Mankala : Serious Games

Alternate reality game: report

In the social media world, the technology represents the ‘table stakes’ - whether or not you are in the game at all. The game is won or lost on whether you have created or supported a community.

Much the same point was made at the Serious Games meeting for the heritage and tourism sector at the Serious Games Institute in Coventry, UK, last week. David Wortley, the Director, opened with the theme, “relationships with places”.

But who is the community? That is the question I ask as a psychologist? How do we relate to the community? How does our relationship with the community change? How do we change because we have a relationship with the community?

As you might imagine, the entire range of opinion was represented.

EXTREME RIGHT takes the view that “ye pay your money, and you get your choice”. They operate in a tight circle of the technology they have at hand and customers who are willing to pay now. They are less interested in how to develop the market or the community.

EXTREME LEFT was represented maybe by an academic who explained the very important and quite counter-intuitive principle behind games. We may call them games, but THEY ARE NOT GAMES! People play computer games for their own sake. They learn the rules, they become well known within the community, and they supplement the community with knowledge from other areas of their lives. When they play, they are not play-acting; they are doing. (The big question maybe, is, what do they to relax??)

IN THE MIDDLE are people for whom serious games are a living. They have a set of skills and a set of technology that they wish to sell. Nothing wrong with that, though some apologized. Their role in our lives is to be technical fundis and to show us how their skills would make our lives better. Our role is to pay them in hard, cold cash for their knowledge, expertise and devotion to our well-being.

I liked the presentation from Martyn Ware of Illustrious Company for that reason. They are musicians and sound engineers and work with artists to arrange all sorts of ’sound solutions’ [my dreadful expression] that make occasions more memorable and engaging. Their niche is so clear that they are unashamedly ‘pop’ - that is, appealing to mass audiences.

Other presentations were more technical, such as the one from David Burden from Daden Ltd who specialize in the interface between physical and virtual worlds. The grunt form of this work is a link up to Second Life. The higher form is a mashup, say of twitter data into a Second Life context.

Who is the community in heritage and tourism?

The community appears to be people who attend explicitly cultural venues & events, such as museums and festivals.

I think we needed the community there too and herein might have lain the issue. Are consumers a community? What are their interests in all of this? What do they want from the experience? A fairly mindless day out? Distraction from their daily affairs? Do they make their judgments alone? Do they make them together?

There were steps in that direction but driven by what considerations and with what effect, I couldn’t tell, at least not at that pace of delivery (15 presentations in 6 hours) and with my current state of knowledge.

There were glimmers. This is what I picked up.

1. Begin with the ‘audience’.

2. Consider how they relate to your subject matter.

3. Look at how well you can deliver graphical fidelity, interactivity, and engagement.

4. Imagine how the relationships will develop with the material.

5. Consider whether you have used the best of your technology and its potential, and whether you have advanced the way it is used.

6. Ask if it is possible to use the technology of the virtual world, much like a TV, to expand our understanding and relationship with the real world.

7. Ask is the virtual world, like a telephone, a useful way for us to communicate with each other.

8. Might we the users be bring knowledge from our real world into the virtual world.

9. Can we change the game in real-time to match the needs of the audience?

10. Will consumers interact with each other in the real world because of their use of the virtual world?

Number 11

I would still want to see more of a community approach.

We have three players or sets of players: the museum and curators, the purveyors of technical skills, and the visitors. How do they relate together? What aspects of their relationships are important to them?

What do the make happen because they have a relationship? Is this a place for teenagers to meet a-la a 1950’s drive in? Is it a place to hear music live? Why are we there at all?

What kinds of relationships could we have if we augment our communication with technology? Movies bring theatre cheaply to people - a kind of Walmart of the entertainment world.

Could technology expand the services of a museum? To brainstorm, could children in Coventry discuss the making of cars with children of workers making the Tata-people-car in India??

Could technology change tourism? Could we stand outside Buckingham Palace and talk to people at the other end of the world about what we are seeing?

How will our relationships change because of technology? And most particularly, will we see the people who visit us differently? Can the people add value to exhibits? Can we learn from them? Would I go to Buckingham Palace because other people are there? Would I go to a museum to hear the conversations between children from different ends of the world?

Are our lives enriched by their interactions and not just by their dollars, paid directly or via the scenic-route from taxpayer to government and back again? Do the interests that emerge from these conversations change the way we see the exhibits?

Anyone else interested in the community approach?

Anyone interested in the community-end of the equation, I am most interested in talking. Maybe next time SGI holds a meeting we can show the technology guys where we are coming from and they can list their questions to us!

A graphic interface to plot the timeline of your life until your death (in Dutch and English)

Very serious games from Italy.

An interactive map of the world listing headlines for each country

A 2004 app that allows you to track the connections between the directors of one organization and another in the US

Move a cloth and peg it elsewhere

Make your own “soap” with friends on a rainy evening

Place European countries on a map against a timer