Brisbane Writers Festival - Street Reads

This was one I was really excited about. If you haven't heard of Street Reads before it's basically a choose your own adventure book played in the read world. The basic premise is that you would start in one of two starting locations (Reddacliff Place or the State Library forecourt) where you would find a poster with a QR code that you could scan on your smart phone and be linked to a webpage with a section of the story that you could either read or listen to. At the end of each section you would be given two or three options of what you want to do, each directing you to the next location. Pretty neat.

As a huge fan of the choose your own adventure books as a kid I loved this idea and headed out, enthausiastic as anything, the day it started. My gusto began to slowly crumble as I became increasingly aware of my limited knowledge of city street names and landmarks. This first occurred as I was being directed "along George Street in the direction of City Hall". City Hall? Where's that? That sounds like somewhere I should have heard of? I looked down George Street and took a gamble, I had a 50/50 chance of picking the right direction. I chose wrong. A few blocks down I was sure I'd gone in the wrong direction so, not letting that dampen my spirits, I turned around and away I went. Surely enough after a few blocks I found Adelaide St and the bins behind city hall that should have held my next chapter. Examining each bin as I went I found a poster, scanned it, nope, that one was the end of a different story. After about my third sweep of the street I accepted defeat on that one and decided to go back to my previous location and try a different route.

This time I was sent to Burnett Lane, fortunately I  had seen this street sign on my way to Adelaide St and knew where to go, so I set off, again. At this point I think it's important to note the alarm bells that were going off in my 20-year-old female brain as I turned down an alley that I would never have walked down alone without reason. Maybe it was just that day, but lined with construction workers, staff on smoking breaks and a general lack of other female presence the alley didn't give me the feeling of somewhere I should have been and I rechecked the street name before wondering why I was being sent down this undesirable alleyway.

Granted I was paying more attention to my safety than to any posters on the pavement, but again, the only poster I found was for a different story. I still wonder if the real poster was under one of the number of delivery trucks parked in the street, if it was there at all, or if I just missed it entirely but this was where my patience was lost and I gave up.

I did go back and try to restart the story entirely but with significantly less enthusiasm than before and I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to the creators and give that as justification to not even finding the first section of that story.

Really I was quite disappointed in the experience, perhaps I was having an off day and just missed obvious posters, or maybe they had already been ripped down by vandals but the result was the same. I went home defeated that day. Persistent as I am I have refused to let this ruin what I think is a great idea and, as soon as I have gotten my drive back, I will give it another go and give a further update.

Update: September 13th

Last night I kept my word and attempted Street Reads for the second time. on this adventure I was uploaded into the Nexus of the Brisbane City simulator which was under the threat of Three-Dom, a kind of confusing omnipresent entity in the nexus. This time I was able to find all of the check points (called 'data nodes' in the story) and complete the story and I really enjoyed it. I will admit that some of my choices were still made based on my knowledge of the city, refusing to get lost again. I'm going to take the blame for this one as the creators really did make navigation as easy as possible with directions and maps included.

The initial options you are given for Street Reads allow you to choose the adventure you are embarking on, a pirates adventure, an alien invasion or a digital nexus quest. in my first attempt of Street Reads I chose the alien invasion, and that still sounds like the most fun to me, but in my second attempt I wasn't up for getting as lost and confused as on my first attempt so I chose the digital nexus simply because the QR codes I had mistakenly scanned before were from this story so I knew that at least some of the posters really were around the city. While the story was a little confusing in its over-use of fantasy jargon, it was a lot of fun. Coming out of the experience I felt a weird disappointment to be back in the real world but revelled in the lasting impact of some of the final words of the story that allowed me to hold onto the fantasy that what I had just experienced was more than fiction.

"The real world brightens around you. you're still in King George Square , still flattened and remade by Metricon, but somehow everything is more alive, more colourful. Did your digital adventure affect the real world?"

Going on this adventure reminded me of the games I would play everyday as a kid, I was some kind of adventurer or guardian secretly saving a world that was magical only to me. Being thrown back into this was a lovely, if not totally nostalgic experience.

Tomorrow is the final day for Street Reads 2014 and I really do urge anyone who hasn't yet to give it a try. If you miss this year's there is sure to be another next year.