Do you drop spot? (plus: Go get this right now!)

Do you drop spot? I do! A drop spot is a kind of alternative mailbox -- hidden in plain sight.

Drop spotting is just plain awesome, and I love it. It's a lot like geocaching, only:

-no GPS coordinates or GPS device required!
-less rooting around in remote areas!
-more visual clue-iness!
-and usually less driving involved to get there.

So instead of creating geocaches in the wilderness or out-of-the-way place, drop spots are hidden in plain sight, often in crowded urban environments. I learned about it last December from a very cool, smart undergrad in ITU-Copenhagen - drop spotting is very global!

Here's why I bring up drop spotting now. Drop spots are becoming an increasingly important part of World Without Oil.

One WWO hero in Illinois is doing guerilla gardening and is using Drop Spots to mark the sites of the secretly stashed seeds. He writes:

According to John Jeavons "how to grow more vegetables", the bare minimum it takes to grow a subsistence diet is 4000 square feet per person. My yard total has less than 2000, and now I can't use the best parts of it without getting evicted. So what am I doing? I'm planting my food wherever I can. I've dropped a few fruit trees around town, in public spaces I walk by daily. I dress them up with mulch and the like to make it look like the decorative ones the city puts in. So far noone has notices. I got some "volunteer" tomatoes that grow like wildfire at my mother's, and spread them around town. I hide seed potatoes in the carefully landscaped city flowerbeds. I've found where the wild onions grow and spread them. I blow dandelions in the wind, even though I'm not eating them yet. This is called "guerrilla gardening", and it's very civic minded. In some ways I reclaiming the Commons, making public land productive for the citizenry. Anyone who wants to can help themselves to the food when it's ready, I'm planting enough to accommodate."

A WWO hero in Kentucky is using a Drop Spot to trade life tools to help others get through the oil crisis. She writes:

This Drop is on Preston road, right under I-64 and across the street from the "Green" parking lot. There is a patch of wild bushes/trees, concrete, another patch (where the drop is located), concrete and then a final patch. You shouldn't have to actually step into the patch, I placed it about 2-3 feet in and covered it up with some leaves/branches. It's a plastic "gallon size" ziplock bag.

And for all of your San Francisco area readers who might not be playing WWO yet, this is your chance to get involved. Emil, one of the original WWO team members, writes:

i've set up a San Francisco drop spot for exchanging essential goods, notes and anything else you can shove in this strange little stash. hopefully only fellow world without oil heroes will use it. i've kicked it off by leaving one of evie's favorite books (you know her as mpathytest). the chapter 1 explanation of how we got into this oil mess was, well, mindblowing. and the rest of the book should help any wwo hero think of some ways to innovate our way out of this crisis. if you pick up the book, leave something else behind for me or other wwo heroes. cool.a few hints for finding the spot: it's at ground level. it's about halfway between bluxome and brannan. it's on the east side of the block. if you see a statue of a saint or a monk watching over you from behind a gate, you're in exactly the right spot. no digging required. just stick your hand in and reach to the right.

If you are reading this in the SF/Bay Area, GO GET THIS SOMA drop spot (near the CalTrain) RIGHT NOW! It's your perfect window into the game. Jump through it! Go!

What are you waiting for? The world needs saving, and if you live in San Francisco, you are the person to do it.

Is it ethical to play during a time of crisis?

I honestly never thought I'd live through this kind of turmoil in the U.S.

Burning cars, vanadlism, looting. EVERYWHERE.

Even here in Berkeley. 3 women were attacked and robbed yesterday at the biodiesel refueling station. It's come to that. It's not enough to fight over oil, now we're fighting over alternative fuels?

8TSOC's Week 10 Update pretty much sums up the current state of the domestic crisis for those of you reading this from other parts of the world. Not that you're necessarily better off, what with the Australian secesssion conflict, the Chinese warships in the Straits of Malacca, the rebel forces in Nigeria... well, all I can say, seriously, is: WTF, World? WTF!!

If you're like me, you're probably reading this at home, hunkered down in front of your computer, because you're basically in hiding. You don't want to deal with the reality of all of this. You don't have the freaking gas to go anywhere anyway and are afraid to use your bike because you'll probably be mugged for it.

For most people, it's hard to live like this. It's REALLY hard to get any work done. It's hard to go about the everyday business of life. Let alone any play.

