Chapter 13 in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

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“We have identified three growing cultural trend that have influenced and given birth to pervasive games:
the blur or the real and the fictive,
the continuous struggle over public space in urban areas,
and the rise of ludus in society.”

“With the emergence of the global village, with its ever faster communication, multiculturalism, and cultural relativism, [finding supposedly factual truths] is becoming increasingly difficult. Truth is being replaced by a perspective, an opinion, a third class between truth and fiction.”
It has been important – and possible – to mark a work as fiction or nonfiction. “This is no longer the case; the gray area between fact and fiction is widening.”

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“Truth becomes an opinion, and, in a perverse twist, opinion becomes truth.”

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“The roots in the struggle [over public space] lie deep in urbanization: In order for there to be public space, there must also be private space.”

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There is a general rise in ludic activities in society.
In “persistent online worlds such as World of Warcraft and EVE Online […] play goes on perpetually with no winning or losing in sight. There are temporary victories and setbacks, and the players do measure success in various ways, but there is no permanent closure. These online worlds are also called games, even if they are more like environments where play occurs. This is underlined by the fact that for many players social interactions and intercharacter role-play are among the most important reasons for play. Yet neither is coded into the game engine, and there are not even any strict rules of conduct. It is easy, and commonplace, to appropriate the virtual worlds for activities that they were not designed for originally.”
Entarchs might also be more like environments where play occurs!
There was this ueber-ship that was destroyed in EVE, and because it was unique it disappeared for good. (mentioned earlier in the book)

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“The Beast pretended to pretend to be real so that the players could pretend the game was real as well. For many pervasive games, the question of what is ludic and what is ordinary is one of the central questions.”

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“[…] reading news, watching advertisements, taking a walk in the park, surfing social networking sites, and even everyday face-to-face interactions are but stages where playing takes place. We are all players in a ludic society.”
“The ambiguity between game and life is a defining characteristic of pervasive games, but it is difficult for these games to achieve mainstream appeal unless the borderline is disambiguated enough for players to feel safe, comfortable, and oriented in a pervasive experience.” !!!
“It is also possible that as the real and fictive blur, they will finally merge.”

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“[…] it remains to be seen what kind of foothold [pervasive games] will have as the environment that birthed them evolves into something else.”
“If the boundaries around traditional play continue to blur and break, and numerous more activities continue to incorporate pervasive elements, a separate category of pervasive games may lose relevance soon after it has been defined.”
“Arnold Pacey (1985), a historian of technology, identifies three aspects of technology: technical, social, and organizational. Whereas the technical aspect only deals with the dimension of technology that makes things physically work or not, social and organizational aspects are related to the way we actually make use of our machines and how those practices are combined with values, norms, and other structures of society.”
“The enculturation of digital information and communication technologies has just started, and within the emerging practices like those of pervasive gaming we might just be seeing the first steps of a new kind of culture being created through the human use of these new tools rather than just humans blindly accepting the uses these technocratic systems impose on them.”
“One way to view pervasive games, and their sudden emergence in the past 10 years, is to see them as a societal response to the need for advanced media literacy. Play has always had an enculturing function, and pervasive games teach players media literacy skills that are viatl in coping with the demands of the converging media culture. As long as these kinds of skills are required, pervasive games will be available as one appropriate field of expression and response to the increasingly mediated and complex surrounding social realities.”