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“We are overwhelmed with joy to beat a number of teams including that from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in an international competition,” said Jimmy CHIU, a Hong Kong Design Institute (HKDI) student of the Higher Diploma in Creative Media Design course. Recently, Jimmy and his three classmates demonstrated their creativity and grabbed the first runner-up of “Best Scene in Town @ PICNIC 11” mobile apps design competition organised by the PICNIC Festival 2011 of the Netherlands.
 
Using the mobile app platform designated by the organiser, Jimmy’s team came up with a guided tour game with high verisimilitude to raise the awareness of users of the Festival and the surroundings of the city. Jimmy said, “We named the game as “The Spirit of a Soldier”. Once the application is activated, the mobile phone user will turn into a soldier marching towards different scenic attractions around the venue where the PICNIC Festival is held with the aid of the guided tour function. When the solider reaches a destination, he will be instructed to perform a task, for example looking for the location of a building, or uploading the pictures of the logomark of shops before he is to be given another instruction to continue with the game.” The team also added Asian elements into the game by requiring the gamers to write down their feelings about the meaning of Chinese characters found in the course of the game.
 
In the course of the competition, Jimmy felt severely limited by not being able to do a site visit in person. Fortunately, with concerted efforts, the team overcame the difficulties by making use of technological resources like satellite maps, information on the Web and teleconferencing to grasp the geographical details of the Netherlands. Eventually, they came up with a game which was exciting, interactive and informative. “We learnt a lot through participation in the competition. Apart from applying what we have learnt from class, our English has also improved considerably as we were given ample chances to practise the language. But most important of all, our efforts are not in vain.”