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A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming - Ed Jewett - 29-09-2010
This could have perhaps been posted in a number of categories: arts, media, culture, propaganda, science, information, surveillance... it seems to be a 21st-century mixture of all of them.
Read the pdf, then read the background, comment as you will, and then you tell me where it belongs, and more.
The recent find:
A Case Study in Collective Intelligence Gaming ( a 43-page PDF by Jane McGonigal)
Click on either link
http://www.avantgame.com/McGonigal_WhyILoveBees_Feb2007.pdf
Some background:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_McGonigal
Storytelling in new media: The case of alternate reality games
“There is a great deal of debate about how to define the term "alternate reality game" and what should be included or excluded by the definition. Sean Stacey, founder of the website Unfiction, has suggested that the best way to define the genre was not to define it, and instead locate each game on three axes (ruleset, authorship and coherence) in a sphere of "chaotic fiction" that would include works such as the Uncyclopedia and street games like SF0 as well.[2] If one accepts noted game designer Chris Crawford's definition of a game (it requires that there is an opponent), then ARGs are perhaps better understood as puzzles. However, if the puppetmasters are actively changing the game while it is going on (as happened with The Beast), then the ARG does more closely fit the definition of a game.”
“Among the terms essential to understand discussions about ARGs are:
Puppetmaster- A puppetmaster or "PM" is an individual involved in designing and/or running an ARG. Puppetmasters are simultaneously allies and adversaries to the player base, creating obstacles and providing resources for overcoming them in the course of telling the game's story. Puppetmasters generally remain behind the curtain while a game is running. The real identity of puppet masters may or may not be known ahead of time.
The Curtain - The curtain is generally a metaphor for the separation between the puppetmasters and the players. This can take the traditional form of absolute secrecy regarding the puppetmasters' identities and involvement with the production, or refer merely to the convention that puppetmasters do not communicate directly with players through the game, interacting instead through the characters and the game's design.
Rabbithole - Also known as a Trailhead. A Rabbithole marks the first website, contact, or puzzle that starts off the ARG.
Trailhead - A deliberate clue which enables a player to discover a way into the game. Most ARGs employ a number of trailheads in several media, to maximise the probability of people discovering the game. Some trailheads may be covert, others may be thinly-disguised adverts.
This Is Not A Game (TINAG) - Setting the ARG form apart from other games is the This Is Not A Game aesthetic, which dictates that the game not behave like a game: phone numbers mentioned in the ARG, for example, should actually work, and the game should not provide an overtly-designated playspace or ruleset to the players.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game
**
The WikiPedia article also describes:
--Similarities and differences to other forms of entertainment
--Influences and precursors
--Basic design principles of ARGs (important reading)
See also the sections on
--grassroots development
--community development
--commercial games
--the self-supporting ARG
--the serious ARG
--new developments
--TV tie-ins and "Extended Experiences"
The WikiPedia article lists as over 60 linked or downloadable references:
McGonigal, Jane (2003), "A Real Little Game: The Performance of Belief in Pervasive Play" (PDF), Digital Games Research Association (DiGRA) "Level Up" Conference Proceedings
"A Conspiracy of Conspiracy Gamers". WIRED. 2001-09-19. http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,46672,00.html. Retrieved on 2007-02-19.
***
"Anyone interested in developing an Alternate Reality Game in London/other sites in UK. The game is based in a near future, dystopian society. A small group of individuals resist a sinister multinational corporation that aims to control the entire population. The game is influenced by various works, including 'The Crying of Lot 49' by Thomas Pynchon, 'The Traveler' by John Twelve Hawks and 'The Prisoner' TV series with Patrick McGoohan. The game is in the early stages of development. If interested in getting involved, please get in touch by joining www.wespeakforfreedom ".
***
http://www.argn.com/ The ARG network
****
First Monday
http://firstmonday.org/
First Monday is one of the first openly accessible, peer–reviewed journals on the Internet, solely devoted to the Internet. A lead article in the latest issue is
Storytelling in new media: The case of alternate reality games, 2001–2009
by Jeffrey Kim, Elan Lee, Timothy Thomas, and Caroline Dombrowski
First Monday, Volume 14, Number 6 - 1 June 2009
http://www.uic.edu/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/i.../view/2484/2199
Some of the references:
Helena Cole and Mark Griffiths, 2007. “Social interactions in massively multiplayer online role–playing gamers,” CyberPsychology and Behavior, volume 10, number 4, pp. 575–583.
