickr.com
Kim Possible Image taken from coreywolfe.com

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