Pervasive Game Workshop

Slide 1: Pervasive Games Deploying Digital Content into Everyday Life for Play, Participation and Profit David Fono Founder, Giant Dice www.giantdice.com

Slide 2: A Story  Margaret’s Honey website gets “hacked”  Interested visitors talk to Dana, the webmaster, about what’s going on  Visitors find garbled “mayday” messages, fragments of a story in embedded code and corrupted images  Ongoing blog/email contact with Dana, mysterious artificial intelligences deepen mystery

Slide 3: A Story, Cont.

Slide 4: A Story, Cont.  Players come across puzzles hidden in the site, leading to more messages  Players are lead to payphones across US  Over 12 weeks thousands of players congregate at phones to hear story fragments, talk to an AI, and perform missions

Slide 5: A Question  What’s the difference between a game and “real life”?

Slide 6: Pervasive Gaming  Break / problematize the “magic circle”  Spatial  Temporal  Social  Simpler: “The world is the platform.”

Slide 7: The Spectrum of Pervasive Gaming cyberspace in-between meatspace also:

Slide 8: Interesting Numbers  Tie-Ins / Marketing  Art of the Heist: 45mil impressions  The Beast: 1mil players  I Love Bees: 2mil players  Independent  Chasing the Wish: 3k players  MetaCortechs: 12k players  Perplex City: 40k players

Slide 9: Play traditional MMO

Slide 10: Pervasive Play  Low production barrier  Low entry barrier  Dynamic  Flexible

Slide 11: Why is this so important?  Immersion  Games for multitaskers  Social capital (x2)  Massively scaled collaboration  True call-to-action  The old becomes news

Slide 12: Trends  Cross-media  Participation Culture  Collective Intelligence  Public Space Activism  Ubiquitous Computing  Social Computing

Slide 13: Cross-Media

Slide 14: Cross-Media (Gary Hayes)  “bathing the audience in a sea of your original inextricably linked content across continents of devices, letting them find their own path to live their own story”  1.0 - Pushed  2.0 - Extras  3.0 - Bridges  4.0 - Experiences

Slide 15: Participatory Culture

Slide 16: Participatory Culture

Slide 17: Participatory Culture  More than half of all teens are media creators (Pew)  This is a culture: (Henry Jenkins, henryjenkins.org)  1. With relatively low barriers  2. With strong support for creating and sharing  3. With some type of informal mentorship  4. Where members believe that their contributions matter  5. Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another

Slide 18: Participatory Culture “Scrap the focus groups, fire the cool chasers, and hire your audience.” Alex Wipperfurth

Slide 19: Collective Intelligence  The network will “mobilize and coordinate the intelligence, experience, skills, wisdom, and imagination of humanity.” (Pierre Levy)

Slide 20: Collective Intelligence

Slide 21: Collective Intelligence

Slide 22: Public Space Activism  “We are dedicated to protecting our shared common spaces from commercial influence and privatisation. While some see the streets as an untapped source of advertising revenue we see protected public spaces as a fundamental pillar of a healthy democracy. If only wealthy advertisers have access to our visual environment, then freedom of speech suffers in our city.” (Toronto Public Space Committee)

Slide 23: Public Space Activism (newmindspace.com)

Slide 24: Ubiquitous Computing  “The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it.” (Mark Weiser)

Slide 25: Ubiquitous Computing

Slide 26: Social Computing  “Humans are fundamentally social creatures. From birth we orient to other people, and as we develop we acquire abilities for interacting with one another ranging from expression and gesture through spoken and written language. As adults, we are exquisitely sensitive to the actions and interactions of those around us.” (IBM Social Computing Research Group)

Slide 27: Social Computing

Slide 28: Applications  Engagement  Audience  Customers  Employees  Taps current consumer behaviour  Engenders a strong relationship  Empowers participants

Slide 29: Applications  Marketing  Becoming virtually ubiquitous  Highly memorable  Gets you tons of buzz (even if it’s not that great)  Audience becoming too cynical?

Slide 30: Applications  Education / Training  Bleeding edge  Serious games point the way  Develop real-world skills in real-world contexts  Great for new media literacy, collaboration

Slide 31: Online Games

Slide 32: A Bunch of Words  ARGs: Alternate Reality Games  “Help save the world, srsly”  AREs: Alternate Reality Experiences  “Feel like you’re saving the world”  360 Campaigns / Extended Reality  “Enjoy the ride”  Treasure Hunt  Viral Marketing

Slide 33: Down the Rabbit Hole  “Alternate Reality Gaming (ARG) is a relatively new genre of games that encourages players (you!) to interact with a fictional world using the real world to do it.” (ARG Quickstart Guide, www.argitect.com)  A quick example:  Email --> Website --> Hidden Number --> Live conversation!