GDA (International Game Developer’s Association), 2006. “2006 alternate reality games white paper,” at http://www.igda.org/arg/resources/IGDA-Alt...epaper-2006.pdf, accessed 25 February 2009.
Nick Iuppa and Terry Borst, 2006. Story and simulations for serious games: Tales from the trenches. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Henry Jenkins, 2004. “Chasing bees, without the hive mind,” MIT Technology Review (3 December), at http://www.technologyreview.com/, accessed 25 February 2009.
Henry Jenkins, Ravi Purushotma, Katherine Clinton, Margaret Weigel and Alice Robison, 2006. “Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st century,” Project New Media Literacies, at http://www.newmedialiteracies.org/files/wo...LWhitePaper.pdf, accessed 25 February 2009.
Jeffrey Kim and John King, 2004. “Managing knowledge work: Specialization and collaboration of engineering problem,” Journal of Knowledge Management, volume 8, number 2, pp. 53–63.
Jeffrey Kim, Jonathan P. Allen, and Elan Lee, 2008. “Alternate reality gaming,” Communications of the ACM, volume 51, number 2, pp. 36–42.
Andrew Losowsky, 2003 “Puppet masters,” Guardian (11 December), at http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,481...-110837,00.html, accessed 25 February 2009.
Alexander MacGill, 2008. “Adults and video games,” Pew Internet & American Life Project (7 December), at http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/269/report_display.asp, accessed 25 February 2009.
Jane McGonigal, 2008. “Saving the world through game design: Stories from the near future,” 2008 New Yorker Conference, at http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conf.../2008/mcgonigal, accessed 25 February 2009.
N. Nova, T. Wehrle, J. Goslin, Y. Bourquin, and P. Dillenbourg, 2007. “Collaboration in a multi–user game: Impacts of an awareness tool on mutual modeling,” Multimedia Tools and Applications, volume 32, number 2 (February), pp. 161–183.
Shintaro Okazaki, Radoslav Skapa and Ildefonso Grande, 2008, “Capturing global youth: Mobile gaming in the U.S., Spain, and the Czech Republic,” Journal of Computer–Mediated Communication, volume 13, number 4, pp. 827–855.
Tasmin Osborne, 2003. “The virtual battle of the sexes,” BBC News, Technology (23 December), at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7796482.stm, accessed 18 May 2009.
D.D. Pennington, 2008. “Cross–disciplinary collaboration and learning,” Ecology and Society volume 13, number 2, at http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol13/iss2/art8/, accessed 18 May 2009.
Frank Rose, 2007. “Secret Websites, coded messages: The new world of immersive games,” Wired volume 16, number 1, at http://www.wired.com/entertainment/music/m...e/16-01/ff_args, accessed 25 February 2009.
Sean Stewart, 2008. “Alternate reality games,” at http://www.seanstewart.org/interactive/args/, accessed 25 February 2009.
Wikipedia, “Alternate reality games,” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game, accessed 25 February 2009.
Dmitri Williams, Nick Yee, and Scott Caplan, 2008. “Who plays, how much, and why?
Debunking the stereotypical gamer profile,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, volume 13, number 4, pp. 993–1018.
About the authors:
Jeffrey Kim, Ph.D., is the Director of the Institute for National Security Education and Research at the Information School of the University of Washington.
Elan Lee is one of the foremost Alternate Reality Game designers and founder of Fourth Wall Studios.
Timothy Thomas is a CIA Officer in Residence at the University of Washington.
Caroline Dombrowski is a Research Project Manager at the University of Washington.
The last three sentences: “ The next few years will reveal if industries outside of gaming and marketing can use the same principles to harness the intellect and drive of wide groups of people. The rise of “serious” games, such as World Without Oil, demonstrates the growing desire to do just that (McGonigal, 2008). As participation and information sharing increases, the special case of ARGs indicates a potential path towards changing the world. “
***
Tutorial for playing Alternate Reality Games
http://www.unfiction.com/dev/tutorial/
******
http://virtualeconomics.typepad.com/.a/6a0...8789e970c-800wi
************************************************************
“‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’ he continued.
[B]‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.
And while you’re studying that reality —judiciously, as you will— we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.