Here's the thing. I think we need to play. Well, yeah, of course you knew I was going to say that. For years, I've been saying that pervasive games are a powerful way to exert influence on spaces, to change public behaviors, to alter reality. So now I'm feeling like I shouldn't be at home cowering behind my laptop. I should be out in the real world, playing in the now ubiquitous empty parking lots, gathering people together. Maybe if we start playing together, we'll remember how to live together.

I know what you're thinking. It doesn't feel reasonable or ethical or productive to play during this kind of total societal breakdown. Part of me feels that too.

But maybe the opposite of all that is true. Maybe to rebuild our institutions, we need to play together. And maybe we need play to make it safe to go outside again.

As you know, I've been teaching ubiquitous game design at San Francisco Art Institute this semester. Through that class, I've met a lot of amazing young game designers. And so last week I asked them to help with this. I've asked them to design some real-world games for people like us to play in this new world without oil. I asked them to design physical games that we could play together in public, keeping in mind the fact that we basically can't depend on driving anywhere and are dealing with so many different kinds of everyday chaos.

Several of my students have masterminded one. It's an adventure walking game, and it's called LnC2k7. (Bonus points if you can post in the comments a correct translation of the name!) And I have to say, it is brilliant. I went out and played it last night. It was definitely weird to be playing during crisis. But it felt right. And we met so many people as we played, and that felt right too, talking to them, not being scared of strangers but friendly again. In a way that we were before all the oil was lost. You can download the rules here. You can see photos of other people playing it here. Or you can just start by calling this number: 1 888 349 6448.

So here's the big announcement. When we have some more of these games, I'm going to hold a public game festival. That's right. In the middle of this crisis, we are going to go to a park, or an empty parking lot, and we are going to play. Games. Big games. Playground games. No technology, no boards. The games we used to play when we were kids, in the streets, or at recess. This will happen soon. Probably in just a couple of weeks. A playground festival for a world without oil. You heard it here first.

If you want to help, play the games we come up with, or make up your own games. Be brave to play them, out in public, in the midst of the chaos. Let the games put a little structure, a little sociability back into the world.

Post here a link to anything you create, and I'll make sure other netizen heroes find out about it. (While you're at it, follow that link and sign up to be a hero yourself, okay? There are 1342 of us so far and counting.)

(No idea what I'm talking about? Go here immediately!)

Play Now! World Without Oil is LIVE!

032707_07172.jpg
Originally uploaded by Avant Game.

Play it-- before you live it.

Stop whatever you're doing. Take the next 30 seconds to sign up as a citizen hero for World Without Oil.

WWO is a game for good -- the first alternate reality game to tackle a real-world problem. Gamers to save the world? Hell, yes!

The game is live as of yesterday, and I hope you will check it out. It runs until the first week of June. There are all kinds of ways to participate -- you can read the fictional characters' team blog, you can browse real-character player-submitted blogs, videos, audio messages and images. If you're inspired to really get involved, you can tell your own story by submitting your own original content imagining and documenting YOUR real life during an oil shock. You can send us URLs, emails, or call our game hotline (1.866.WWO.TSOC)

If you want the fictional backstory on the game to help you imagine what to create, you can start here. And if you want the REAL backstory on the game (warning: ARG spoilers!), you can check out these quick project facts.

And finally, a great background article on the game.

Live from Etech - my keynote on Happiness Hacking

I just finished my Etech keynote "Creating Alternate Realities - what the new game designers know about improving quality of life." Yay! It was a totally new presentation, created this week from scratch, and so I was a bit nervous about debuting it. I am happy that it was very well-received.

Here's the abstract:

This talk will explore what the new game designers know about improving everyday quality of life, and how non-gaming companies can become a part of the solution. Alternate reality game designers are solving problems that other technology companies have yet to discover. Cutting-edge collaborative, reality-based games are addressing a whole new set of social needs and personal desires, individual challenges, and collective wants. But games are not the only way to meet these needs and desires. In this talk, McGonigal explores how other technology products, services, and brands can capitalize on the key signal - a desire for a life more worth living - that is coming out of the most innovative game genres.

My slides are here. I'll have a webpage with links and references up on my Avant Game site on Friday. (Here it is - references for Hacking Happiness!) In the meantime, here is the text from my four favorite slides to give you a sense of the stakes and claims of the talk!

3 things you need to know about me:
1) I’m a hacker. I hack the real world to be more like a game. (that’s what I mean by creating alternate realities)
2) I think a lot about the future. What are today’s game trying to tell us about tomorrow?
3) I’m an existentialist. I identify with Sisyphus. My primary goal is to reduce human suffering.

