The game I've been playing the most with my 3DS is not Pilotwings or Street Fighter. It's not the awesome activity log, not the camera, not Health and Safety Warning. It's StreetPass. Just StreetPass, the functionality itself, the game I can play even with the 3DS buried in its sleeve, tucked into the side pocket of my bag.
StreetPass has done something for me in the last week that it's hard to imagine anything else doing: not only has it broken the constant, agonizing monotony of my daily commute to and from work, but it has actually made me look forward to it. Walking and taking the trains each day is no longer the same kind of chore, instead becoming my daily adventure in a role-playing game—only my life's the game, and I'm playing the role of myself, in search of areas dense with rewarding random encounters!
I find myself drawn to groups of people now that I'd usually attempt to avoid for the sake of speed and sanity, instead sizing them up during my approach. Who out of these guys might be carrying a 3DS? Does one of those girls have Nintendogs loaded up in her bag? What about those businessmen over there? From a position directly above myself in space, I imagine a game-like HUD layered over my world, a blue orb of wireless data barraging everyone around me, searching for that precious data, a smattering of other like-minded people doing the same. Instead of head-down rushing from point A to point B, I find myself more relaxed. Meet a couple friends across town? Sure, I'd be happy to take a little walk.
The rewards themselves, like so much enemy loot, vary. At the moment, most people are carrying their Miis around via Mii Plaza. There's something unexplainably appealing about seeing the avatars of real people around me pop up there on my screen, telling me what they're playing and who they are, before maybe giving me a puzzle piece I need and helping me kill some ghosts. My sought-after rare drops right now are Street Fighter encounters—chances for a virtual action figure battle between the collections we have built up and tweaked. From anonymity comes a sort of lighthearted alliance, playing a game as we go about our lives.
The last week has seen me unwittingly cultivate a miniature virtual friendship with Takaaki, a blue-shirted fellow with cat ears and pursed lips, who I first tagged while walking up the stairs to my train into town. I got him a second time days later, in the exact same spot. When I checked it that time, it asked me what I thought of him, and gave me the options to pick "Okay, I guess..." or "Fantastic!" In my haste I picked the less enthusiastic of the choices, and agonized over it. "What will he think of me!" The next day I got a tag I wasn't expecting, this time going back home from downtown. It was Takaaki again, in the afternoon instead of the morning. We had encountered each other at a different time, in a different place. I checked his information and saw he was from Osaka, which allowed me to figure out a little bit about him: we had probably been meeting in the morning as he came to my local train station to work on Port Island, just as I was heading into town, and we met up again downtown as I was leaving town, just as he was arriving back there from work on his way home. And so, a life is discovered: Takaaki the pursed-lips cat-earsed businessman, who commutes from Osaka to Port Island each morning, does his job, then goes back to Osaka in the evening, just as I'm heading home.
My American 3DS system not offering me the option to mark my place of residence as Japan, despite offering a variety of other, remote countries, he surely noticed the anomaly of my English name and home in the States. His personal message to me, on our most recent third tag, was composed in somewhat haphazardly spaced English lettering, instead of the Japanese default that everyone else's messages show up in:
"how are you"
Pulling the system out of its sleeve just a little bit to check for The Dot is like tapping A to check my after-battle stats. Am I lit up brilliant green like a Christmas tree or will the quest continue? Joy and disappointment, rolled into one. In the last week I've found myself motivated to veer completely from my path home after work—to wander around the city to see what I can rustle up, wondering where those 3DSes might be tucked away, where they're hiding. Where can I position myself to cover the most area? I walk down the other side of staircases, closer to the escalators, sit in the middle of the train platform to catch people from both sides, walk back and forth through street crossings, just to be immersed in humanity. We all pang around the streets and stations like pinballs, careening and hopefully colliding. Thanks to the pedometer I even have something to show for it: a relative indicator of my physical activity at any given time on any given day, a step-count cherry on the sundae. "Today I took 6,158 valiant steps and met four other travelers!"
Over the weekend I went to Osaka myself, loitering around the busy Umeda station and on one of the main bridges over the Dotonbori river (next to the enormous, neon Glico man) for twenty minutes like a real creep while my girlfriend combed through the nearby H&M. I walked back and forth in the huge nearby crosswalk, then popped into the McDonald's to see if there were any pesky schoolkids that I could nab. I felt suspicious, like a thief, snatchin' away them bits and bytes.
Though at first I'd blow my tags one at a time, unable to resist, now I kinda like to save 'em up, walk around with four or five chambered, ready to fire off. Yesterday I kept a six-shooter of notifications loaded, then bought some cats with my Play Coins and sent them all on their massive raid of the Mirage Tower, wasting some ghosts and getting me some more new headgear.
When I meet up with Takaaki again, it's entertaining to know that the silly hat he sees me wearing will have been earned, in part, because of his crossing paths with me, the foreigner who he's never met in person, but does virtual battle for every so often, just by virtue of going to work and coming home. The only words of reply I can return, sixteen characters tops:
"I'm happy. You?"
