no shit
30.09.2009
Stenros, J et al ~ The Ethics of Pervasive Gaming
category: PhD sources
tags: , ,

Chapter 10 in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

197
“In general, games distinguish themselves from everyday life in that they delimit activity differently. Things that are acceptable within the magic circle of a game might not be so in ordinary life, and vice versa.”
“Games liberate the activities of those who participate in them through offering a context where the outcomes of their actions do not influence their daily life. This is a central feature of the magic circle: The restrictions set down by the game are needed for the game to be free and liberating. [...] Expanding the magic circle takes pervasive games into a hazardous area, where a situation is ludic for some and ordinary for others.”
If bystanders don’t know they are watching a game, they might call the police or get seriously angry.

“Games are not the only human activity that has this property: Art, politics, and sacred ceremonies are all social systems that are demarked with differently framed ethics. However, social systems must be upheld socially; their limits are constantly renegotiated by those involved. In secretive pervasive games, ludic and ordinary activities become blurred, and social negotiation becomes impossible, or at least fraudulent, as some participants are not as well equipped to participate. This is a feature that pervasive games share with transgressive activities in other social systems.”

198
“‘When climbing past windows it is not polite to look in. This is especially true if there is something interesting to see.’”

201
“In a playful state of mind, “within reason” means something different from what it means in a serious context. Jane McGonigal has noted that pervasive games have a tendency to shift the focus from free play within illusory constraints toward becoming actors playing their part in a vision dictated by the game designer.”

205
“In alternate reality games, it is common to include several levels of invitations, bringing a person further and further toward full-fledged playership, using the onion model of participation. As the full rules of a pervasive game are not always exposed at the time of entering the game, repeated levels of invitations can provide a good mechanism to ensure that players have a good picture of what they are agreeing to each time they decide to participate more deeply.”

208
“Usually, events that are organized for “the common good” have more leeway. Organizations, be they department stores or museums, are more willing to cooperate with game oganizers if the game collects money for charity or seeks to liven up a neighborhood in a joyous and egalitarian way. Similarly, unaware participants are more likely to forgive transgressions for good causes, but if money is made out of the venture, they may feel that the profit has been made at their expense.”

209
“Gaining a genuine societal acceptance is the best long-term strategy: Conversing with officials in advance and paying rent for the play areas are good ways to get started.”

206
“A basic piece of advice is therefore to always notify the relevant authorities, be it the police department or park rangers, that one is about to run a game in their jurisdiction. If something unexpected were to happen and they need to get involved, forewarning can be instrumental in helping to defuse a situation.”

210
5 defenses of art (A. Julius; 2003; Transgressions: The offences in art):
1. aesthetic alibi (although some forms of expression, such as hate speech and blaspehmy, can be legislated and cicumscribed, these restrictions do not apply to art)
2. art speech (artistic expression is on par with political and commercial speech, and thus, for example, government funding must be allocated to all kinds of artists or else the state is not living up to constitutional requirements)
3. estrangement defense (art teaches its audience something about themselves, the world, or art itself. Shocking the viewer is necessary to shatter illusions, to astonish, to disturb, to seduce, or to shake things up)
4. formalist defense (it is the job of art to explore form and the spectator should learn to keep his cool distance and contemplate. The subject is not relevant, only the presentation)
5. canonical defense (it looks for continuity in the canon of art. It finds similar works that are respected, points to them, and shows that, logically, if the new work is dismissed, there goes the canon as well)

211
“While all games are forms of expression, freedom of expression cannot be uncritically extended to cover all pervasive games: Performative activity on the far edge of the magic circle is not only expression, but also physical acting in ordinary life. While freedom of expression covers both the magic circle and ordinary life, it can be argued that it is limited to the world of representation and not extended to the physical world. It is one thing to write and stage a play where a person is pushed in front of a car, but claiming that freedom of expression covers shoving a pedestrian into traffic in ordinary life would be preposterous. But where is the line drawn?”
“It is easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission. But just as one might not receive permission, forgiveness is not automatic either.”

