Skip to main content

World’s first pee-controlled video game opens in London bar

In most pubs and bars, going for a pee involves just that – emptying your bladder, washing your hands and returning to your table. However, take a pee in The Exhibit bar in south London and you’ll have an altogether different experience.

You see, The Exhibit has taken it upon itself to install in its men’s bathroom a number of pee-controlled video games; games with carefully thought up names such as Clever Dick and On The Piste. The system is thought to be the first of its kind in the world, and besides making a trip to the bathroom more entertaining, it will also be an opportunity for advertisers to promote their products.

Developed by UK-based Captive Media, the high-tech urinals come with 12-inch LCD screens fitted just above them. Ads play on the screens until a punter approaches the urinal. Detecting that the punter is in position and ready to pee, the system then switches into gaming mode.

“Sophisticated algorithms then allow the user to do something simple, but VERY engaging – controlling the system just by aiming their stream left or right!” the blurb says on Captive Media’s website. So with the skiing game, you’re able to navigate the course with some subtle but deft movements. How well you do at the game is entirely in your hands, so to speak.

Image used with permission by copyright holder

The pee-controlled urinals are the brainchild of Gordon MacSween, a man who is effectively paid too pee. “We tend to drink a lot of water so that we can test the product more often,” he told London’s Time Out magazine.

MacSween said that when the system was trialed at a bar in Cambridge recently, a couple of behavioral changes among the peeing public were noted. “There has been less mess, which we sort of expected because we designed the game so you’re not splashing about, and less vandalism,” he explained.

“When we put it in, people thought it’d be ripped off the wall within a week, but it’s still there after four months. Because people are having a laugh, there’s a lot less vandalism. People just tend to get less angry.”

At one point MacSween was baffled by players’ ability to achieve scores far above anything he ever got. After talking to some customers, he found out why. “It turns out people were learning how to stop and start (their pee flow) to get higher scores.” So if you ever find yourself peeing for points, you know exactly what to do.

The Exhibit bar opened its new bathroom on Friday. It’s quite possible that for the first time ever in a UK drinking establishment, there’ll be more people lining up for the bathroom than for a drink.

It’s not known what, if anything, Captive Media has planned for the women’s bathroom.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
The best Dragon’s Dogma 2 mods
Dragon's Dogma 2 key art featuring a knight with a fiery hole in their chest.

Even before release, there were some red flags about how Dragon's Dogma 2 would perform on a technical level. While console players need to wait and hope for patches to fix things, those on PC can already improve their games through the hard work of modders. Of course, technical improvements are only one area where modders focus. With such a massive world and many systems in place, Dragon's Dogma 2 is brimming with potential for mods of all shapes and sizes. Aside from mods that just improve your performance, most are better saved for after you've reached the true ending, but no one is going to stop you if you'd rather start experimenting from the start. Here are a handful of the best mods you should try in Dragon's Dogma 2.
Dragon's Dogma 2 DLSS3 Enabler 01 - Puredark

For whatever reason, Dragon's Dogma 2 launched with its DLSS3 function disabled. While it is assumed it will be turned on at some point with a patch, modder Puredark went ahead and released the simple Dragon's Dogma 2 DLSS3 Enabler 01 to let you actually play the game with better visuals and framerates. If you have an Nvidia 4000 series GPU, there's no reason not to install this simple enabler.
Crazy's Shop

Read more
V Rising – Legacy of Castlevania crossover will let you fight Simon Belmont
Castlevania's Simon Belmont in V Rising.

Stunlock Studios and Konami have revealed that the survival crafting game V Rising will feature Castlevania crossover content when it leaves early access this May.

V Rising is a survival game where players control a vampire, and this crossover adds Simon Belmont as a hunter who's constantly trying to track down and kill players. If Simon Belmont is defeated, players will be able to equip and use his whip as a weapon. While that content is being added to V Rising free of charge as soon as it hits 1.0, a paid Legacy of Castlevania Premium Pack DLC will also be released. Purchasing it will net players Castlevania-themed decorations and music for their lair. These are all fitting crossover spots for a game that already heavily features vampires and pumps some life back into an unfortunately dormant game series.

Read more
What is dragonsplague in Dragon’s Dogma 2 and how is it cured?
A dragon roars in Dragon's Dogma 2.

Dragon's Dogma 2 likes to keep many of its mechanics and systems a secret until you discover them. You will learn quickly that you can't fast travel around the map freely, but there's one mechanic that is far more detrimental to your game. This is called dragonsplague and it is a disease that can't be cured with a simple tonic. In fact, you may not even realize if you have it in your game because it isn't something that affects your character at all; instead, it affects your Pawns. Failing to recognize you have dragonsplague and deal with it in a timely manner can ruin your entire playthrough if you're not careful. To avoid such a catastrophe, here are all the details about this cruel disease.
What is dragonsplague?

Dragonsplague is a special kind of disease that Pawns can contract seemingly by interacting with either Drakes or Dragons. That part isn't fully clear yet, however, we do know that Pawns with dragonsplague can spread the disease to other Pawns. Since Pawns are able to pass between worlds to join other players, you are never fully safe from being infected if you're playing online. Unlike a real sickness, though, dragonsplague actually transfers between Pawns rather than spreads, meaning it won't fully run rampant through the game.

Read more