Haphazard Journey by Starlight

I had to go to A&E yesterday. I was asked to describe my symptoms to 5 separate people over the course of 3 hours. A very interesting experience as each medic had their own take on what was wrong with me and an explanation as to why. Each to had started a new explanation, the previous medics' comments rattled around in my head and I found it very hard to stick to my original story. Other people's ideas about what happened to you, during a situation which is high emotion and rather hard to remember in the first place can very quickly have me questioning my original description. And in other ways I found myself exaggerating certain symptoms if I felt they had been overlooked in the previous consulation. It would be interesting to do a study on how a patient's memory and experience of symptoms changes over the course of a 3 hour period under this kind of cross-examing. I'll probably have to leave that to someone else but I thought there's definitely a game there too. A game with some similarities to chinese whispers, except the goal is to try and alter a players' memory of something they've had to learn off by heart. Perhaps part of a story. And other players must prod them, ask questions about the story, paying special attention to a part which was perhaps originally quite unimportant....to get them off track. The person who can most closely stick to their original story is the winner. A bit rough but maybe there's something there. I like a game that uses psychology, confusion....

Posted by Celinelj at 07:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

with thanks to Fortune Cookie for the use of this graphic

creative commons licence details

Ron and I created a game that I hope we can play at a Hide and Seek Sandpit event in the near future. You can view the untested rules here: http://ludocity.org/wiki/Double_Agent_/_Watch_Your_Back We trying to think of games which might create a raised awareness of body language. The Ludocity site includes lots of other wonderful street games - definitely worth taking a look.

Very grateful for any feedback.

Posted by Celinelj at 07:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I feel increasingly uncomfortable thinking of location-based games as primarily tracking the *location* of a player. More and more I feel it's time for greater recognition of movement, direction, tempo, speed and the importance of the human body in the game. Until then I feel as if there may be strategy but little in the way of self expression in our physical play and we are limiting our designs. I'm just going to play those location-based games on google maps or send out my pet robot to play on my behalf. Stuart Dredge makes the point, for example, that it's always going to be hard to get players to be in the together in the same place at the same time. As he explains, there are of course other ways to deal with location, however I think by placing focus on the body, we're giving ourselves even greater gaming opportunities.

Posted by Celinelj at 02:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As usual this is going to be a rushed post scratching out a basic idea before I rush of to try and keep my the rest of my life above water.....

whilst working on a possible piece of work for the games fringe a colleague asked how the basic game I'd designed could be made to be more "arty". To begin with i thought the answer was simple, we'd just give it an arty theme or atmosphere...

But then, being of the belief that games are an art form in themselves without having to be "arty" I started to wonder why there's an expection that a fringe game should be *more* arty. Well, this is just in the brief so no need to argue it.

Looking at much art/games, these works lack a real game structure. What I mean by this is that that the player is often thwarted....the goals and rules are purposefully unclear/broken and the game aims to produce a sense of surprise, shock and to raise questions but does not in my opinion end up achieving the flow or fun, a sense of achievement that you get from a traditional game. They've broken the game to make a statement. In my mind these aren't art - yes, but games - no.

So I went on to think about Blast Theory: in my mind one of the most successful art/game groups. Their *games* are very simple in terms of mechanics -Uncle Roy is a treasure hunt, Can You See Me Now is chase game and as such are really fun to play.

What makes them *arty farty*?

Well, they interject the experience with questions for participants which encourage reflection on the nature of their lives and relationships with others. That's pretty simple, it could be done with just about any game - the game is just a framework. And it's true to say they've used the same game mechanics and game engine to produce a number of different works. So far there doesn't seem much art involved...

However I think it's their use of technology that makes them powerful pieces, each work involves two players working together, anonymous to one another, one online one offline supports their exploration of modern society and alienation, but is there any more to it? BT use the same basic gaming structure to create a variety of diff art works...whereas Blast Theory, I'd argue are making true game art. A question of the medium is the message in this case...but is it always the case? I really don't know!

PN: Here's a great, clear article on current thinking on games as art at gamasutra: http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20070316/ochalla_01.shtml

Posted by Ron Edwards at 07:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)