The future forecast (Think: 2012)
Quality of life is the primary metric for evaluating everyday technologies
Positive psychology is a principal, explicit influence on design
The public expects tech companies to have a clear vision for a life worth living
To succeed, a brand, product or service, must increase real happiness – the new capital

Do our technologies pass the “deathbed test”?
“Though we must live our lives forward, happiness is gained by assessing it backwards. Only on your deathbed can you see your life complete and so judge its happiness.” – ancient Greek wisdom
How will the time spent with our technologies look in retrospect, when our users are on their deathbeds? What kind of life will they have enabled, afforded, or supported?

An ETech’07 call to action:
Invest a portion of your time, energy and resources towards understanding and innovating happiness. It’s the new capital.
Make your technology not only feel good (more pleasure), but also do good (more engagement)and expose good (more meaning).
Build your brand's culture around quality of life.
Together we can hack our everyday reality into a collective life worth living.
Hack Happiness!

The Future of Collective Play (report on GDC keynote)

Yesterday I gave my Research + Design keynote at GDC on the topic of "The Future of Collective Play."

CNET has a great summary of the talk in "Future games to harness gamers' collective wisdom".

Rather than posting complete notes from the talk here myself, I'll just excerpt from the intro and point to the online slides in a day or so from this blog:

Today, I’m going to talk to you about the future of collective play. By "future of collective play", I mean two things: first, the new kinds of collaborative games we might pioneer over the next decade, and second: the real-world future we might build for ourselves by playing more collectively.

Last fall, I left my position as lead designer at 42 Entertainment, a commercial game development company, to become the resident game designer for the Institute for the Future— an independent nonprofit research group based in Palo Alto. As a result, I am now officially the first person in the world to claim in my daily job description that “I design games from the future.” But, what exactly does it mean to design games from the future?

At the Institute, we develop long-term future forecasts to help companies, government agencies, and private foundations make better decisions today about the uncertain future. We create detailed, plausible, and internally consistent scenarios of how important emerging trends today might intersect and play out over the next decade. So, as the Institute’s new resident game designer, I spend a lot of time these days thinking about two questions: First, how are the specific kinds of games we choose to design and to play today most likely to impact our future culture? And second, what kinds of games will we need to play in the future in order to learn whatever social, technological, and organization skills emerge as the guiding principles of global culture?

Today, I’m going to argue that over the next ten years, a particular kind of digital game-- the massively collaborative puzzle genre known as alternate reality gaming -- will become increasingly important as both a way to imagine and engineer a best-case scenario future. Alternate reality gaming will also assume the role of a central cultural activity teaches and trains us to be successful and ethical actors in a global, networked culture--particulary as that culture is increasingly chaotic, democratic, commercial and cooperative.

So the problem I want to consider today is this: Can a computer game teach collective intelligence? I believe the answer to this question is absolutely, yes—and moreover, I believe that collective intelligence is the single most important thing we can be teaching through serious games as we attempt to build a better future, and to prepare for its uncertain challenges. Of course, this problem begs several additional questions: namely, why should we care about teaching collective intelligence? Who should be taught CI? How, exactly, does an alternate reality game teach CI? And, finally, what kind of future will we shape by playing alternate reality games?

[Come back in a couple days for the slides for the rest of the talk!]

Erasing the delta: Games that alter reality!

Here are my notes for my first Game Developers Conference talk, as part of a serious games summit panel on “Erasing the Delta - Games that Accomplish a Specific Task” The theme of the panel is about moving away from games that just prepare you to do something (learning/training games), or help you think about something (simulation games, persuasive games) and games that actually enable and indeed require you to do that thing, or to produce that thing, simply by playing them (games that work).

(Fellow ARG travelers Brian Clark and Brooke Thompson were there -- yay! we are so totally going to alter reality through play...)

(UPDATE: There's nothing that makes me post-talk happier than when multiple different communities take away ideas they're excited by. So I'm happy to see, for instance, some great responses to the talk at MTV, ARGN, and Destructoid!)