StreetPass has done something for me in the last week that it's hard to imagine anything else doing: not only has it broken the constant, agonizing monotony of my daily commute to and from work, but it has actually made me look forward to it. Walking and taking the trains each day is no longer the same kind of chore, instead becoming my daily adventure in a role-playing game—only my life's the game, and I'm playing the role of myself, in search of areas dense with rewarding random encounters!
I find myself drawn to groups of people now that I'd usually attempt to avoid for the sake of speed and sanity, instead sizing them up during my approach. Who out of these guys might be carrying a 3DS? Does one of those girls have Nintendogs loaded up in her bag? What about those businessmen over there? From a position directly above myself in space, I imagine a game-like HUD layered over my world, a blue orb of wireless data barraging everyone around me, searching for that precious data, a smattering of other like-minded people doing the same. Instead of head-down rushing from point A to point B, I find myself more relaxed. Meet a couple friends across town? Sure, I'd be happy to take a little walk.
The rewards themselves, like so much enemy loot, vary. At the moment, most people are carrying their Miis around via Mii Plaza. There's something unexplainably appealing about seeing the avatars of real people around me pop up there on my screen, telling me what they're playing and who they are, before maybe giving me a puzzle piece I need and helping me kill some ghosts. My sought-after rare drops right now are Street Fighter encounters—chances for a virtual action figure battle between the collections we have built up and tweaked. From anonymity comes a sort of lighthearted alliance, playing a game as we go about our lives.
The last week has seen me unwittingly cultivate a miniature virtual friendship with Takaaki, a blue-shirted fellow with cat ears and pursed lips, who I first tagged while walking up the stairs to my train into town. I got him a second time days later, in the exact same spot. When I checked it that time, it asked me what I thought of him, and gave me the options to pick "Okay, I guess..." or "Fantastic!" In my haste I picked the less enthusiastic of the choices, and agonized over it. "What will he think of me!" The next day I got a tag I wasn't expecting, this time going back home from downtown. It was Takaaki again, in the afternoon instead of the morning. We had encountered each other at a different time, in a different place. I checked his information and saw he was from Osaka, which allowed me to figure out a little bit about him: we had probably been meeting in the morning as he came to my local train station to work on Port Island, just as I was heading into town, and we met up again downtown as I was leaving town, just as he was arriving back there from work on his way home. And so, a life is discovered: Takaaki the pursed-lips cat-earsed businessman, who commutes from Osaka to Port Island each morning, does his job, then goes back to Osaka in the evening, just as I'm heading home.
My American 3DS system not offering me the option to mark my place of residence as Japan, despite offering a variety of other, remote countries, he surely noticed the anomaly of my English name and home in the States. His personal message to me, on our most recent third tag, was composed in somewhat haphazardly spaced English lettering, instead of the Japanese default that everyone else's messages show up in:
"how are you"
Pulling the system out of its sleeve just a little bit to check for The Dot is like tapping A to check my after-battle stats. Am I lit up brilliant green like a Christmas tree or will the quest continue? Joy and disappointment, rolled into one. In the last week I've found myself motivated to veer completely from my path home after work—to wander around the city to see what I can rustle up, wondering where those 3DSes might be tucked away, where they're hiding. Where can I position myself to cover the most area? I walk down the other side of staircases, closer to the escalators, sit in the middle of the train platform to catch people from both sides, walk back and forth through street crossings, just to be immersed in humanity. We all pang around the streets and stations like pinballs, careening and hopefully colliding. Thanks to the pedometer I even have something to show for it: a relative indicator of my physical activity at any given time on any given day, a step-count cherry on the sundae. "Today I took 6,158 valiant steps and met four other travelers!"
Over the weekend I went to Osaka myself, loitering around the busy Umeda station and on one of the main bridges over the Dotonbori river (next to the enormous, neon Glico man) for twenty minutes like a real creep while my girlfriend combed through the nearby H&M. I walked back and forth in the huge nearby crosswalk, then popped into the McDonald's to see if there were any pesky schoolkids that I could nab. I felt suspicious, like a thief, snatchin' away them bits and bytes.
Though at first I'd blow my tags one at a time, unable to resist, now I kinda like to save 'em up, walk around with four or five chambered, ready to fire off. Yesterday I kept a six-shooter of notifications loaded, then bought some cats with my Play Coins and sent them all on their massive raid of the Mirage Tower, wasting some ghosts and getting me some more new headgear.
When I meet up with Takaaki again, it's entertaining to know that the silly hat he sees me wearing will have been earned, in part, because of his crossing paths with me, the foreigner who he's never met in person, but does virtual battle for every so often, just by virtue of going to work and coming home. The only words of reply I can return, sixteen characters tops:
"I'm happy. You?"