App City: At Barclays Center, Heightening the Fan Experience

The people who run stadiums are clearly concerned about this, and have recently enlisted smartphones in their battle against the television. The new Barclays Center mobile app, released in February for the iPhone and Android, may be the most ambitious effort so far. (The developer, Apps for Venues, describes it as its “crown jewel.”)

I tried the app last Sunday at the Brooklyn arena, as the Nets suffered an ugly loss to the Memphis Grizzlies.

Some basic functions work anywhere, but the impressive features kick in only after you connect to the arena’s free Wi-Fi network — whose existence is a feat in and of itself.

Once you are inside, the app tries to improve the overall arena experience, including offering the first perquisite available exclusively to people sitting in the nosebleeds. Fans in certain sections in the upper deck can order and pay for food from their phones, then pick it up without waiting in the usual line.

Of course, Barclays is also interested in getting visitors into more expensive seats. The arena is considering adding a feature to future versions that would offer fans the chance to pay to move down a few rows after they arrive in the arena.

You can also stream live video of the game to your phone. Several camera angles give fans in distant seats intimate views of the court. You can also rewind up to 30 seconds to watch a replay.

Barclays is the first arena to offer this service, run by Cisco, which plans to start offering it elsewhere soon. When the feature worked, the video quality was impressive. But in many places in the arena I could not get it to load.

For now, only basketball games are streamed this way. The video features will eventually expand to concerts as well, but Barclays will have to sort out rights issues and which camera angles to use case by case.

There was a point at which I felt a little silly fiddling with the video feed on my phone, considering how close I was to what was actually happening. But for me (and, from the looks of it, many of those seated near me), watching sports already involves checking Twitter and elsewhere for a stream of mini-analysis, so that fight has been lost.

One weak area is ticketing. The app lets users browse for tickets, but when it comes to buying them it simply sends you to the Ticketmaster Web site. Nor can you use your phone as a digital ticket yet, a step that 13 Major League Baseball teams, including the Mets, will offer this season through Apple’s Passbook app. Barclays says it is talking to Ticketmaster about paperless ticketing.

In the meantime, Barclays has already addressed one of the inevitable problems that will face fans who order food and stream video on their phones. There are kiosks throughout the arena where you can recharge your phone while watching the action on flat-screen televisions.

The War Z -- A New Zombie Survival Experience

Zombies are everywhere, you’re low on supplies and you’re traveling with people even more destitute than you. You stumble upon another group of survivors who have tons of food but no weapons. Do you use your scarce pistol ammo to kill them and take what you need, or does your moral compass remain strong in a world where the dead now rule?

This is the world of the upcoming zombie survival MMO, The War Z. Developed by Hammerpoint Interactive and published by Arktos Entertainment Group, this is another take on hardcore survival for PC players. To get more information on it, how it differs itself from the already popular ArmA II mod DayZ, and when we can expect to play it, we conducted an email interview with Arktos Executive Producer Sergey Titov and Hammerpoint Interactive Senior Game Designer Eric Nordin.

IGN: OK, so let's just get this out of the way right off the bat: How much was this game a reaction to the success of DayZ? Was this in development before the Alpha's release in April?

Sergey Titov: We started thinking about doing a zombie game last year and began developing a quest-based MMO set in a large, zombie infested world. Players would be able to explore and “unlock” new areas on the map as they progress through quests assigned to them in-game. When DayZ was released to the public we were really excited to see another game that was akin to what we were working on – we were like “wow, that’s cool, we’re not the only ones making something like this." As we saw the popularity of DayZ grow, and how players and the community were reacting, we realized two things – first, there was validation that our idea of making a zombie MMO was actually right and that there is a market/player base for it, and second, we decided to abandon the idea of unlocking parts of the map as you progress – rather, the player will be able to freely roam the world and gather information and quests by exploring notes, diaries, etc left behind by both real players and NPCs.

So short answer – while we began developing our game before DayZ, we've been encouraged by fact that DayZ has become so popular. And yes, of course some of our latest design decisions were influenced by the DayZ community forums.

IGN: What do you guys like about DayZ, but feel like you want to do differnetly with The War Z? What do you want to capture that's similar?

Eric Nordin: Most of our team members are fans of DayZ. We love the way DayZ was able to capture the primal feel of being alone in a big hostile environment, where your biggest enemies are not necessarily zombies, but other players. And these other players are no different from you – they’re scared humans who are trying to survive - this is the same feel we want to capture in WarZ.

The major difference is that DayZ is a fantastic mod for a hardcore military simulation game, so it is all set in that type of environment. We are creating a standalone game, with the entire world designed around a zombie apocalypse, so that players feel completely immersed in that environment. We want players to see the signs of struggle and destruction from humans fighting with zombies and have that sense of fear and anxiety when they are exploring the world. Additionally, aside from having different characters to play and some other mechanics that we think will really set WarZ apart, the other key difference is that, being a standalone game, it will be much more accessible in terms of being able to buy, download, install, log into a server and play.

IGN: So will there be multiple maps for people to play on or only one world?

Sergey Titov: We’ll launch with one world we call “Colorado," but we have more worlds designed, all of which are based on real world locales such as New York, Los Angeles, Paris, etc. We’ll be releasing new worlds/maps as we go and they’ll be available for free to all of our players.

IGN: What sorts of things can players expect to encounter in the world?

Eric Nordin: The game is set five years after a “zombie apocalypse," so most of the human population is either dead or turned into zombies. Cities are decaying, resources are scarce and scattered around the world. About a year prior to when the game begins, a special, mutated type of zombie is discovered. These zombies have stem cells can be extracted and used to create a vaccine that cures humans of the zombie virus. People around the world are hunting these “special” zombies, however they can only be found at night, and they are rare, so players will need to go to places where zombies gather in masses – namely – big cities, larger towns, etc. If you hunt these special zombies and extract the stem cells, you’ll be able to sell them to merchants at “safe settlements” for Gold Coins – the most valuable currency in the game.

While exploring the world, scavenging for supplies, weapons, ammo and gear, players will be able to find “notes” and “diaries” – text pieces left by other players or NPCs. For example, you can find a diary that tells the story of a family escaping their home and running from zombies - and dying one by one. If you read carefully you can find clues that will point you to a place where you can find better equipment. Another scenario would be finding a note from another real player – this note could either help you or lure you into a trap – you never know what other players intentions are.

There are dozens of towns, villages, even large cities scattered across the world that players will explore looking for rare artifacts. You will be able to team up with other players to raid cities at night in order to find special zombie breeds or higher value gear. Players will also be able to form alliances against other clans.

IGN: Will you start with a gun?

Sergey Titov: If you’re playing in hardcore mode, you’ll get some kind of basic gun. In normal Mode you’ll have to find one, but it will be relatively easy to do close to your initial spawn point.

IGN: How does zombie combat work? Are they hard to lose, do they move fast? Will we have to fight hordes of them at a time, or are they a bit more scarce?

Eric Nordin: Our zombies are moving slightly slower than you - so with enough patience and enough stamina you can lose them, but it’s not easy to do. Still if you don’t have a gun or run out of ammo and there are zombies in pursuit, there’s a good chance you can lose them. Also, zombies can’t climb ladders or scale walls, open doors, etc – so you get inside a house and barricade the door and you should be safe.

Depending on location you’ll encounter between one and literally many dozens of zombies at a time. Choosing the right tactics, movement, camouflage (for example you can buy “zombie scent” spray that will save you from being detected in certain situations) or weapon type (silenced weapons are the way to go) you can either end up killing dozens of zombies without being detected or will end up being attacked by hordes attracted by loud sounds, smell, etc.