212
“Pervasive games are in constant and sometimes unavoidable conflict with ordinary reality.”

29.09.2009
Kirsner, S ~ Inventing The Movies
category: PhD sources
tags:

THE PAGE NUMBERS IN THE PDF VERSION ARE DIFFERENT FROM THE PAGE NUMBERS IN THE PRINT VERSION!

The last point (pages 195-199) is VERY good.

37
“The major studios had one perfectly valid business reason not to license certain films to television: they knew they could make more money by re-releasing their old films to theaters. “…Video just can’t pay enough,” said Dore Schary, MGM’s head of production. “We probably couldn’t even get more than $75,000 the way things are now. But if we re-release something like Mutiny on the Bounty to the theaters it would probably bring in upwards of $200,000.” There were rights issues, too, since with contracts drafted before television, it was often unclear whether broadcasting a movie’s soundtrack over the air was permitted or not.
While the biggest studios kept their movies out of the living room, others were willing to supply television stations with content from Hollywood. Initially, they were small “Poverty Row” studios such as Monogram and Republic, independent producers, and foreign studios.
(“If I had my way, we wouldn’t sell to television, ever.” – Fox executive Alex Harrison)
Some of the most popular movies broadcast during television’s early days were westerns featuring Hopalong Cassidy. As it happened, Hopalong (played by the actor William Boyd) controlled the rights to 54 of his movies, and he wasn’t hesitant about turning those rights into cash. Hopalong’s strategy provided one hint that television might not prove to be the death of cinemas: attendance at his movies actually rose the more he appeared on TV.
Part of the problem for Hollywood was that the arrival of television wasn’t just about the arrival of a new technology in the home (similar to radio in the 1920s). Television was accompanied by major lifestyle changes. Americans were migrating out of urban areas and buying homes in the suburbs, away from the downtown movie palaces. With more space in their suburban homes, they were inclined to stay in more often. They were commuting to the office in their new cars.
Entrepreneurs who paid close attention to these new trends saw an opportunity. They started opening drive-in theaters to serve the new suburban, car-oriented populace. Though the first drive-in opened in 1933 in New Jersey, the concept really accelerated in the 1950s, when there were about 4000 around the country. At one point, in the summer of 1956, attendance at drive-ins actually surpassed that of indoor theaters. One early drive-in operator was Michael Redstone, father of Sumner Redstone; his company would eventually evolve into Viacom. Many of the drive-in entrepreneurs later diversified, opening indoor theaters in the new shopping malls that were cropping up like clover around the country.
The studios, hunting for a way to take advantage of television while retaining control over the distribution of their product, kept trying to figure out the right response to the new technology, and the changing behavior of the post-war consumer. They made two attempts to create early video-on-demand systems. The first was called Phonevision (dial a special number, and pay $1 to see a relatively-recent movie) and the second, supported only by Paramount, was called Telemeter. During a test in Palm Springs, Telemeter, though expensive to install, was a mild success, generating revenue of a $10 per month from each of its 2,500 households. But local drive-in owners fought it, arguing that Paramount was violating the still-fresh consent decree, by producing and distributing movies, and also controlling the means of exhibition (the Telemeter box atop the TV.)”
Just like cinema/TV vs. Internet/digital today!

48
“But while the studios had frequently complained that they could make more money by re-releasing a movie to theaters, prices for television rights started to rise, from an average of $169,000 per title in 1962 to $500,000 in 1966.”
Just like cinema/TV vs. Internet/digital today!

54
“”The videotape machine would be used to steal our property,” said Disney’s general counsel, Peter Nolan, “and we could never be fully compensated for the loss that would occur.”
Just like cinema/TV vs. Internet/digital today!

57
“At a congressional hearing in 1982, Valenti famously declared that the 3.5 million VCRs then in use posed the same kind of danger to the American film industry as “the Boston Strangler [posed] to the woman home alone.” Left unchecked, free home recording would eventually choke the revenues of the studios; by Valenti’s estimate, home taping was already costing his constituents $2 billion a year. Attorneys for Universal and Disney threatened that the result could be that the studios would no longer allow their movies to be shown on free television. But advocates for home recording painted the royalty on tapes and VCRs as a tax, lambasting Valenti as “the troll under the bridge,” and no royalty was ever enacted.”

