Artist Response #1: Pac-Man Hits The Streets of Manhattan

Thanks to the folks of PacManhattan, the thrill of the chase comes to life!


As a veteran gamer myself, I instantly was drawn into this concept. Bringing a video game closer to reality is every gamer's dream and every video game designer's goal. What's even better about this is that you can get a pretty wicked workout while getting your game on! Eat your heart out, Nintendo Wii!

As fun as this looks, I think there is something very dark about it. A lot of people like to be in control of everything (gamers especially) so why not be in control of humans themselves? In the PacManhattan game, the player -- ironically called the Controller -- communicates to the person dressed as Pac Man via cellphone and tells him/her where to go. The game gives the Controller the role of dictator or Big Brother as he controls and watches PacMan's every move. PacManhattan is almost like a twisted version of the movie Tron whereas instead of being the video game character and being in complete control of yourself, you are controlled by another. Despite this doom and gloom, the PacManhattan project is just good plain fun for anyone who gets involved. There's a sense of excitement and adventure in not knowing what street you'll end up running down next.

An interesting project that could spawn from the PacManhattan project would be a Role-Playing Game on the St. Mary's Campus with the same idea as the PacManhattan project. One person would play as the main character being controlled by someone else via cell phone. The controller would have a map of the whole campus and tell the main character what to do things, where to do them, and how to them. It would be like PacManhattan, just on a whole new level...the boss level.