no shit
17.12.2009
Montola, M et al ~ Designing Social Expansion
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , ,

Montola, Markus
Stenros, Jaakko
Waern, Annika
Chapter 7 in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

117
“Games that expand the magic circle of play spatially or temporally also have the tendency to expand it socially. When the spatial and temporal boundaries of games are broken, outsiders get involved in the play, whether or not they are aware of it. [...] There are two basic questions to ask: “How is my game going to affect outsiders?” and “How are outsiders going to affect my game?”.”

123
Definiton pronoia: “a “sneaking feeling one has that others are conspiring behind your back to help you.”"
See also BB or quotes, not sure where.

128
“Socially expanded games engage in a dialogue with people and society outside the magic circle.”
“Prototyping and evaluating games with social expansion are challenging.”

129
“As laboratory experiments and even beta testing can be impossible, the game designer must be constantly aware of the political climate and cultural context of the work. The designer should stay on top of her work at all times, which often requires a lot of work and runtime game mastering.”

129 note 4
“The majority of the Swedish population completely rejected the experience of Sanningen om Marika. In an online survey carried out by Aftonbladet newspaper, a vast majority voted that they did not understand the production, and the undertone of the comments was also that they did not care to understand it.”

17.12.2009
Montola, M et al ~ Designing Spatial Expansion
category: PhD sources
tags: ,

Montola, Markus
Stenros, Jaakko
Waern, Annika
Chapter 7 in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

82
Classic games are often made to fill boring moments, pervasive games are different: they are an activity you consciously choose.

08.12.2009
Stenros, J et al ~ Pervasive Game Genres
category: PhD sources
tags: ,

Stenros, Jaakko
Montola, Markus

Chapter 2 in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

31ff
Established PG genres (31):

  • Treasure Hunts (32)
  • Assassination Games (34)
  • Pervasive Larps (35)
  • Alternate Reality Games (37)

Emergins PG genres (40):

  • Smart Street Sports (40)
  • Playful Public Performances (41)
  • Urban Adventure Games (42)
  • Reality Games (44)

35f
“Pervasive larp is a style of pervasive gaming that utilizes live-action role-playing techniques. The central requirement is physical acting with character-based make-believe and pretend play: Role-playing requires the players to pretend and perform being someone else. [...] Live-action role playing (larp, sometimes also called theater style) involves physically acting out as a character in an environment that has been propped to look like the diegetic setting.”

37f
Definition ARG:
“Alternate Reality Games take the substance of everyday life and weave it into narratives that layer additional meaning, depth, and interaction upon the real world. The contents of these narratives constantly intersect with actuality, but play fast and loose with fact, sometimes departing entirely from the actual or grossly warping it – yet remain inescapably interwoven. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, everyone in the country can access these narratives through every available medium – at home, in the office, on the phones; in words, in images, in sound. Modern society contains many managed narratives relating to everything from celebrity marriages to brands to political parties, which are constantly disseminated through all media for our perusal, but ARGs turn these into interactive games. Generally, the enabling condition to is technology, with the internet and modern cheap communication making such interactivity affordable for the game developers. It’s the kind of thing that societies have been doing for thousands of years, but more so. Much more so.” Martin, A et al ~ Introduction to ARG

39
There are 3 business models for ARGs:

  • Game as advertisement
  • Player-created community efforts
  • Cash prizes

44
Are reality games best-suited to combine with film? Or is trying to make it be real the wrong approach?

45
Is “Pervasive Paidia” perhaps what I’m really interested in?
Ludus = formal play
Paidia = informal play
“Paidia, informal play, has always explored strange playgrounds, surprising times, and unbounded social relations. Pervasive paidia is not a genre of pervasive games – as these activities are not games – but they exist in a close relationship with pervasive games.”

