Social Bomb (as opposed to the company it spawned, Socialbomb), is prototype hardware that creates turns simple social interactions into an on-going game, and furthers my work in using ZigBee radios for location tracking, this time using proximity to establish a relative, rather than absolute, location.

Each player is given a device which they carry or wear for the duration of the game. The device contains hardware which detects proximity to the other devices, which in turn affects the score displayed on its front. Scores are affected by those around them, and the basic rules follow cliche high school social dynamics: hang out with people with high scores and yours will go up; a group of lower scores will bring you down; hide by yourself and your score will drop rapidly; spend a few minutes with every player and you'll get a bonus.

As a social experiment, Social Bomb works by reflecting your own actions back to you, but as a game it gives you freedom to interpret those actions. This layering of game mechanics onto real-life social interactions is what spawned Socialbomb the company.

Social Bomb was developed with an Arduino microcontroller, Xbee radios, and a global leaderboard made with Processing.

with Michael Dory & Scott Varland