Reality Games, Gadgets, and Gizmos on Display

You're home watching television, the phone rings, and a woman on the line is crying hysterically. Someone's trying to break down her door. Why is this happening to her? And why is she calling you?

Welcome to Majestic, an interactive game that may rewrite the rules of online gaming.

Majestic was just one of the consumer products to emerge this week at Demo 2001, a three-day event that showcases some of the latest in high-tech wizardry. Other gadgets include a robot that keeps a watchful eye on the grandparents and an electronic pen.

Chris Shipley, an industry analyst and executive producer of Demo 2001, introduced Majestic by saying it could be to online gaming "what Survivor has been to reality television." The game was developed by EA.com of Redwood City, California.

Majestic immerses players in a suspense thriller involving conspiracy theories, government agencies, and menacing fugitives. Players start the game on the Web, but events pursue them into their everyday lives via the telephone, fax machine, e-mail, and instant messaging. It doesn't start and end at a single sitting -- if a character says he'll get back to you tomorrow, he means it, and you won't know whether that means a voice mail, fax, or e-mail message.

"We want Majestic to play you just as much as you play it," said Neil Young, vice president and executive in charge of production at EA.com. Majestic should be available by midyear as part of a subscription service.

Monitoring Tools

Somerville, Massachusetts-based IRobot showed an elegant robot that scurries around on eight wheels with a slender neck that can extend to chest height. Equipped with audio and video capabilities, the robot can be controlled via Web browser from anywhere in the world, allowing it to keep watch over elderly relatives or a vacant holiday home.

IRobot is already selling a commercial version to development partners, pitching it as a way for workers to "project themselves" into distant meetings, or keep an eye on a factory floor at an overseas plant. The company plans to release a consumer version within the year, priced at about $2,000, officials said.

Unwireit.com took a slightly different approach with its MyCasaNetwork service, which uses an Internet appliance that can hook up to electrical devices, sensors, and video cameras to monitor a home or office from a Web browser, mobile phone, or wireless PDA.

The appliance could regulate heating controls, keep tabs on who visits a building, or send out a pager alarm when a room becomes flooded.

High-Tech Pen

One of the more unique gadgets here is an electronic pen from Digital Ink of Wellesley, Massachusetts. The N-Scribe pen uses ink and writes on standard paper, but the cap and the barrel of the pen communicate with each other through infrared, with the cap capturing the handwritten text as a graphics image. The pen stores up to 1MB of data and is connected via a serial cable to any cellular phone, and captured data can be sent via e-mail or fax to any other Internet-enabled device.

In a demonstration here, the digital part of the product appeared to work just fine; unfortunately, the pen ran out of ink. The product will sell initially for about $300, with a "long term" target price of $100, officials here said.

Demo 2001 runs through Tuesday.

(Ephraim Schwartz of Infoworld contributed to this story.)

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