This programme ran from 2008-2010 at the Pervasive Media Studio. For more projects like these please visit the Studio website.

Projects 2010

Company Profile

Mobile Pie is a boutique studio focused on producing innovative entertainment and imaginative games for mobile platforms. Based in the heart of Bristol, the company has received such notable accolades as Channel 4’s New Mobile Game Developer of the Year and has received the Media Innovation Awards’ Trophy 2008.

Journal Authors

Richard Wilson

Will Luton

Blossom Bristol

by Mobile Pie

Can real world data be used to engage people in a playful way, that ultimately informs and inspires change?

Blossom Bristol is a phone based game that encourages people to plant virtual crops in any part of Bristol and watch as they flourish or fail depending on real environmental factors such as the city's air quality, water quality, weather and temperature. The player's real-life activities also feed into their success in the game, with credits and rewards being offered when players choose to shop locally or at a Farmer's Market.

Watch the project video

Journal Entries

Journal Entries

Blossom Bristol Launch

Wed 16 Feb, 2011

As the Media Sandbox scheme comes to an end we're pleased to announce that the first version of Blossom Bristol has been uploaded to the Android Marketplace!

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Location Data Sources

Fri 26 Nov, 2010

One of the key gameplay features in Blossom Bristol is the ability to interact with the locations around you - to plant crops in the locations you visit around Bristol every day. As one of our design aims is to get people to explore the city, comparing locataions, we need restrict the ability of players to plant all their crops in just one location. One of our first design challenges to overcome was how we define a 'location' in the game - we highlighted a number of different options:

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Aaron’s Notes on Design

Wed 3 Nov, 2010

A couple of weeks ago our UWE intern Aaron Gordon spent three days in the PM Studio doing some fantastic research and thinking on Blossom Bristol. He had some great conversations about the project with visitors and other residents whilst there, which led to a number of lightning flashes of inspiration. Here are his redacted notes:

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Evaluation and Data Ethics

Tue 2 Nov, 2010

Following on from the last Media Sandbox workshop, we've been giving thought to how we'll be evaluating and testing the Blossom Bristol project, as well as giving consideration to how data will be stored.At Mobile Pie we run all our projects according to Agile methodologies - this involves constant cycles of building, testing then feeding those test results back into the next build stage. The testing isn't just a bug hunting exercise, rather we get the app in front of people and gauge their reactions either by observing them or through conversation.

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Work In Progress

Wed 29 Sep, 2010

Fellow Media Sandboxers Overlay Media have just done a brilliant blog post with pictures of themselves in kung fu and thoughtful (or confused?) poses, so following the leader I'd like to introduce you to our own (pixelated and less rockstar) mugs.

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