We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’ ”[/B]
************************************************************
“Obama Ads Appear in Video Game"
By DAVE ITZKOFF
"Video gamers who have recently played the racing game Burnout Paradise may find it offers more than a high-speed driving simulation: advertisements for Senator Barack Obama’s presidential campaign, above, have begun appearing in the game. Players of Burnout Paradise who are connected to the Internet are also connected to an in-game system that allows real-life sponsors to place advertisements on billboards and other surfaces in its digital world. Jeff Brown, vice president of communications at Electronic Arts, which publishes Burnout Paradise, said Mr. Obama’s campaign had purchased ads to run in the Xbox 360 version of the game, which he said is most popular among male players ages 16 to 30. The ads will run until Nov. 3 in 10 battleground states. “
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/15/arts/15a...2.html?ref=arts
***
Another Version of the Truth
[B]from the US Bureau of Morality[/B]
***
Aftershock, run by the Institute for the Future
[ http://www.iftf.org/ ] [in Palo Alto, CA] and Art Center College of Design, is based on a 300-page U.S. Geological Survey scenario report that details the extensive damage that Southern California could experience in the aftermath of a 7.8-magnitude quake on the San Andreas Fault. The game began on Thursday and will run for three weeks, prompting users to complete real-world missions — and submit content based on them to the gaming community.
"Disaster preparedness was at the point where the messaging had hit the limit. You can give people this really elegantly designed flyer, and they stick it in a drawer and it hits them in the head during the earthquake," said Jason Tester, the lead game designer at the IFTF. "[The game] says, 'You are experiencing a real earthquake.' We're trying to make it feel visceral."
***
Crowdsourcing the future:
Can alternate reality game Superstruct help save the world?
Dan Kaplan
September 29th, 2008
The year is 2019. Respiratory Distress Syndrome, or REDS, has appeared in Stockholm, the first city outside of the tropics to see a case. The disease is known to overwhelm local health resources everywhere it goes, and news of health insurance companies going belly up has become routine. Word is spreading that in the absence of effective governmental responses, ad hoc militias have been forming to forcibly quarantine infected populations around the globe.
On its own, REDS sounds like a major disaster, but it is not the kind of thing that could put an end to the world. But in Superstruct, a large-scale online game put on by the Institute for the Future, REDS is merely one of five independent “superthreats” coming to a head in 2019. The others involve 250 million climate change refugees, the steady breakdown of the global food supply, increasingly brazen attacks on the world’s cyber infrastructure and the rising international tensions surrounding the world’s failure to agree on standards for renewable energy.
Taken together, these five threats pose a catastrophic risk to the human species.
The game forecasts that humans will be wiped out by 2042. The point of Superstruct, which anyone can begin playing on October 6, is to work together with fellow players and find brilliant ways to avert this fate.
More here:
http://venturebeat.com/2008/09/29/crowdsou...save-the-world/
The Institute for the Future created Superstruct because it suspects that without cooperation on a worldwide scale, the crises of the medium-term future could collectively obliterate everything our species has achieved.
The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is based in California's Silicon Valley, in a community at the crossroads of technological innovation, social experimentation, and global interchange. Founded in 1968 by a group of former RAND Corporation researchers with a grant from the Ford Foundation to take leading-edge research methodologies into the public and business sectors, the IFTF is committed to building the future.
"Networks and Netwars:
The Future of Terror, Crime, and Militancy"
Image: file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/Ed/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/msoclip1/01/clip_image007.jpg
Edited by: John Arquilla, David Ronfeldt
[B]Netwar-like cyberwar-describes a new spectrum of conflict that is emerging in the wake of the information revolution. Netwar includes conflicts waged, on the one hand, by terrorists, criminals, gangs, and ethnic extremists; and by civil-society activists (such as cyber activists or WTO protestors) on the other. What distinguishes netwar is the networked organizational structure of its practitioners-with many groups actually being leaderless-and their quickness in coming together in swarming attacks. To confront this new type of conflict, it is crucial for governments, military, and law enforcement to begin networking themselves.
