How games make reality better
I just got invited to Fitocracy by a couple of gamer friends who I hang out with on IRC. This means that I must immediately start my more healthy life and gather experience points! I will share my experiences on this blog. It will be great fun to see if grinding works in reality!
There will be a post about how Fitocracy actually works in the future, when I’ve played it for a while. 
Now! Quests!
Strangers.
They are unknown. Possibly dangerous, or at least scary. They are definitly strange, otherwise they would not be called strangers, right? It takes guts to move up to a stranger and start to chat. It isn’t even easy to offer someone you don’t know help when they are in apparent need. Sweden, the godforsaken, polarbear-infested country of the north, is widely known for its citizens incomparable fear of talking with strangers on the bus. You do not, I repeat, do not take a seat beside someone you don’t know if it isn’t the last resort. That is a fact.
I believe that the cold north would be a little colder if this were a rule not to be broken. Luckily, that is not the case. Luckily, there is a game which helps you overcome this fear of strangers.
Ladies and gentlemen, an applaud for Situationist (www.situationistapp.com).
Situationist is a iPhone game inspired by the Situationist International movement who sought to experiment with our everyday social behaviour in order to transform it. You need an iPhone, of course, and you need to keep the application alive as long as you are playing. The first thing you do is to take a picture of yourself, in order to let other players identify you. Next step is to choose actions you wish strangers to do to you.
This sounds really scary, right? That’s the whole point.
When someone who has the application on comes close to you, you or the other player gets the photo and an action to perform. It may be ”wave to me like a long lost friend”, ”ask me what I think about the war”, or ”hug me for five seconds exactly”. When, or if, the action is performed, you both have to confirm that it took place.
That’s it.
That’s how you get a reason to interact with a stranger and make the world a cozier place.
However, this poses some major problems. It is safe to assume that no one who has even an inch of doubt towards interaction with strangers will participate in Situationist. Of course, for those playing, the game will probably be really satisfying, but for those who isn’t too comfy with the thought of being even waved to by someone unknown, will never even download the application. If Situationist should be a tool for forcing people to interact, we will need a strategy to 1. get the non-believers to participate to begin with, and 2. make them feel comfortable with it, and even enjoy it. It’s almost catastrophic if the game made people less urged to interact. How do we overcome this problem?
The other major issue is the element of participation in general. Of my friends, only a handful is interested in playing, and that is not because the others are anti-social cowards. One reason is the fact that the game, as of today, only is playable on iPhones. Another is that some judgemental beliefs, that it is, in the best case, unnecessary, and in the worst case, a beacon for attracting lunatics (such as myself, I suppose). If, in a town like Linköping, Sweden, with a population of one hundred thousand people, only me and my friends is playing, there isn’t much of a surprise when I high five my friend Samuel for the twenty-eleventh time. In order to make Situationist work as it is supposed to, we need to get a lot of different people to play. It would be interesting to hear about how Situationist is working in other cities of different sizes. Please leave a comment!
This post is, of course, a call to apps. A call for more players and a more social world. Situationist is a remarkable and fun way to meet new people, interact with so-called strangers, and make new aquaintences. It is worth it.
Tags: Situationist
The slightly obsessive compulsive disorder to check in at every place spreads like a virus, making a game out of visiting as many places as possible (or, as in the case of Facebook, just telling your friends where you are). It is easy to question if that is sane, but that is not what I intend to do here. Quite to opposite, as a matter of fact.
The two largest “check in” games of today is Gowalla (www.gowalla.com) and Foursquare (www.foursquare.com) (correct me if I am wrong). I wrote about Gowalla in “The unorthodox tale about why I started using Gowalla”, but I will summarise what the game is about: Everytime you check in, there is a chance you will get an item. The more items you got, the larger your collection. (You may, also, collect stamps and trips by going to certain places) You can drop items at spots for others to pick up and you can trackback who owned the stuff you have in your backpack. There is, as far as I know, no reward outside the game.
Foursquare, on the other hand, is all about rewards in the real game. In short, everytime you check in in Foursquare you get points (which varies depending on which kind of place it is and how often you check in at that place and places like it). If you have to most point, you are the mayor of the spot. All spots doesn’t have rewards for being a mayor (I think rewards of that kind is more common in the United States than in Sweden, unfortunately) but some have and that’s the important part. Other spots has rewards just for checking in: H&M had a 20 % off deal all through June, for example.
Both Gowalla and Foursquare boosts the fun in visiting places, even the ones who usually are quite dull. If you have a chance of picking up a rare item or catching a sweet deal at the store, you will be more likely to enjoy going there, or even feel the thrill as you check in. In that similar way, both Gowalla and Foursquare improves the reality. However, the similarities ends there, and it is rather obvious that the games appeals to different kinds of players (i.e. all people).