08.12.2009
Stenros, J et al ~ Historical Influences on Pervasive Games
category: PhD sources
tags: ,

Stenros, Jaakko
Montola, Markus

Chapter 3 in Montola, M et al ~ Pervasive Games

53ff
Roots of PG:

  • Play in Public Space (54): Campus Culture (55)
  • Play in Everyday Life (56)
  • Roots in Literature and Arts (58): Performing Arts (59), Ludic Literature (61)
  • Gamer Cultures (62): Role-Playing Games (64), Persistent Virtual Worlds (65)
  • The Migration of Influences (66)

64
“Although their influence is felt most clearly in pervasive larps, role-playing games have influenced pervasive games in general. The structure of role-playing games, a complete fictional world set up and administrated by game masters and populated by characters played by players, is today common in many games.”

68
“It is as if pervasive games are part of a larger cultural shift, questioning the concepts such as “real” and “fiction.”"

68f
Their explanation why and how cultural and technological factors influence each other. This is why this interaction is one of the bases of their research.

06.12.2009
Denward, M et al ~ Broadcast Culture Meets Role-Playing Culture
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , , , ,

Denward, Marie
Waern, Annika

They compare the different cultures of the two production companies of The Truth About Marika, SVT (Swedish public service broadcasting) and The Company P.
The difference (and to some degree ignorance) between the two companies led to quite a few problems that ultimately lowered the quality of the consumer experience.

Good overview of The Truth About Marika.

06.12.2009
Waern, A et al ~ On the Edge of Reality
category: PhD sources
tags: , , , , , , ,

Waern, Annika
Denward, Marie

The fact that the project played with consumers’ perception of what is real lead to quite some controversy.

“In the terminology of Cindy Poremba, Sanningen om Marika was a ’brink game’, a game in which the activities are so real that it cannot fully be considered to be just a game. The brink effect was created through the combination of the alternate game aesthetics, the emphasis on ‘pushing your personal boundaries’ inspiring participants to do things they might want to do but never would have done otherwise, and the lack of off-game.”

“The central goal of successful immersive game design is to communicate to players that a cage is in place, while making it as easy and likely as possible for the players to pretend that they don’t see the cage.” Quoting McGonigal.
“Sanningen om Marika did not achieve this effect, and as discussed above we do not believe that the producers intended it to. SVT wanted SOM to be deliberately confusing to television viewers, and P wanted to create a brink game experience.”
“The authors of this report believe that the effect [of not achieving McGonigal's effect] was both unfortunate and unethical. It was unfortunate because it made some potential participants afraid to participate, and created unnecessary conflicts between players and newcomers which in turn harmed the game experience for the players. It was unethical because it made some participants engage in a mission that they believed to be serious, and then made them very disappointed when it was not.”

06.12.2009
Koljonen, J ~ Eye-witness to the illusion
category: PhD sources
tags: , ,

Koljonen, Johanna

185
“Perhaps role-playing games should be divided into three categories: those that are created all through visualisation (tabletop), those that require conti-nuous translation (free-form and larp) and those in which the environment can be accepted at face value (larping in the 360° environment). In the last category, the process of role-playing is the least cerebral. It becomes immediate, physical, and social. It may not even be role-playing in the sense of constructing a shared fiction. As a mental process, it lies closer to the sense in which we role-play in our everyday lives – except that in this role, we actively censor recollections of our other roles and environments.“

29.10.2009
Martin, A et al ~ Introduction to ARG
category: PhD sources
tags: , ,

Good definition of ARG:
“Alternate Reality Games take the substance of everyday life and weave it into narratives that layer additional meaning, depth, and interaction upon the real world. The contents of these narratives constantly intersect with actuality, but play fast and loose with fact, sometimes departing entirely from the actual or grossly warping it – yet remain inescapably interwoven. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, everyone in the country can access these narratives through every available medium – at home, in the office, on the phones; in words, in images, in sound. Modern society contains many managed narratives relating to everything from celebrity marriages to brands to political parties, which are constantly disseminated through all media for our perusal, but ARGs turn these into interactive games. Generally, the enabling condition to is technology, with the internet and modern cheap communication making such interactivity affordable for the game developers. It’s the kind of thing that societies have been doing for thousands of years, but more so. Much more so.”