See Also:
Paperback Cover Price: $25.00 (Amazon, Barnes & NBoble, et al)
Discounted Web Price: $22.50
Pages: 380
ISBN/EAN: 0-8330-3030-2[/B]
Contents
[B]Preface PDF
Summary PDF
Acknowledgments PDF
Chapter One:
The Advent of Netwar (Revisited) PDF
Part I: Violence-Prone Netwars
Chapter Two:
The Networking of Terror in the Information Age PDF
Chapter Three:
Transnational Criminal Networks PDF
Chapter Four:
Gangs, Hooligans, and Anarchists - the Vanguard of Netwar in the Streets PDF
Part II: Social Netwars
Chapter Five:
Networking Dissent: Cyber Activists Use the Internet to Promote Democracy in Burma PDF
Chapter Six:
Emergence and Influence of the Zapatista Social Netwar PDF
Chapter Seven:
Netwar in the Emerald City: WTO Protest Strategy and Tactics PDF
Part III: Once and Future Netwars
Chapter Eight:
Activism, Hacktivism, and Cyberterrorism: the Internet As a Tool for Influencing Foreign Policy PDF
Chapter Nine:
The Structure of Social Movements: Environmental Activism and Its Opponents PDF
Chapter Ten:
What Next for Networks and Netwars? PDF
Afterword (September 2001): The Sharpening Fight for the Future PDF
Contributors PDF
About the Authors PDF
[/B]
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1382/index.html
“Immersion, engagement, and consideration start to become tools for looking the way audiences engage with brands (who are the advertising industry’s clients.) … An ARG audience judges first and foremost on the quality of the experience they having: later people who come along and try to “save them” from the “advertising campaign” get told by those advocates, 'Yes, we know there’s a sponsor, but we’re having a great time, so we don’t need saving, see you later!'”
[B]“... ARGs are fascinating because they work from creative assumptions[/B] that rely upon those traits that are unique to networked audiences, a relatively recent addition to mediascape for most people.... Cognitive psychology continues to find surprising connections between the way the brain works and the narratives we use to explain existence to ourselves and each other. Play (for certain) and gameplay (perhaps) predate even narrative on the tree of ancient human technologies.”
http://retext.blogspot.com/2007/05/lets-be...non-casual.html
IGDA ARG SIG WhitePaper
[B]A White Paper (in Wiki Format) from
the Int'l Game Design Assocation
Alternate Reality Games Special Interest Group
http://www.igda.org/wiki/index.php/Alterna..._SIG/Whitepaper
http://www.igda.org/arg/
“Alternate-reality gaming blends real-life treasure hunting, interactive storytelling, video games and online community--and may be one of the most powerful guerrilla marketing mechanisms ever invented.”[/B]
"It's a very addictive form of entertainment," said Steve Peters, a Las Vegas musician who is one of the founders of the Alternate Reality Gaming Network, a set of Web sites devoted to the topic. "People stay up all night; it really is very immersive."
It's exactly that dedication that has made alternate-reality games powerful marketing mechanisms. The two biggest games so far have been associated with products: Stephen Spielberg's "A.I." movie and Microsoft's "Halo 2." Advertising executives say it's a promising tool.
"When other people are missionaries for your brand, you've got something special," said Jordan Fisher, director of brand planning at Perceive, an advertising agency in Los Angeles. "The brand becomes something much bigger, has a purpose rather than being just another product on the shelf."
“Transformed reality or underhanded trick?
Indeed, the appeal of playing the games--and of writing them, their authors say--is that the lines between what's real and what's part of the game quickly become blurred. It can be an extraordinarily paranoia-inducing experience.
As part of the run-up to Perplex City, known as "Project Syzygy," a series of postcards began appearing around the world. Several have been found randomly in Bologna, Italy, and North Carolina. They have a painting of a city scene on them and a series of coded messages on the back.
Players quickly realized that the lit windows of the building translated into "Hello World" in binary code. The "stamp" was an electronically readable barcode translating into "www.PerplexCity.com."
The significance of several series of numbers on the cards remains unknown, however--and that's where the paranoia is running high. One number was an anagram of 2012, the year that London is hoping to host the Olympics. Players visited the London Olympics Web page and found quickly that it had been created by a Web design company called "Syzygy."
A coincidence? Probably. But the players aren't sure.
The collective mind has come up with sometimes astonishing information, however.
One series of digits featured in an early teaser advertisement was deciphered as the ISBN number of science fiction author William Gibson's "Pattern Recognition," with specific words on certain pages spelling out a message.
The community has even found the exact street in Japan where a video associated with the game was filmed. What that means, if anything, remains to be seen.”
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-141493.html
***
October 05, 2005
[B]Antecedents to alternate reality games
Infocult: Information, Culture, Policy, Education
Information: its culture, history, and role in teaching and learning.[/B]
http://infocult.typepad.com/infocult/2005/...edents_to_.html
John Robb over at GlobalGuerillas has extensive commentary on the intersection between gaming and resiliency in this chaotic world
here: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/global...nd-reality.html and
here: http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/global...ryone-wins.html
Each entry is built around an embedded video.