67
“Visual effects artists tended to see technology as a fast-growing beanstalk that could take them to new places each time they climbed it. “Whenever I finish a show, I imagine the work I just did as already being obsolete, but I don’t know what’s next,” said Dennis Muren.”
Filmmakers are entirely different! They fear (and therefore hate) the new.

75
“Catmull said one of the main challenges of his job was stoking the fires of originality and experimentation. “The message has to be that technological change is good,” he said. “It’s the air you breathe, the water you swim in.”
Filmmakers are entirely different! They fear (and therefore hate) the new.

162
“”The art of any time,” he concluded, “is usually made with the technology of that time.”"
This is most definitely not the case with film today!

195-199
There are 3 areas of tension between innovation and preservation in film/Hollywood:
1. New technologies make it possible to watch anything anywhere anytime.
2. The boundaries between movies, the Internet, and video games are dissolving.
3. There is high friction between the movie industry’s elitism and today’s democratisation.

25.09.2009
Holopainen, J et al ~ Designing Pervasive Games for Mobile Phones
category: PhD sources
tags: , ,

Chapter 9 in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

181
“In a pervasive game, we desire to make players feel that the game extends beyond the tiny screen, creating a world that is integrated with the ordinary world, and that the players are able to act in this world through their device interaction. Player and game world identification, player-to-player interaction, especially when the game supports the formation of communities, and many of the design strategies described later in the chapter enhance this sense of presence.”

182
“By making the player a game character, [...] games are able to create a strong relationship between the surrounding environment and what is shown on the screen of the phone.” Does this only apply to games? Games are but a part of an entertainment architecture.”

184
“[Player communities] tend to emerge in any game that is sufficiently successful for a longer period of time. [...] Once a player feels part of a community, she is likely to continue to play. [...] Being part of a game community extends the presence of the game outside play sessions. [...] A player does not have to interact actively with a community for the community to be meaningful. [...] An additional opportunity is to show traces of other players’ activities in the real world. [...] This way the players get the feeling that there are other active players, increasing their commitment to the game.”

187
“[...] Sometimes pushed messages feel like spam, they can be stressful when urging the player to go online when they cannot, and it can also incur high costs for the player or organizer.”
“An important issue is deciding what game events are communicated to the player. The basic rule is that the player should be notified about anything that would have caused her to act if she had been playing. However, the amount of messages should not be overwhelming because this can disturb the player or cause her to start ignoring messages.”

188
“[...] the player should never feel alone in the game [...], even if players might rarely be online at the same time.”

25.09.2009
Peitz, J ~ Insectopia
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , ,

Case I in in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

p 177
“Pervasive games generally tend to require a lot of content to function properly. Insectopia circumvents this by using the existing infrastructure around a player to generate resources for a game.”

24.09.2009
Stenros, J et al ~ Epidemic Menace
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , ,

Case H in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

p160
They discern crossmedia games from multiplatform games.
Crossmedia games are “played across different devices and media channels and that emply a wide variety of gameing devices and media channels in the game play, including state-of-the-art mobile and stationary computing devices as well as more traditional communication and information channels such as television broadcast or print media.” Lindt et al 2005
Multi platform games: for example GTA3 is available on PC, PS3, and XBOX
“[In crossmedia games] different tasks are performed on different interfaces. This is supposed to generate and support interesting gameplay across different media.” Lindt 2007
“[Epidemic Menace] was situated in tangible reality, taking place not just on the various interfaces, but also between them.”

23.09.2009
Stenros, J et al ~ Pervasive Game Design Strategies
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

Chapter 7 in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

137
“In many pervasive games, the design of tangible experiences is central. The goal should be to provide players with the feeling that they are, right at that moment, experiencing something unforgettable.”

