Pervasive games

Contributors: Name(s)

Summary:
Pervasive games, in which people use rule sets rather than pre-written scripts to enact a game in communal spaces, will provide the models—and experience—for pervasive protests.

Jane McGonigal

Defines an emerging group of supergamers who have the following characteristics.

-Game structures engage supergamers more than performance scripts. The more established traditions of public play and performance tend to follow scripts, but I believe there is another, and much larger group, of people who can be mobilized through rule sets rather than scripts. That means a clearly stated goal, a "win scenario" they can clearly identify and measure their success against, clear methods for proceeding, "pleasurable inefficiency" (a built-in friction that all games have to make the goal more difficult to achieve. Like getting a tiny ball into a hole by hitting it with a stick, instead of just walking over and dropping it in), and metrics

-Internally satisfying as an activity. More attractive to "introverts". It's not about being extroverted, like old-school Cacophony stuff. Doesn't require an on-site audience. It is just fun in its own right. Even if no one is "looking." Self-contained in this way. Think: If a game is played in a forest and no one is standing around watching, is it still fun? (YES!)

So the people doing these are people looking for fun little activities, often in small groups. Something specific to do instead of just hanging out. Something that at the end of it, you feel "Oh, we really did something." But for yourself, not for an audience.

-Transparent to onlookers, if there are any. A lot of the old-school stuff is about making people look at you, live on site. Often in what I consider to be fairly anti-social and aggressive ways. That are hostile to people "not in the know." I like spectacle in as much as it is a good way to capture attention, but I don't think it requires confusing the hell out of onlookers.

Julian Bleecker

Examines pervasive games at the Annenberg Center at USC

Julian gave a talk at eTech that listed many examples of pervasive games:
www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/008187.php

Wil Wright - Sim games

Howard Rhinegold - mobilizing mobs

Ian Bloomquest

Flickr & The Ministry of Reshelving (from Jane McGonigal)

“My thinking is that activism, to be successful, needs to be visible-so I am using a visually-oriented networking medium to guide folks to create visually interesting moments of protest. Of course, I like that the protest moments have a temporary life and site-specficic impact in the real-world, as well as more enduring life and broader circulation online.

Also, I'm using a viral rule set/script, because I believe gamelike performance missions with instructions that can be snipped and passed around are an incredibly effective mobilizing tools. A clear goal, clear methods for proceeding, a certain "success" condition that can be measured objectively.

Anyway, the project is called The Ministry of Reshelving. Here's a link to the Flickr group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/reshelving/ . Also, a snip from the rule set:

How to Serve the Ministry of Reshelving - dedicated to the proper

1. Select a local bookstore to carry out your reshelving activities.

2. Download and print "This book has been relocated by the Ministry of Reshelving" bookmarks and "All copies of 1984 have been relocated" notecards to take with you to the bookstore. Or make your own. We recommend bringing a notecard and 5-10 bookmarks to each store.

3. Go to the bookstore and locate its copies of George Orwell's 1984. Unless the Ministry of Reshelving has already visited this bookstore, it is probably currently incorrectly classified as "Fiction" or "Literature."

4. Discreetly move all copies of 1984 to a more suitable section, such as "Current Events", "Politics", "History", "True Crime", or "New Non-Fiction."

5. Insert a Ministry of Reshelving bookmark into each copy of any book you have moved. Leave a notecard in the empty space the books once occupied.

6. If you spot other incorrectly classified books, feel free to relocate

7. Please report all reshelving efforts to the Ministry. Email your store name, location, # of 1984 copies reshelved, and any other reshelving activities conducted, to reshelving @ avantgame.com. Photos of your mission can be uploaded to Flickr, tagged as "reshelving", and submitted to the Ministry of Reshelving group.

Our goal is to relocate one thousand nine hundred and eighty-four copies,and to complete successful reshelving of 1984 in all 50 United States. Global contributions are welcome.

Note: this project is not a critique of bookstore culture, the state of the shelving industry, or even of pervasive government surveillance. It is merely an observation that 2 + 2 = 5, and 5 is no longer fiction.”

There's definitely many examples of mobs gathering in "games" to gather or disperse information. Like a mobile trainspotting that tracks license plates on the web. People were tracking a series of licenses plates. Couldn't this be used to then track things of more interest like license plates (and hence some of the actions) of politicians.

"I love bees" - promotional game for Halo 2 involved getting people into a whole virtual and immersive puzzle that drove demand of the game. Millions of users.

Red cross has simulation software to educate their aid workers. They get a bag of money to simulate catastrophe relief. If all money was spent on food, the mechanics of how things play out with those decisions.

Watercoolergames.org

People may take a role of "puppet master" and use something like the reshelving "game" to get people to protest in lieu of the participants actually caring about what the protest is about. This game might also play out in the virtual world where someone corrals an army of virtual avatars to influence opinion through protests.

These immersive games (i love bees, last call for poker) that are entertaining and so sticky becomes something to make more people aware of issues in the world might be better than just protesting.

Replay events like Hurricane Katrina to children to make people aware of the past.

Phyiscal tagging of bad things or things in protest.

Prediction markets used to help play out scenarios on how policies and its changes may affect the world. Wisdom of the crowds type games to fuel protest.

Broadcast physical buildboards that play on the short radius radio of people driving by. This could be turned into a game to get people to be aware of their local places.

Politicians and people can now more easily brand their causes.

A lot more media promoting brands of causes. Like fan sites for apple. Now there will be fan sites promoting or protesting causes. Instead of fan created commercials for Nike, someting about child labor.

By blending these games into the real world, it becomes easier then to get people to pay attention to causes that are local to a community.

Is it so much cheaper now to mobilize people to do these things, because its all virtual. Is it less or more distruptive? On one hand people may not be ditching work for protest, but they might be so distracted by these games.

Can the non-technically mobile still have access to these types of things, if they don't have a ton of access to PCs?

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