Slide 34: Down the Rabbit Hole Key points through case studies For more info, check out the IGDA whitepaper (igda.org/arg)

Slide 35: Types of ARGs  Promotional  Grassroots  Productized  Single-Player  Education / Training

Slide 36: A Promotional ARG  The Beast  By Microsoft, for A.I.  The “first” ARG

Slide 37: The Beast

Slide 38: The Beast  The Story  Evan Chan was killed. Who, how, and why? Takes place in the future.  Webpages  http://bangaloreworldu-in.co.cloudmakers.org/  Phone  Jeanine Salla’s voicemail  Live calls to players  Puzzles  Simple: hidden text  Complex: chemistry

Slide 39: The Beast  The Curtain  “Not so much as a cough from whichever team is responsible for producing it (Evan Chan has a grandson called 'Lucas' who designs video games, so LucasArts is Netribution's guess)”  This is Not a Game - performative suspension of disbelief  The Community  “We've managed to keep this thing pretty well organised thanks to the hard work of a few individuals and a co-operative spirit… Personally, I hope we can keep this underground. We probably can't though. So, to all of us 'old timers' I say, be prepared for a flood of newbies.”  Collective intelligence in action

Slide 40: Another Promotional ARG  I Love Bees  By 42 Entertainment, for Halo2  Rabbit Holes  Halo 2 Trailer  Funky packages:

Slide 41: I Love Bees  The Story  A weird AI has hacked into Dana’s aunt’s website. WTF?  Players called to payphones across US  Live events are big news  Large part of story told through segments of radio play over payphones  Storytelling through archaeology

Slide 42: I Love Bees

Slide 43: I Love Bees  Not many puzzles at first, but added in due to fan response (e.g. killer.jpg)  The game can improve on-the-fly  Clever gameplay takes advantage of the particular media  No blatant “Buy Halo 2 Message”  Trust is important - the experience is paramount

Slide 44: A Grassroots ARG  Chasing the Wish, Catching the Wish  By Dave Szulborski  The Story  Dale Sprague is a web designer who lives in Aglaura, NJ along with an assortment of other characters. Dale has been having strange dreams, and bizarre phenomena are occurring around town. They need help.

Slide 45: Catching the Wish  Heavily driven by dynamic character interaction  ARGs easily do what videogames still dream about  Run by a handful of people for about $1000  Agile development  A lot of bang for your buck

Slide 46: Catching the Wish  Various packages sent to players from characters, and purchased on eBay  Players really get into games that cross traditional media boundaries

Slide 47: A Productized ARG  Perplex City  By Mind Candy  The Story  Perplex City has lost the Receda Cube. It’s somewhere on Earth, and they need your help to find it.  The Product  Puzzle Cards

Slide 48: Perplex City  Mega-events… with helicopters!  Spectacle is becoming a key element  Competition  Players get points for solving cards  There’s a $200,000 prize at the end  But there are still huge community resources where players help each other  Competition and collaboration can live together (given the right conditions)

Slide 49: Perplex City  Collaboration:

Slide 50: Who Wins?

Slide 51: Another Productized ARG  Majestic  By Electronic Arts  Single player  Subscription based  The infamous catastrophic failure

Slide 52: Majestic  Why did it fail?  Ahead of its time  Not enough content  Arbitrary play-time limitations  Developers scared off of subscription model for next decade

Slide 53: More Productized ARGs  Cathy’s Book  An ARG-in-a-book  Edoc Laundry  An ARG-in-a-T-Shirt-Line

Slide 54: An Educational ARG  World Without Oil  By various people  Not your usual “game”  “What is your life like after the oil crash?”

Slide 55: World Without Oil  Material packaged and distributed to schools  With forethought, it is possible to have a lasting product  Almost all content player-generated  More evidence of incredible player dedication

Slide 56: When ARGs Go Wrong  Underestimating the Difficulty  Grassroots creators unprepared for unique demands of the genre  Running the game is as much work (or more) as preparing it  Professional creators underestimate the capability of the community to break the game  Your game is going to break

Slide 57: When ARGs Go Wrong  Drink Your Ovaltine  Ethan Haas Was Right  Fleshed out puzzle trail with websites, phone numbers, hand-delivered letters, a registration form and a countdown to the “next phase”  The countdown ends… and it’s just an ad

Slide 58: When ARGs Go Wrong  Poor expectations management  Iris  Microsoft’s Halo 3 promotion  Much less intricate than I Love Bees, and riddled with technical problems

Slide 59: When ARGs Go Wrong

Slide 60: When ARGs Go Wrong  Misunderstanding the Audience  Save my Husband  Mainstream competitive players confused by collaboration in ARG community  Some mainstream players confused about fictitious nature of plot  Golden Jigsaw  Tried to shutdown player collaboration, provoking discontent

Slide 61: Nuts and Bolts  Exposition  Heavy narrative element compared to videogames  Blogs (cheap and easy!)  Websites (narrative landscape)  Audio / video (nice reward)  The world’s intrinsic weirdness  Newspapers, TV, Movies, Posters, Skywriting…

Slide 62: Nuts and Bolts  Interaction  The defining characteristic?  Chat (live / bot)  Phone (live / message)  Email (autoresponse / mass / conversation)  Face-to-face interaction

Slide 63: Nuts and Bolts  Challenges  Puzzles  Cryptography  “Hacking”  Learning a system  Etc.  Games (easy to grok)  Player Projects  Social Engineering

Slide 64: The Audience  Diverse demographics  Community play  www.unfiction.com  Player-created resources  Different levels of engagement  Devotees  Active Players  Casual Players  Curious Browsers

Slide 65: The Audience  Different player types  Character interactor  Community support  Information specialist  Puzzle solver  Reader  Story hacker  Story specialist

Slide 66: Challenges  Plausible suspension of disbelief  Respecting the audience  Selecting / understanding the audience  Dealing with the unexpected  Managing expectations  Preventing frustration  Fostering accessibility & reusing content

Slide 67: Opportunities  Incredibly dedicated fans  An incredibly immersive experience  Utterly remarkable collaboration  A lot of buzz  …for cheap!