Martin, A et al ~ Introduction to ARG (29.10.2009)

28.10.2009
Montola, M. ~ Games and Pervasive Games
category: PhD sources
tags: ,

PG = Pervasive Game

7
“The magic circle of a game is the boundary separating the ordinary from ludic and real from playful.”

12
“breaking out of the proper boundaries of time and space makes pervasive games fundamentally different experiences that can utilize a novel set of aesthetics for creating engaging and meaningful experiences.”
Definition-pervasive game:
“A pervasive game is a game that has one or more salient features that expand the contractual magic circle of play spatially, temporally, or socially.”
“The socially constructed ludic space does not have to be a physical one.”
“Pervasive gamers inhabit a game world that is present within the ordinary world, taking the magic circle wherever they go. Unlike nonpervasive games, which seek to be isolated from their surroundings, pervasive games embrace their environments and contexts.”
Augmented reality expands/extends PGs incredibly well.

12-17
PGs are different from (and bigger than) classic games, because of 3 characteristics:

  1. spatial expansion
  2. temporal expansion
  3. social expansion

PGs are expanded games vs. unexpanded classic games
(legal-economical expansion also exists, but is less relevant for PGs)
=> pushed to the extreme, a PG BECOMES reality? -> they are inseparable / the same
=> PGs are not games?

19
“When the three expansions of pervasive games are taken to extremes, the magic circle starts to lose its meaning as a contractual boundary between ludic and ordinary. Extreme temporal expansion leads to ordinary life becoming a pervasive game. The same happens with space if the ordinary world is seen primarily as a game world: There cannot be a game world without the ordinary world. And, finally, a game where everyone is only an unaware participant is no longer a game.”
“For professional gamblers, athletes, and gold farmers, the metaphor of the magic circle loses its meaning as a ritualistic separator of ordinary and playful, becoming only a representation of a code of conduct within the game.”

21
“Both play and ordinary life can benefit from the blurring of the boundary.”

22
PGs & video games are intrinsically different.

28.10.2009
Stenros, J et al ~ Designing Temporal Expansion
category: PhD sources
tags: , , ,

97
“While spatially and socially expanded games use the tangible realness of ordinary life to spice up the game experience, temporally expanded games add the pleasure of gaming to ordinary life.”

103
“A lack of rhythm in a game makes it hard to parse noise from signal.” It is easier for players to integrate the game with their real lives if things happen regularly – even if this makes the game less plausible.
“The very start of a pervasive game often makes or breaks the whole game experience and, hence, should be crafted very carefully.”

104
Definition rabbit hole: “A common way of luring players into alternate reality games has been through rabbit holes, which are ludic entrances to the fictitious world of a game hidden in ordinary environments that people can find accidentally and then enter the game. Basically this means that puzzles or mysteries that lead to the game are hidden in plain sight.”
“Believability is the most important feature of a rabbit hole, […] [but] regular players have become quite apt to recognising them.”

107
Definition contextual adaptability: “The ability of a game to adjust, either actively or passively, to changes in the social environment so that negative effects on gameplay or activities overlapping play sessions are minimized.” (Bjoerk et al 2004)

108
“A good temporally expanded game strikes a balance between sufficient contextual adaptability [see above, p107] and thrilling pervasivity.”

109
“Temporally expanded games invade a player’s ordinary life and spice it up. They mix playful and serious activities and situations, producing a refreshing element of surprise that feels as though it is just out of the player’s control. The games add color to mundane, boring moments with the ever-present possibility of playing. However, as players can never control the games completely (without exiting the game), this does produce anxiety that needs to be taken into account in the design.
The ultimate temporally expanded game would completely erase the distinction between the ordinary and the ludic.”