So we all stood in a circle and spent a while trying to grab each other’s thumbs.  Specifically, to play this game, you old your left hand out palm up (under your neighbor’s thumb), and your right hand out thumb down (over your other neighbor’s hand).  When the bearded man said, “Go!” we’d all try to grab the thumb of the person on our left, while trying not to get our thumb grabbed by the person on the right.  When you thumb was grabbed, you were out and the circle got smaller. (Thanks bearded man! – who I found out later is Dave from Friends of the Earth UK.)

What’s the point of all this?

I sucked at the game, and was quickly knocked out – leaving me time to contemplate the spectacle.  The game worked well as an ice breaker.  We were in the last session of the last day of the conference, but everyone was up on their feet, interacting and paying attention.  The lesson is that games can have purpose.

Examples

We spent most of our time talking about examples.  What I picked up on was that different kinds of games (or game like elements), are good for different kinds of things.  They can get press attention, drive website traffic, educate, change behaviors and keep people motivated.

That said, here are a bunch of example’s people mentioned, or that I’ve come across…

WWF action card / passport – Earning points for doing online actions. (Care2 also has a more sophisticated version of this kind of thing

Conspiracy for good – Last year it was a alternative reality game (ARG) with a real world “doing good” twist (they actually helped provide books to kids in Africa).  This year, they plan to focus more on the doing good (due to player feedback).  But they’ll still maintain a mythology and keep it a compelling experience.

Real world games – Games you play in the “real world”, not staring at your computer screen or looking through an iPhone (though mobile phones are often used in the games).  A good argument for games by SlingShot Effect, a company that makes real world games.  Examples of real world games (from igfest)…

Hurl Berl – Simple web game where you throw Berlusconi out of the G8, was the viral driver for an onine petition.  Cost 15,000 to build/distribute, did not take long to build (maybe 3 weeks), 25p per head recruitment. Conversion rate was very low, at end of game it was “play again” or “sign the petition”, numbers made it effective for recruitment. Also Got media coverage.  Seems like a lot of people just want to play casual games.  (Thanks Weldon!)

Add a counter to almost anything – And you’ve got instant competition. Volunteers were using mobile devices to get petition signatures at U2 concerts.  Once they added a counter to the app, volunteers were much more motivated, signatures shot up. (Thanks Weldon!)

Book recommendation – Game storming

Fate of the world (computer simulation game) – Take charge of a global organization that takes on the challenge.  (Thanks Jed from Oxfam!)

Weight watchers – People who participate in it don’t think of it as a game, but it has a lot of game like elements (goals, points, achievements).

Treasure hunts / scavenger hunts – Photo scavenger hunts were mentioned as something that’s easy to do. One person knew about an example where a group wanted to get their volunteers familiar with a particular area of the city.  So they created a photo hunt (you give people photos and they have to find where they were taken and take a picture from the same spot), which got people used to the geography.  Another example was having a team (or thing) that moves around a city, twittering it’s location.  People who catch up to the thing get a prize (has been done by a shoe store and an airline company that I know of).  Cohen, from Fairfood, told us about a treasure hunt style project they’re working on, but asked us to keep it secret for now.  Best to contact him if you’re curious.

Geo caching – One group wanted to promote quality time between parent’s and thier kids.  So they organized geo caching events.  The idea also came up for Save the Libraries to geocache books from libraries that ar being shut down.  (You shouldn’t need to hunt for them!)

Super badger – Facebook application built by Rechord – Gives you new a campaign  every two weeks, earn points, move up the ranks, involving friends also gets you points. After enough points you move up in rank. One challenge was keeping players motivated after they reached super badger status (which happened with a lot of the players).  Had a leaderboard with top 20 players.  Problem – FB API keeps changing so then your application stops working.  Plays on social competitiveness.  Incentivize with prizes doesn’t generally work for this kind of thing. Recognition does.  Seeded it with active campaigners, key was points for inviting people.

World power league – Rachel from Rechord helped build this web application designed to, “help young people to engage with issues of power, citizenship and politics”, by voting on which public figures are most powerful or evil.

Further reading and some links:

My post on a SXSW presentation by Andy Baio called, “Gaming the crowd” (includes what makes a good game, and some more examples).

Games for Change – a group dedicated to social change through gaming.

An academic attempt to define what games are.

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.

Starts off by showing some games…

Quest for the crown

Desert Bus (1995, Sega TV, unreleased) – Drive the Penn and Teller tour bus in real time. Get to the end (after 8 hours) and you get 1 point. (video)

Marathon video tame – Run a virtual marathon in real time button tapping, guy did it, took him three hours. Showed vid. Guy looks like he’s going to die.

