27 October 2005, Texas, Austin, Austin Game Conference
Starting out with a definition of ARGs
Game examples:
"I love bees" associated to HALO 2.
Last Call Poker. Runs now.
(handing out flyers so one can play it.
Part of backsory to Activions title "Gun".
Rl events around america in weekends. Playing variety of texas holdem on cemetaries w tombstones.
"The Go Game"
Interacting w actor, doing crazy things in neigborhood
"The ministry of Reshelving"
Go into bookstores, moving books, putting notes behind them.
40 000 ppl doing it one night
Wikipedia entry.
Highly collaborative.
Player voices:
Communite *is* the game.
Social engineering
Spillover effects to people's real lives.
Players seeing themselves in community as _one_mind_
Quoting Jenkins.
... But what about the mechanics about it.
Right now this community idea is a black box.
...laeding up to McGonigals subject...
What is community design?
Player recombination as design framework.
Genetic recombination.
Emergent creation: the community.
/* still a black box this :) */
Restructuring society, new things, toys, can do it through games.
Juxtaposition of digital worlds/games using real world
Etymology of ARG. ...names have dreams... Names tell stories...names make claims...
Alternate, not alternative.
Gaming, not game. Something you do, active process, always on. /*not an artefact*/
Players have been part of creating the alternate realities.
...why MMOs?
1970ies... New Games movement: the more players the better, being part of a larger whole.
Andersons quote on emergence. Unexpected things when scaling up.
Super computing, event when ppl took many laptops to a gymnasium.
Recombination 1# benevolent conspiracies.
Pronoia, oposite of paranoia. Conspiracy on your behalf. /* lovely, i feel it often */
What would a game be like where you have this, conspire together to help?
...understanding of that world is fundamentally friendly...
The players trust in the game designers.
ARGs could be a way to train oneself to see world as a nice place.
/*wot, wait a minute, a _socialist_ texas hold em??? */
Players in i love bees acting as if people wanted to help them. Amazing things achieved when being in that mindset.
/* lovely stories about players doing unlikely _nice_ things */
Recomibnation #2 - scientific literati
Players acting as a scientific community.
Explosion of interpretation on why they were given a coordinate.
Recombination #3 folksonomy mobs
Tagging and classifying media bottom up.
Collective classifications
Rheingold on smart mobs.
Design idea of this; ministry of reshelving, real world social bookmarking: putting it into the realworld.
Texas holdem cametaries. In history cemetaries have been a public social space, which it is not anymore in the us. Grave yard games: reclassifying graveyards back to their original use.
Recombination #4 - grooming networks
...to be groomed by a monkey...
Mutual understanding in small gestures.
-secret gestures of the go game
Zombie mombs: can flash signs to them. Entering into contract that ppl can zombiefie oneself. Green goo and fake blood, from outside it looks sponatneous
- Touch in tombstone hold em
- I take care of my crew, in i love bees
Thumbwrestling: we thumbwrested!
There will be a tomstone texas hold em in austin Saturday 11 am. Im still here then! Whee!
All pictures from the session
