Each week we chat about the tools of the trade with one outstanding creative to find out exactly how they do what they do. The questions are always the same, the answers, not so much. This week: Gbanga. Click here for more User Preferences Tech Q&As.The Creators Project: Who are you and what do you do?
Gbanga: The Gbanga team is an interdisciplinary and international team of experts and enthusiasts in the field of mixed-reality and gaming. We have worked in GPS-based games since 2007. Matthias Sala is an award-winning entrepreneurial Swiss inventor having worked on activity-based advertising at Xerox PARC, smart vacuum cleaners at the ETH Zurich and self-refilling refrigerators at Siemens Smart Home Lab in Munich. Together with a friend, he won the Sentient Future Award for Bin It!, a futuristic waste disposal system with a gamification component. Today, Matthias is working on Gbanga, the future of location-based gaming where reality and fiction are blended to mixed-reality. Besides this, Matthias is founding member of Mobile Monday Switzerland and president of the Swiss Game Developer Association. He is also co-organizer of SuperHappyDevFlats and StartupCamp Switzerland. Matthias holds a Masters degree in Computer Science with a minor in constructional Architecture from ETH Zurich. He has spoken at, and given presentations for MIT Media Lab, Prevasive 2006, Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona and GameBeat SF among others.
Matthias SalaWhat kind of hardware do you use?
We have used mobile phones of all sorts (fancy smart phones and older feature phones a few years ago).What kind of software do you use?
We develop our own software natively, which is HTML5-based.What piece of equipment can you simply not live without?
My Arduino.Map ModeIf money were no object, how would you change your current setup?
Instead, I would possibly create more games in shorter time.Gbanga FamigliaWhat is your favorite piece of technology from your childhood?
Certainly, the NES, Game Boy and x86 machines around 1990 influenced me. I really loved the aspect of programmed entertainment.What fantasy piece of technology would you like to see invented?
An artificial intelligence house pet that has no function, but just “lives” in my flat, goes back to the dock to recharge itself, and walks around exploring the flat, etc.@CreatorsProject
Gbanga: The Gbanga team is an interdisciplinary and international team of experts and enthusiasts in the field of mixed-reality and gaming. We have worked in GPS-based games since 2007. Matthias Sala is an award-winning entrepreneurial Swiss inventor having worked on activity-based advertising at Xerox PARC, smart vacuum cleaners at the ETH Zurich and self-refilling refrigerators at Siemens Smart Home Lab in Munich. Together with a friend, he won the Sentient Future Award for Bin It!, a futuristic waste disposal system with a gamification component. Today, Matthias is working on Gbanga, the future of location-based gaming where reality and fiction are blended to mixed-reality. Besides this, Matthias is founding member of Mobile Monday Switzerland and president of the Swiss Game Developer Association. He is also co-organizer of SuperHappyDevFlats and StartupCamp Switzerland. Matthias holds a Masters degree in Computer Science with a minor in constructional Architecture from ETH Zurich. He has spoken at, and given presentations for MIT Media Lab, Prevasive 2006, Mobile 2.0 in Barcelona and GameBeat SF among others.
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We have used mobile phones of all sorts (fancy smart phones and older feature phones a few years ago).What kind of software do you use?
We develop our own software natively, which is HTML5-based.What piece of equipment can you simply not live without?
My Arduino.Map ModeIf money were no object, how would you change your current setup?
Instead, I would possibly create more games in shorter time.Gbanga FamigliaWhat is your favorite piece of technology from your childhood?
Certainly, the NES, Game Boy and x86 machines around 1990 influenced me. I really loved the aspect of programmed entertainment.What fantasy piece of technology would you like to see invented?
An artificial intelligence house pet that has no function, but just “lives” in my flat, goes back to the dock to recharge itself, and walks around exploring the flat, etc.@CreatorsProject