Place-based or space based?
Nicholas Nova - who I have huge respect for....seems to capture what I have been trying to articulate for ever..
he sees the situated nature of games on a spectrum, with worst case scenario...
people required to be in the same place and the same time to play (in other words just like traditional streetgames! - he mentions lazerquest style games that require not only a place, time but also special equipment that costs money....and even blasttheory...)
through to playing anytime anywhere all together (he suggests this is utopian....tech is simply not that seamless...at least not yet or for a long time yet...)
THE MIDDLE - to describe it he makes a nice analogy with skate parks
"A mid-point on this spectrum would be to have an approach to combine the two. And I quite like the skateboard metaphor for that matter. You can do skateboard freely in lots of places (streets, parking, etc.) and also go to skateparks. In the former, the infrastructure of the everyday environment constrain the skateboarding tricks whereas in the latter the skatepark design is meant to allow certain tricks. What is interesting as well is that in street skating, there is a pleasure associated in finding nice and relevant spots, whereas in skateparks, things are more under controlled."
for Nicholas a possible solution then might be to design design "for both targets in minds: both the daily and everyday environment (with its constraints, problems, issues) and for the “laser-park” equivalent in which the control of certain parameters would allow to go beyond the daily environment"
For me, this is not really practical, until we have distance learner hubs, how he also asks "And what would be a good candidate (as a device) for that? What corresponds to the skateboard?" - I think the object, as a kind of transitional, bridging object, might be partly the answer (like the geocaching box). A think that helps to translate the environment somehow, creates a perspective.....). This is where I think the answer might lie.
http://liftlab.com/think/nova/2007/10/01/pervasive-gaming-laser-games-and-the-skatepark-model/