Gowalla simply appeals to the collector, a gamer that concentrates on getting each possible thing. May it be items, stamps or trips, the collector got to have them all (the Pokemon games, to draw a abominable parallell, has it as slogan: “gotta catch ‘em all!”). Since there is no other point in checking in, Gowalla needs to generate new goals for the collector to achieve. It is like collecting stickers or porcelain cats, only it is digital. The only real world rewards is the excitement of the hunt and the proudness over the great collection, which, on the other hand, is one hell of a reward.
Foursquare has found another kind of player. Greedy may be a strong word, but the main objective for the adventurer is fame and fortune. A successful adventurer is well known as well as a virtuoso in resource management, knowing exactly which path to choose, weighing every option to identify the most effective method. That, however, is not inside the boundries of Foursquare. Instead Foursquare is a tool for making those choices in real life. Just like browsing reviews or price-comparisons before you but new stuff.
The difference, to sum it up, is very much dependent on which types of activities you prefer: collecting or adventuring (although, geocaching brings on new dimensions for the latter). Do you want the main impact to be in-game or in real life? Maybe both?
Tags: Foursquare, Gowalla
The everyday routine of going to school, making homework and wearing a seat belt makes life safe and dull for many youth. How to remove that boredom? Add a layer of reality, Deathgame, where you see new places, meet new people and stab them with a carrot.
How does it work?
Deathgame is a BRG where the goal is to “kill” as many of the participants as possible while staying alive. Bananas, carrots, onions and apples are an important part of the arsenal of weapons used in the game. A banana is used by pointing it at another player and saying: “Bang, you’re dead!”. The other weapons have similar rules, but one that I find extra interesting and quite amusing is the onion which symbolises a gas grenade. The onion is activated by peeling it and throwing it towards another participant, all players in that room five seconds after the onion is thrown will be killed by the onion if they don’t equip a snorkel (within ten seconds).
A kill is reported to the games masters through a web interface at the Deathgame website by the one who made the kill, a description is added to the report and both the killer and the killed must agree that the kill has happened.
How does this game make reality better?
Deathgame adds a level of excitement to everyday life and makes the participants get to know other participants, perhaps after they’ve blown them to pieces with an apple.
Tags: deathgame, excitement, game master
A lot of stuff occured at almost the same time: someone told me about reality-altering games (such as Situationist (situationistapp.com, but more about that later)), Andreas (my fellow blogger here at BRG) pitched his idea about calling “alternate reality games” for “better reality games”, and – finally – I was told that some, admittedly visionary, woman was talking about how games can save to world. Heck! She even wrote a book about it, called Reality is Broken.
Maybe I could have avoided the tendences, at least if they had struck me one at a time. Maybe I could have laughed about it and fled into my well-trained bubble of cynism. But I didn’t. My curiosity was underfed and just a few days later, Reality is Broken (realityisbroken.org) by Jane McGonigal (janemcgonigal.com) was safely lying on my desk for roughly half an hour.
Then I was stuck.
My ambition has never been just to live a happy life, but to save the world, or at least humankind. It is quite possible that the goal was born under one or many of all the times I saved the world, or at least humankind, in virtual worlds. It is plausible. But all the previous world-saving runs was just a waste of time, wasn’t it?
Jane McGonigal argues that it wasn’t. Quite the opposite, as a matter of fact.
Jane McGonigal argues that the games satisfies human needs that reality doesn’t, that gamers train collaboration, problem-solving and the art of both succeeding and failing, that the activity in itself has a meaning and purpuse that is hard to find outside the frames of a game. By recognising what gamers really do and become good at, she invents a list of game-like abilities and systems that, in the best of worlds, can be applied on reality:
Where does that leave us? Or, for that matter, where are we now?
The earth and humankind stand in front of some rather itchy scratches. Climate changes is underway, and along with it the end of oil as a major power source. Wars are ravaging all over our planet, leaving scars on humans as well as communities and landscape. Diseases and famines, water-shortages and poverty makes reality a living hell for millions of people, and an unavoidable slippery slope for some of the most powerful people in the world.
Let’s say we took fate in our own hand, and mobilised our gamers (and those who doesn’t play anymore, because that’s no activity for an adult, even though it is really fun) to save the future? It is hard, of course, but in Jane McGonigal’s vision, “hard” is a requirement for rallying gamers. The challange is part of the solution.
How?
I’m glad you asked! Buy designing “better reality games” (or, as most of the world call them, “alternate reality games”) that satisfies the aching needs of gamers by giving them a game-like environment to take on purposeful and meaningful challanges. Jane McGonigal has developed some of her own, and they are well presented in Reality is Broken (and probably on the world wide web as well) for you to read about, or partake in for that matter. The funny thing is that my game designing ambitions has been slowly falling lately, along with my playing. But since I laid my hands on Reality is broken, nothing has been the same. I feel like designing games, world-changing as well as mine and Olle Linge’s (snigel.nu) Nostalgia (a game about boasting). I feel like playing games, not all of them and every kind, but those who has a potential to, in some way, make me, reality or the world a better place. And most importantly, for the creation of this site, I feel like writing about and discussing how games can make reality better. And I have Andreas, Olle, Samuel Gyllenberg (@gyllenberg), and Jane McGonigal to thank for that.
