Pervasive game ethnography

big game ethnography early research results

who am i _ 10 years as producer/product manager BBC syzygy social software agency _ 4 years into academia at UWE doing PhD researcher in the DCRC teaching web and games stuff

my project

why do this?

what are pervasive games?

naming the unnamable Alternate reality games Transmedial games Augmented reality games Urban games Mixed-reality games Street games Ubiquitous computing games Smart street sports Ubicomp games New sports Locative games Big games GPS games City-wide games Mobile games Interesting games Massively multiplayer mobile games

expanding the circle CC: gwydionwilliams @ flickr

big games copyright area/code

a brief history of pervasive games early experiments IPerG festivals & marketing 99 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 10

early experiments copyright B.U.G

IPerG copyright IPerG project

festivals and marketing

whereʼs bristol?

style of research

points _ hipsters and habitus _ nostalgia _ festivals and games _ games: from computer to urban

hipsters and habitus

But this game was completely transparent, you can kind of see the machinations of everything and I could even see like the bombers, behind like the green thing they were hiding from, and you know the Game Developer's right there and pressing the buttons to make the sound effects.

hipster aesthetic _ highly referential but not ironic _ lo-ﬁ and hand-made aesthetic _ cool as cultural capital

This experience to me is closest to playing Man Hunt or Cops & Robbers when you were a little kid, as a 7, 8 year old running in the streets of your neighbourhood with your closest friends and just being physical, but still adhering to a certain set of rules This is exactly the same enjoying it as a child and there's no reason why people can't enjoy it now as adults This is something that they enjoyed as kids, there's no reason why they can't enjoy it now. It's just a slightly more mature version, slightly more advanced and more complex concepts and different ideas.

nostalgia

One thing I've always enjoyed are computer games I play games and board games, I've been going to a games club for the past 4 years, but it's funny I don't know if I can really call myself a gamer in the usual sense because I donʼt feel like I really do it that much, maybe once a week. I like to play Colonisation and Civilisation on the computer and Simcity

computer games meet the real world

So yes we didnʼt want to do that any more, so technology can really give you an advantage or it can give you a means to create an experience that you couldnʼt have otherwise. Now a good use of technology will do that, [...] the experience is really novel and it is really interesting but itʼs kind of ruined by the fact that you have to go through this device management process.

from computer games to urban games copyright IPerG project

Well there is deﬁnitely like this social experience part of it that you don't have playing a game by yourself in your room, or I mean maybe like an arcade in the older days back when arcades were popular and you could have a little bit of socialising with people watching and cheering you on, but this is much more, yes I would say the social part is the biggest change about it. I think we were a very nice group, so it worked very nicely. I didnʼt know the people in the beginning, I didnʼt know what their strengths were. It was nice, I think we built a nice team. I did make eye contact with those bombers a few times, those enemies of mine.

festivals and games

cutting room ﬂoor _ discovery _ web native experiences _ criticality and cultural comment _ politics, power, prestige

thanks for listening

Pervasive game ethnography

by Dan Dixon on Nov 05, 2010

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Pervasive game ethnography — Presentation Transcript