You only live once – Standard platformer. When character dies, it’s for good. When you restart the game you’re still dead.

Upgrade complete – Game about upgrading a game. Game play itself is pretty booring. Can even buy the ending.  (walkthrough here)

Achievement unlocked – Get achievements for everything.

Punchline: All these use games to discuss what games are. Last two focus on the meta game. Even though you know you’re being manipulated, it’s still fun.

Mechanical Turk

Feels weird when he uses it. Feels like exploitation. So he set a Mech Turk task for people to photograph themselves with a sign saying why they do it.

Turns out that the demographics are roughly the same as the English speaking internet. Most say they do it for the money (very small amounts) or for fun (but the tasks are very tedious).  This is kind of weird given the small rewards involved.  Then he realized it’s kind of like a MMOG. You pick your tasks (quests), compete with each other, win cash (points), communicate with each other.

Social web = MMO

More examples of games at work

At Target, the cashier’s terminals provide feedback scores on the last 10 checkouts. Mainly is a motivational thing, incentivises them to improve. Get printout each week, compete with each other, place bets. Fun.

The Squeaky wheel – Bug tracker with achievements.

Obama campaign – Neighbor to neighbor – Level up, get promotions. Patrick was in room!

Ford Fusion, Honda Insight – In dash reflection of fuel efficiency – (growing leaves in the Ford).

Nike/iPod exercise site

Investigate your MP’s expenses – Had 450,000 documents. Posted it online. Let people dig through it. Had a leaderboard, persistant identity, reputation. View of entire team’s progress.

Kick starter – current project – Is all or nothing. You hit the goal or get nothing. 90% of projects that hit 20% mark succeed. Never had a project that hit 80% fail.

What you need for a good game

• Options (decisions the player makes, picking which quests to do)
• Feedback (points, metrics, levels)
• Recognition (awards, achievements, collectibles)
• Goals (with levels of difficulty)
• Community

Ribbon hero – turns Microsoft Office into a game. Using more advanced features of the application increases your score. Includes hints, and suggested “quests”. Gives feedback when do something write. Has advanced mode. Connects with Facebook to challenge friends. Exploratory learning.

Good games are easy to learn, hard to master.

Grinding is no fun. It’s when it stops being fun.

Warnings

Once you have game elements, they are very hard to remove. Community gets pissed.

Do not do a leader board (absolute ranking) – every single time it results in a conflict. Alienate people who can’t get near the top. Negative competitive vibe. Can be ok if scope it to friends, or small location.

Metafilter – number of favorites for comments. Moderators felt it contributed to snarkyness. Wanted to try changing it from number of favorites to just “favorited” for a month. Huge outcry. Ended up changing it back.

Cheating – It’s hard to resist. Foursquare example (fake check ins, fake accounts). Incentives can invite abuse.

Stack overflow – Was lots of cheating. Solution – Bind incentives very tightly to the desired behavior. Who’s gaming who?

Evil gaming

What responsibility do we have? Do we have a responsibility to tell people we are hacking their brains?

Do games make people happy? Or do we just make them unhappy whne not playing.

Farmville – Uses incentives well. Reciprocity. Loss aversion. Whole friends can see how bad you’re doing. Set completion. Mostly is grinding with a lot of social interaction. Not really evil, but has very compulsive.

CruX360A – 3rd ranked woman in the world. Plays games just for the achievements. Collection impulse. Especially when you’re almost there, hard to stop.

MMOs – Blizzard tells people to take breaks, go outside. Are doing more timed events. Don’t want people to burn out, loose jobs, drop out of school. Better to keep them for life.

I personally draw the line when you start using feelings of guilt to motivate behavior. Swoopo.com, sooo evil. Pay to bid, each bid brings the cost up by one penny and extends the auction. One person gets a cheap product, everyone else looses what they put in. You feel like you’ve already put in so need to get something. Even auction bids. Bid buttler – bids for you. Takes advantage of our irrationality, gaps in how we think.

Final thoughts

Making boring fun – Need a skill that is repeatable and measurable, with those two things you can make anything a game.

Reputation – want something supportive, that fosters collaboration. Achievements don’t take away from other people. Are popping up everywhere. Quests are also good.

Making a direct connection to cash changes people’s behavior dramatically. Like paying your mother for Christmas dinner. Lawyers surveyed were asked if they’d do work on discount for good causes, answer was no; asked if they’d do the same work pro-bono (for free), answer was yes.

Further reading

Jesse Schell talk – everything is trackable, everything has points and achievements.

Web reputation systems – O’Reily (check their blog post about karma)

Amy Jo Kim – Putting the fun in functional.

The art of game design

Panic status board – Good example of reflecting back progress to staff, which then serves as a motivator.

Usability for evil