No subject

Thu Jan 17 09:40:16 EST 2013

eds a serious promotional effort to gather a critical mass of participants =
(relying on established network and organizations), and there is a degree o=
f user self-selection in the process. Since the &quot;content&quot; is eith=
er collectively created or revealed gradually, I assume most people joining=
 an ARG have a vague idea of what an ARG is beforehand. Similar projects li=
ke Jane McGonigal&#39;s Evoke have built-in viral campaigns. They essential=
ly reward players for bringing in other players, but that&#39;s a bit of a =
turn off for me. I&#39;d rather experience something first and then, if it&=
#39;s compelling, tell the world about it. I wonder what are your thoughts =
about it.

Another aspect that I always tried to wrap my mind around is: how do you ma=
nage agency in a distributed and collaborative storytelling/brainstorming e=
ffort? Formalized games, digital or not, provide a tight feedback loop that=
 make the player feel like their action actually matter within the game sys=
tem. Even in roleplaying games or free-form storygames players are constant=
ly negotiating, affecting and limiting each other. My understanding of WWO =
or Evoke is that puppetmasters/organizers come up with a series of challeng=
es along the line of &quot;let&#39;s all think about how to save Africa&quo=
t; or &quot;let&#39;s imagine how your daily life would be during an oil cr=
isis&quot; and then ask the players to produce social media content (blog p=
osts etc) in response. I know sometimes there are external rewards for part=
icipating (like scores or prizes) but I didn&#39;t find examples of players=
 engaging with each other and coming up with something unexpected, somethin=
g that is more that a short essay. I&#39;m sure you analyzed behaviors and =
user-generated content and maybe you can give us some insights.

<br>
P</font></span><div class=3D"HOEnZb"><div class=3D"h5"><br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
On 3/19/13 11:57 PM, Ken Eklund wrote:<br>
<blockquote class=3D"gmail_quote" style=3D"margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1p=
x #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex">
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Claudia wrote:<br>
<br>
I&#39;m familiar with WORLD WITHOUT OIL, though I&#39;m not sure how the ga=
me mechanics play out beyond the website form, or the discursive exchanges.=
 Could you please speak a bit about this? (I have the impression that the g=
ame is distinct from Mcgonnical&#39;s work, which plays off and online). Do=
 players play out these simulations?<br>

/Ken: Sure, Claudia. The unfortunate thing is, it&#39;s much harder to expl=
ain WWO than it was to play WWO! 
 
I wrote earlier: 
 
&quot;WORLD WITHOUT OIL had a simple device: on its website (<a href=3D"htt=
p://worldwithoutoil.org" target=3D"_blank">worldwithoutoil.org</a>) it pret=
ended that an oil crisis had started. It presented itself as the &quot;citi=
zen nerve center&quot; for the crisis and asked people to send in reports d=
escribing their lives in the oil shortage. It immersed itself in its own fi=
ction, i.e., the metadata about the project was made unobtrusive; once you =
acquainted yourself with what the project really was you need never be remi=
nded again.

<br>
&quot;In WORLD WITHOUT OIL, then, there was no separate representation of y=
ourself, and there were no rules. Because the gamemakers set examples with =
themselves in the game, people understood they were to try to imagine their=
 lives realistically in an oil shortage. This proved to be a very fun exper=
ience for a lot of people and a very powerful experience for some.&quot;<br=
>

<br>
That describes the game mechanic, but of course it smacks of describing soc=
cer as &quot;kicking a ball around.&quot; Back in the day, I prepared a blo=
g to relate a typical game observer&#39;s experience -- it&#39;s here, at G=
retchen Sans Petrole: <a href=3D"http://gretchenv.wordpress.com" target=3D"=
_blank">http://gretchenv.wordpress.com</a><br>

If Gretchen had been a player, she would have included an account of her co=
ntributions: she would talk about the things she read and observations of h=
er own life that inspired each story she created, the responses each of her=
 contributions got from the game and from other players, and the effect the=
y had on the game narrative as a whole. It would be readily translatable in=
to typical game lingo: &quot;I entered the game, and I made this move, whic=
h kinda worked, so then I tried this, and that worked better, and then I di=
d a bunch more, and in the end I felt really good because I played really w=
ell and added some elements to our victory.&quot;

Re: Jane McGonigal 
WORLD WITHOUT OIL is and isn&#39;t distinct from what Jane does. It certain=
ly isn&#39;t distinct in that Jane was a part of WWO -- she became availabl=
e shortly before the game rolled out and I immediately hired her on. You ca=
n see her touch in the &quot;missions&quot; and &quot;awards&quot; that we =
added to WWO after she came on board. It is distinct from her work in its c=
ore gameplay mechanic of &quot;immersive participatory narrative&quot; as d=
escribed above.

Re: &quot;Do players play out these simulations?&quot; 
In their heads, certainly. Which is all you need. 
 
 
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</blockquote>
 
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