Now, let’s get to making reality better.
The echoes of the ironic era haunts our everyday life. The individuality and self-help-mindedness of the 21th century sows doubt in our fragile psyche; even the honestly meant compliments are recieved with disbelief:
“I like your shirt!”
“… Are you sure?”
A game is never ironic (although the fantastic first person puzzles Portal and Portal 2 has taken the art of sarcasm to new heights). Every reward is well meant and every level up is the result of hard effort. The joy we feel when recieving feedback of that kind is strong and immediate. Why are compliments from people so different?
In my reading of Jane McGonigal‘s Reality is Broken (awesome book, more about it in another post) I discovered Plus One Me. Plus One Me is not a game, although it makes it possible to reward people with game-like acknowledgements. All you do is enter a persons e-mail, click on “+1 them” and chooses in what areas of expertise the person has shown strength and deserves to be rewarded for. For example, you may send +1 Kindness, +1 Leadership and +1 Attraction. There is about 35 different attributes and still counting (feel free to suggest new attributes that needs to be rewarded). Once you send your +1s the person will recieve an e-mail with your acknowledgements and, hopefully, a smile to wear for the rest of the day.
Why is this good, you ask?
Unlike reality (the real reality, at least) our +1s will not be recieved with an air of doubt and mistrust (which might be the case if I, with a possibly (you’ll never know) smirkful smile, compliments your shirt). There’s no sense of ironic agenda in an e-mail that says:
Hey There!
A friend of yours, Martin, +1d you to acknowledge some of your strengths. Specifically they’re acknowledging these attributes:
+1 Kindness
+1 Leadership
+1 Attraction
You don’t have to do anything or register for anything. We won’t send you any emails unless you receive more praise from friends. If you’d like to send some +1s to your friends, just visit www.plusoneme.com. You don’t have to register to send +1s, but registering allows you to see the totals of all the +1s you’ve received so far.
Enjoy your day. And congratulations!
When we’ve got ridden of the potential misunderstandings, there’s two major benefits of Plus One Me: the simplicity of using the website, and the strong well-being of getting an compliment.
The website is easy to use, no doubt about it. The easiest way is described earlier in this text, and the most complicated way is to register and do the same thing. There’s no extra features, no bloaty design standing in the way of complimenting your friends, co-workers or just about anyone.
Although it was forseen that my inbox would get some acknowledgements since I started spreading the word of Plus One Me (I’m in no way involved in the website, other than as a user), I’m humbled and happy about the things people like to compliment me on, and I feel that the feedback is sincere and well thought over. It is equally hard to express acknowledgements as to recieve it, and Plus One Me limits the effort to a minimum and maximises the impact massively. An effect may be that we get better at expressing such feedback in real life as well, and that is why I feel the need to use Plus One Me and share this with you.
That, and the joyful puzzlement I can send by rewarding people anonymously:
Someone +1d you to acknowledge some of your strengths. Specifically they’re acknowledging these attributes:
+1 Attraction.
Enjoy your day. And congratulations!
“Why do you feel the need to share with the world every place you’ll visit?” a friend asked.
“I don’t”, I replied, “I just do it for the items.”
This cryptical answer, do have a back story, of course; all tales of importance have. Let us begin with the arrival of an iPhone last fall. Before the arrival of this particular iPhone, my knowledge of these kinds of games (and naturally, my participation as well) was at a minimum. I had heard about them, anything else would have been an embarrasment, given my current occupation at an gaming association. I hadn’t tried since my phone, by the time, was about as functional as a overused wig. This particular iPhone came with opportunities, promises of new and better realities!
I therefore installed Gowalla (www.gowalla.com).
Gowalla is, in short, a game of checking in. Almost all places of some importance do have a so called “spot”. When you arrive at such a place, you check in. Sometimes you get items, and some spots are linked as trips. Lots of visits leads to lots of stuff.
I tried this for a week or two, and the abscence of improvement of my reality was notable. This may have a simple explanation: I’m not a big fan of collecting stuff (excluded books) in real life, and not so much in any other life either. A colleague of mine is, on the other hand, at least in Gowalla. He saw my collection and said:
“You have the guitar.”
“Yeah?” I said, not following.
“I don’t,” he said.
“Well, you can have it if you want. How do I… Nevermind, do it yourself,” I said and handed over this particular iPhone. He handed over this particular iPhone back to me, thanked and looked satisfied.
I have checked in at every place (when I remember to, at least) ever since. Not because I find the need to collect stuff and stamps, only because I can get items my colleague wants. And, in some cases, trade them for services in real life, dramatically enhancing my reality.
Tags: Gowalla
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