Slide 68: Locative Games  Big Games  Urban Games  Street Games  Pervasive Games  Mixed Reality Games “The world is a game board.”

Slide 69: What Are Locative Games  Games that map a significant area of real- world space to game constructs  Landscape  Artifacts  The space itself  At least some players are within that space  Technology not critical, but it can add tremendous value

Slide 70: Some Examples  Cruel 2 B Kind  Jane McGonigal & Ian Bogost  http://www.current.tv/video/?id=25511301  Uncle Roy All Around You  Blast Theory  http://blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_uncleroy.html

Slide 71: Big Games Doc  What Are Big Games?  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1394867462119324238  Learning Skills Through Play  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7206449325841236249  The Future of Big Games  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2135527604136480712

Slide 72: How Are They Used?  These are mostly experiments / art  But there’s a few  commercial games  employee / client engagement  And there’s the potential for  localized marketing / tourism  education / training

Slide 73: A Commercial Game  Bot Fighters  Fight with bots in your vicinity  $70k / month!

Slide 74: An Engagement Game  The Go Game  Operates across the US, running games for:  Team-building  Conferences  Special Events  Basic mission structure

Slide 75: The Go Game

Slide 76: Deriving Design Principles  Difficult, because few games have parameters for success  But, we have some  Facilitate performativity  Use the space  Use the people  Allow flexibility  Balance the technology  Respect “outsiders”

Slide 77: Facilitate Performativity  “Drop your pants and dance”

Slide 78: Facilitate Performativity  Performing missions instead of making decisions  Players as actors  Designers as puppet masters  The illusion of the puppet master creates immersivity  The reality is that the players have control

Slide 79: Use the Space  New York is not Sydney  Challenge: reusing content

Slide 80: Use the People  The people who play these games are generally pretty friendly

Slide 81: Allow Flexibility  Reality intervenes  Technology breaks  You have no control  Don’t panic!

Slide 82: Balance the Technology  Too much mediation defeats the purpose  What tech can do  Gosh wow! aesthetics  Local feedback  Distance communication  Leaving traces  Props  Technology should be transparent

Slide 83: Balance the Technology  Your technology is too hard to use  Test and iterate in real contexts  Automation is tricky  Design beautiful seams

Slide 84: Respect “Outsiders”  People don’t like to be used, or to be threatened

Slide 85: Tools of the Trade  Mobiles (Phone / SMS / MMS)  Mobiles w/ Location Sensing  Mobiles with Bluetooth  Mobiles with the Web  PSP / DS with Wifi  Laptops with Wifi  RFID  Semacodes

Slide 86: Tools of the Trade  Portable Sensors  Fixed Sensors  Misc. Props  The World  Actors  MP3 Players  Projectors  Large Displays  Digital Cameras

Slide 87: A Few More Games  3001  Mobiles, Projector  Control an avatar to create collab. music

Slide 88: A Few More Games  CollecTic  PSP  Collect resources from wifi points

Slide 89: A Few More Games  Navball  Mobiles w/ GPS  Find the ball, line up to kick it and score

Slide 90: A Few More Games  OMMRPG  Mirrors and lasers!  Place the mirrors and guide the laser

Slide 91: TorGame’s Waking City  2-week online/offline game w/ 120 paying players  Websites, blogs, email, live theatrics, live games, puzzles, etc.  Goals: build community, knowledge of Toronto  In between an ARG and a locative game  The trailer  http://youtube.com/watch?v=56uc1D_0VDw  TV segment

Slide 92: Waking City: Day 1  Video Blog 1  http://youtube.com/watch?v=56uc1D_0VDw

Slide 93: Waking City: Day 2

Slide 94: Waking City: Days 3-6

Slide 95: Waking City: Day 7

Slide 96: Waking City: Day 8

Slide 97: Waking City: Days 9-11

Slide 98: Waking City: Days 12-13

Slide 99: Lessons  Clear communication is important!  So is clever crisis management  You need to be open with your players  There’s such a thing as too much fun  Cross-media stories can be harder to follow  Actors are more integral than usual  Attrition is a reality

Slide 100: Successes  Most players enjoyed the game  Players reported an increased familiarity with the city  Players formed new friendships  Players indicated they would return to businesses they’d visited  Plenty of buzz

Slide 101: Next Steps  Further explore the online / offline hybrid  Further explore urban engagement between players, the city, and local businesses

Slide 102: Questions?