Jeff Macpherson, a.k.a. Doctor Tiki, produced one of the standout video series of the vodcast era. His Tiki Bar TV — a charming take on the not-so-charming premise that the solution to all mankind’s problems can be found in a bottle — was featured by Steve Jobs himself at the initial iPhone launch.
The show went into suspended animation in late 2009. “It went from experiment to business,” he explains. "We were getting into advertising deals and selling merchandise. But when the economy tanks, a Tiki mug is not a high priority.” Leaving three unfinished episodes on the shelf, Macpherson turned his attention to other things.
So what has the good doctor been doing for two years? Just what any self-respecting new-media innovator would do: He’s been building an incredibly cool smartphone game. “I like to create worlds,” he says. “I want to give people the experience of living in this fictitious world.”
CodeRunner is emphatically not a casual game. As the video trailer shows, it’s the opposite of FarmVille and a far cry from Angry Birds. It's an alternate reality game for iOS that embroils players in an intricately constructed paranoid fantasy of government-mediated total information awareness. Quietly beta-launched on the App Store, the game has garnered five-star ratings and glowing reviews from players in Berlin, Amsterdam, London, and New York ("the classic spy cities," Macpherson observes).
The experience of playing CodeRunner is like starring in a James Bond film in which everyone around you is an unwitting extra. Upon launching the game, you’re recruited to work undercover for the newly created US Department of Privacy. A spymaster tasks you with spying on enemies, gradually drawing you into layers of deception, conspiracy, and intrigue. The mechanics are something like a treasure hunt, with each clue leading to the next opportunity to download or upload vital information. These items — an email message pilfered from a hacked Wi-Fi connection, a bank balance gleaned from a nearby ATM, a password based on the name of a nearby business — thicken the plot and drive gameplay forward. It takes between four and eight hours of diligent spycraft to solve the mystery.
“I love those old stories where someone has the microfilm and has to deliver it across the Iron Curtain,” Macpherson says. “But technology has made them obsolete. Now you’d just email it. So I’ve created a scenario in which information has to be transmitted manually. Your location triggers messages from your handler. When his instructions line up with what you’re doing at the time, you become utterly convinced you’re being monitored.”
In developing CodeRunner, Macpherson and his collaborators, game designer Mike Ferraro and technical lead Ryan Chapman, took full advantage of the iPhone's capabilities. The game uses audio, video, camera, messaging, GPS — everything but the accelerometer, which will be incorporated into a future release. The Google Maps API was also critical. Access to Google's geolocation database allows players anywhere on earth, speaking any language, to find banks, schools, libraries, and other brick-and-mortar establishments that serve as pivot points in the game. “It pulls in from locations around you to make you feel like it’s happening in your neighborhood,” Macpherson says. “It works best in an urban area, especially in Europe, where pubs and shops are near where people live.”
Priced at $2.99, CodeRunner will function as a loss leader for a series of missions that likely will carry higher price tags. In building mobile games that require focused attention, Macpherson understands that he's swimming against the tide of anywhere/anytime casual gaming. "In certain mobile games, some levels are so mundane that people pay to avoid playing them," he says. "If there’s anything in your work that someone would pay to avoid doing, it shouldn’t be there. I believe in charging at the box office and delivering the best piece of entertainment I can."
As for Tiki Bar TV, Macpherson hopes to reactivate it coming months. But the world has changed, and it will require a new venue. “I don’t think people watch vodcast feeds anymore,” he says. “Hundreds of thousands of people subscribed to the Tiki Bar TV feed, but I doubt people subscribe anymore. I think they prefer to watch embedded videos or see them on YouTube.” This is the challenge of new media: To deliver a fresh, compelling experience despite incessant technological and social change — and maybe create a new genre in the process. Tiki Bar TV did that at the dawn of the Web video boom. CodeRunner is a bold bid to do it again.
