Topic:  The most photorealistic, networked environment you can play in is real life”. Mobile internet, pervasive gaming and sensor-enriched public spaces enable new possibilities in game-play, distributed story-telling and immersive events. (description)

Raw notes…

Links to the examples mentioned and Twitter names can be found here.

Johnson

Video of interesting games festival, Bristol.  30-40 games each year.  Looked like fun.

Elephant – with big balloon bunches.  Demonstrates how/why we use tech.  Interface is a baloon sculpture you’re trying to sneak around.  Use tech in background.  Tracked location.

Resolution of the real world is bigger than the 10cm x 5cm smart phone screen. Kept tech in background.

The real world will collaborate with you, add richness.

Duncan Speakman

Invented subtlemob

Comes from a theater background.

Put on headphones that let you hear something other people in the mob hear things no one else is hearing.  When you see other people doing the same, you feel a bond with them.

Didn’t want flash mobs because audience is youtube, wanted something where it’s about interacting where you are.  You have to be there.

Different members of the audience are asked to do simple things. The rest of the audience is given a narrative that includes your actions.

On YouTube, it just looks like a street with people on it.  But for the people who are there, it was a different experience.

Looking forward to location aware content delivery.  We don’t change the world, we see it through different eyes.


Barnes

Game producer, design

Massively passive multiplayer

Using Oyster cards – showing what people do when they see their data, how it affects their behavior.  Like where you’ve been over a year.

Slow games, barely games.  Very easy to participate over a very long time.

Layering a game over the city (using it as a game engine).

Started adding social aspects.  Team play.

Nina Steiger

SoHo theater London

Wants to do populist work. Things people participate in.

Theater has suffered from the 4th wall.  Lot of our projects are about making 4th wall bendable, permiable, or non-existant.

Shrada (sp?) – play about London’s gypsies who are being displaced to make room for the Olympics.  Created a game called “drom”.  GPS enabled caravan.  Goal was finding a place for it to stay, as close to theater as possible.  Had people in it, blogging, etc.

Every night after the show the caravan would come and be parked in front of the theater.  When audience comes out, it’s like the play is no on the outside.  It’s like they’re on the other side of the 4th wall unexpectedly.

Also did short plays in and around the caravan for passer bys.

Good experience, good marketing.

Q and A

Tweature – social robot, gps, tweats, lets you claim him by tweeting a code at him.  When twitter is down it feels like he’s rejected you.

Steiger – Picked up on the thing from Kring’s talk yesterday.  Choosing where different aspects of the story play out (online, in theater, on street).

Speakman – Preferes reliable technology.  Doesn’t like using the flaws as an excuse.  Never really get good.

Is it about amazing people, or is it about something more textual and immersive?

Bristol method – we come up with a pun, then reverse engineer it to a game.

Speakerman – Problem with spectical is scale.  You can’t compete with the scale of cities.  They’re overwhelming.  I try to get people to observe the details.  Play in the world is like life.  A lot of problems in the world come from lack of observation.

Barnes – Games are different than a toy.

Johnson – Narrative, at first spent a lot of time on the back story.  People never cared.  The narrative is the experience, what they do and what happens while playing.

Steiger – A game with a strong question in it’s heart has huge power to engage people.

Barnes – One of my restrictions is that I want people to pay for it. I want it to provide enough value that they’ll pay for it.

Speakman – Niche is OK.  It only takes small amounts of people acting different ways to gather momentum.  I’m interested in things that linger after the event.  Keep affecting you.

Barnes – After playing Assasins Cread I walk around the city looking for ledges.

Can games create social change?

Johnson – Depth of engagement is sometimes shocking.  Deep play.  But how do you then take that and do something useful with it.

Wants to work with some NGOs this year.

Barnes – Behavioral ecconomics.  We’re not as rational as we think we are.  Climate change is hardest thing to solve.  All the time I’m thinking this is Peggle.  Great thing is it gives you constant rewards.  Games as happyness engines.

Audience funded model, rather than corporate branding funded.  Maybe a pledge model.

Instead of prizes, try escalation – “We’re going to what now?”

Myth of inovation – you don’t always have to create something new. (Actually you don’t.)

ARGs – often a lot of back story, often takes far to long to play, don’t have time for him.  How about “Disruptive reality”?

Nina likes the collective performance aspect of ARGs.

Johnson – Testing, we do test runs with our games, get feedback, improve.

Also tested subtle mob a bunch of times on a smaller scale before doing bigger.

When you’re writing things to happen in the real world, you need to leave space for the real world to interveen.

Once you play a game in a place you feel ownership of it.