My spiel follows:

Erasing the Delta Gap is really about two different practices:

Making a new kind of serious game: Games that are designed as functions with an end result that is a measurable difference in the present state of reality. Serious games now are viewed as “resources” (for education, training, instruction, simulation) or “platforms” (for messages, persuasion). We must start to create serious games as “generative processes” or “solutions to problems”

Redefining what we define as a “serious impact”: We must move away from “preparation” and “knowledge” and “skills” and “rhetorical effect” as our only serious impacts. We can also consider for example “improved quality of life” and “better health” and “improved social organization” and “future resources produced”. In these terms, many games are already closing the delta gap, particularly in the area of health -- if we think of something like “reducing human suffering” as a serious impact (games for pre-surgery sedation) or intervening into the obesity epidemic (physical activity games) or, in the future, things like serving as a live suicide prevention resource (instead of calling 1 800 suicide) or facilitating global security through youth cooperation and co-immersion
So: What is the role of Alternate Reality Games in erasing the delta?

The new opportunities for ARGs to do work is best understood as a movement through different definitions of “realism” in gameplay

Realism in ARGs
1st wave ARGs: they’re so real! Real Life (embedded in real, working life): operational, everyday technologies, intimate
2nd wave ARGs, they’re so real! Real World (moving into real-world spaces): social, physical, face to face, everyday spaces, public
3rd wave ARGs, they’re so real! Real Impact (starting to solve real-world problems, for example: global relations/world peace, massively multiplayer science, quality of life, learning): intentional, effective. Games that alter reality!

Two factors that make this third wave possible:

Our culture is becoming more ARGlike (CI culture, participatory Web culture/2.0, creative commons, science commons)

Our culture WANTS to be more ARGlike (the spirit of massive collaboration saving the world)

Examples of ARGs that start to erase the delta:
Past - Tombstone Hold ‘Em – putting live bodies back in cemeteries, creating a public culture for a dying public space
Present - World Without Oil – generating a massively collaborative map of potential, citizen responses to oil shock; constructing a database of lower-consumption practices that might prevent that shock from happening
Future - Massively Multiplayer Science – games with real scientific data embedded in them, and gameplay to collect, analyze and process the data in massive parallel

Massively multi-citizen science is almost here

Can a game developer be nominated for a Nobel Prize in one of the sciences by the year 2032? That's my plan, which I presented this past weekend at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

You can download the slides from my talk, or read the related research paper (hot off the press!), or peruse some related links, on my AAAS webpage here. (Or see what Newsday took away from it here.)

My goal over the next decade is to support the development of a massively multi-citizen science through massively collaborative games (think: alternate reality games with real-world data embedded inside.)

So in the near future, when the most creative, collective-intelligence gamers are grinding away 10, 20, 30, or more hours a week, they're grinding on real scientific research problems wrapped inside a yummy fictive or fantasy shell.

Yes, I am calling for a truly popular scientific research practice that engages the global public in hands-on, brains-on collaboration, via sites Citizen Science and Amazon's Mechanical Turk and through immersive, story-driven play. Amateur participation + a creative commons for science literature + the stickiness of a well-designed game and well-told story = radically interdisciplinary mash-ups accessible to lay people and productive of real scientific insight.

Sound crazy? No way. This is seriously possible, and plausible. Here's three reasons why:

1) Science practice itself is increasingly leaning toward a kind of collective intelligence, amateur participation. You can read about it in the incredible Institute for the Future report: Delta Scan: The Future of Science and Technology, 2005-2055.

2) Meanwhile, there is no doubt -- as I argue in my new 50-page case study for the MacArthur foundation -- that alternate reality gamers are doing real CI investigations that would fully prepare them for real-world collaborative research. Their gameplay is already fundamentally a CI scientific effort to undertand fake (fictive) data. I'm just proposing that we shove some real scientific data in there, while they're at it.

3) And perhaps most importantly, as Sean Stewart - the original and most esteemed alternate reality storyteller around - has famously said: "I do NOT assert that [alternate reality gaming] is the first, or greatest, example of massively multi-player collaborative investigation and problem solving. Science, as a social activity promoted by the Royal Society of Newton's day and persisting to this moment, has a long head start and a damn fine track record.... We just accidentally re-invented Science as pop culture entertainment."

So, yes, If this sounds interesting, get the slides. And here are a couple of other sites to get you thinking: "Fostering Scientific Habits of Mind in the Context of Online Play" and MacArthur Spotlight on Digital Media & Learning.

If you want to propose a data set, scientific problem, or research focus for a massively multi-citizen science game, or if you want to be notified when there's such a game to be played, email me at jane @ thenameofthisblog dot com.