143
“[The players] must believe “this is not a game” in order to enjoy the immersive pleasures of its realistic aesthetic. They must disbelieve “this is not a game” in order to maintain the ludic mindset that makes realistic murders, apocalyptic science, cyberterrorism, and other dark plots pleasurably playable.” McGonigal 2006

144
“Don’t let players leave the game. One way to create a strong life/game merger in long-duration games is to let players carry on with their ordinary lives, only to run constantly into game-related events and information. Utilizing temporal expansion in this way leads to a state of mind where the players are constantly in game and will start to connect anyting they experience to the game. Eerie coincidences are often reported as one of the most enjoyable experiences in pervasive games.”

147
“Games striving for a predetermined yet interactive plot often require game masters to control the pace of the game or to subtly steer players in the right direction. [...] If players see this steering too clearly, there is a risk that they will lose their sense of agency.”

149
“Some games are based on narratives whereas others are not. Stories are particularly relevant for pervasive larps, alternate reality games, and urban adventure games, whereas assassination games, treasure hunts, and smart street sports do not typically feature them. A compelling game narrative provides players with a frame for the play experience: Solving the puzzles of The Beast was motivated by the need of discovering the narrative. The narrative was both a reward for discovery and an excuse for spending endless hours looking for clues.”
“Games with strong stories are usually games of progression instead of games of emergence. Games of progression feature a series of particular challenges presented in sequence, and a player progresses through the game by overcoming them. Games of emergence feature relatively few rules, but complex and changing gameplay emerges from those rules.” Jesper Juul (2003)
“A game of progression is only compleded once. [...] Games of emergence tend to be much shoreter, but they are played over and over again.”
“Some hybrid games offer a story world that is more of a sandbox to play in. Exploring the story world is not only common in digital games such as the Grand Theft Auto series, but also in sequential pervasive larp campaigns, reality games, and urban adventure games. The completeness and coherence of the diegetic world are extremely important in these games.”

150
“The distributed narrative is told in small fragments, which are hidden in different locations and in verious media.”
“In the ARG community it is customary to share discoveries with other players.”

151
“In ARGs, players produce both a description of the diegetic story, a trail, and a story of how all the puzzles were solved, The first consists of a (re)assembled distributed narrative, the latter is the collective story.” Dena 2008
“The success of [The Beast] depended on whether a community emerged and whether that community began to tell its own story.”
“First person stories are not su much stories per se as sequences of events that players experience and later turn ointo stories when reminiscing the events. Although similar first person stories can be created for severeal players, they are experienced as private, as certain particular events happen only to a certain particular player. First person stoeis are especially common in pervasive larps, assassination games, treasure hunts, and urban adventure games, as these games feature incidental coincidences with outside events, making each experience unique.”

153
“One way to increase replayability is to simply include so much content in the game that it is impossible to go through it in one go.” If you make people experience an entertainment architecture under time pressure they CAN’T go through all the details! That way they can play (and pay for) it again!

154
“[...] keep players occupied with single-player content until critical mass is reached.” Then two players, then multiplayer, then massively multiplayer.
“Conceal the lack of critical mass”
“Designing the pace for a pervasive game is one of the most difficult parts of the design [...]” Hardcore vs casual players.

155
Definition immersion:
“The experience of being transported to an elaborate simulated place is pleasurable in itself, regardless of the fantasy content. We refer to this experience as immersion. Immersion is a metaphorical term derived from the physical experience of being submerged in water.”
3 types of immersion:
Sensory
Challenge-based
Imaginative (fits ARGs and larp best)

156f
3 factors might make it possible to play a pervasive game casually and therefore reach a MUCH bigger audience (not just geeks):
Choosing a simple platform (inexpensive and compatible with everything)
Keeping the social threshold low (don’t make participants wear capes and swords)
Enabling tiered participation (there should be stuff for both hardcore and casual players)

157
“The key to successful development is in mutually supportive strategical decisions, where the technology, the business model and the gameplay work well together.”

20.09.2009
Tan, T et al ~ Is Tom Cruise Threatened
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , ,

They don’t agree with Chris Andersen’s Long Tail Theory.

Summary and comparison with the Long Tail Theory here.