scoot CIP | scoot FedSq | scoot camp
 |
 |
SCOOT is a creative work that is the result of my current PhD studies ("Lesser-known Worlds")
SCOOT is a mixed reality experience designed to explore the potentials of a relatively new(ish) form of game design, location-based games (LBGs), that employ the web and mobile devices as tools of play. SCOOT is set in both the physical world and a virtual facsimile of the site situated online. Players are challenged to find and solve clues in BOTH worlds in order to reveal the dynamics of the site and progress in the game. SCOOT also exploits known tropes from treasure hunt and puzzle games in the real world, supported by online navigation and communication.
SCOOT: Location-Based Games as a creative tool for reviving local participation in urban environments.
SCOOT represents a new theorisation of the role of location based games (LBGs) as potentially playing specific roles in groups' access to the culture of cities. It argues that as a new genre in the field of mobile entertainment, research in this area tends to be preoccupied with the newness of the technology and its commercial possibilities. However, this overlooks its potential to contribute to cultural capital in this field. I have begun with the presumption that the potential lies in the capacity of these experiences to enhance relationships between specific groups and new urban spaces. It is proposed that this is enabled by the game's capacity to intervene in both the actual and telematic flows between local sites, individuals and groups, allowing individuals and groups to more actively engage in the social, cultural and economical transactions in an urban place.
In order to do so the focus of the study has become:
1. How can LBGs intervene in the existing urban infrustructures (in particular the 'telematic' flows normally controlled by Telcos and government bodies)
2. How to exploit this in order for LBGs to provide the opportunity for urban 'existents' to engage in their cultural environments in a creative and productive way.
Instead of only studying current examples of LBGs, I decided the best way to understand all the complexities involved, was to engage in a reflective process of the design and delivery of such an intervention. The resulting project, SCOOT has had multiple iterations in unique urban spaces that foster similar cultural and community activities with varying levels of access for local participation.
Interventions in urban environments and their telematic flows
I found that when the developers of newish hybrid spaces become involved with the planning of cultural environments and events, it is obligatory that these environments become players in the world of global information flows in the form of ‘intelligent buildings' and ‘smart offices'. As a result, the places in which we humans find ourselves are becoming parallel infrastructures of both the telematic (Graham and Marvin 1996) and urban ‘spaces of flow' (Castells, 1998). The first giving rise to the improved processing and circulation of information, services, communication and exchange, and the second is the site of human experience of place and the social interaction and construction of identities by groups and individuals (Zukin, 1995). Given the increasing potential for building global networks, what are the opportunities that now exist for the local stakeholders? Who are they, and what are their actual levels of access and agency within these nodes and flows?
The first iteration of 'Scoot' is designed for the new “Creative Industries Precinct” in Brisbane, Australia "where a government and university have come together to plan and build a new integrated community”. According to the developers of the site “it provides a unique opportunity for designers, artists, researchers, educators and entrepreneurs to easily connect and collaborate with others to create new work, develop new ideas and grow the creative industries sector in Queensland." [kgurbanvillage.com.au]. As well as being a place of urban renewal with various opportunities for community engagement, this is a "$60 million site that boasts some of the most advanced digital facilities" [ciprecinct.com.au]. The game attempts to bridge these parallel worlds of the physical and global networks, and exploit them in an effort to reveal and make richer the socio-cultural experiences for local stakeholders: the everyday inhabitants!
emergent narratives as evidence of creative intervention:
Emergent narratives as evidence of the games ability to provide social and cultural capital. I will be concentrating on broadening the current discussion of ‘game narrative’ to include the following 5 narrative types. I will discuss the significance of each of these in the exegesis:
1- Developers narratives: the story of how we will make the game and the stories that emerge form the team as a result of a participatory design process. These discussions constantly impact the aesthetics and structure of the game as various team members develop ideas about the game narrative. The initial developers narrative (design brief) also acts as a guide for all team members during production… it sets the frame for the group perspective as well as providing a sense of individual roles within the frame.
2 - Players “in-play” narratives: provides a motivation for players to continue through the game. These are stories and conversations had during play. Some of these occur between the game and the players, but most of them are generated by players communicating to each other through discussion forums, electronic notice boards, game bunker chatter and onsite gatherings (all intentionally provided and recorded by the game).
3- Players “out of play” narratives: the stories retold of the game play. This is especially significant if the game has been able to create a sense of game camaraderie amongst the players and provided resources to insure this connection has resonance beyond the actual game play and into more ‘everyday’ interactions. These stories also provide the game with a loyal following and a kind of legendary status amongst particular groups that have formed. (these stories are obtained through post-game discussion forums and focus group interviews)
4 – Site narratives: the local histories or stories related to the site that inform the game development and integration. This also includes stories of how the sites physical and technical infrastructure is perceived and utilized.
5 – The game narrative: eg. "Rejected by his own world, Omega Carnega has new plans to bring his experiment to your world. You have two choices. You can simply wait for the chaos or put an end to this crazy carnival."
6 – the Game genre: the story of the game as a genre has an impact of how it is conceived, experienced and perceived. (both for the developers, the players and the inhabitants of the site
the projects: ideas manifested and shared
The original version of Scoot has already had a few lives. The first was at the newish Creatiive Industries Precinct in Brisbane and the next iteration will occur in April 2005 in Federation Square, Melbourne, Victoria. see more details below...
Scoot @ CIP and Fed Sq are 1 to 3 day events with rich media across both virtual, physical and hybrid environments.
This version provided the design methods, game structure, narrative, characters, rules of play, graphical style and promotional materials. It also set specific levels of player participation, multi-device communications, system feedback, tools for location analysis and stakeholder cooperation. (all of this will be detailed in the exegesis… but some will be available on the web site by the end of Jan 2004
SCOOT @ the Cultural Industries |
Melbourne. 1 day mediated event. April 2005. Designed for the Aust. Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). Funded by the Melbourne City Council and ACMI. |
Another version of Scoot (temporaily called scoot camp) has also been developed to enable cooperative design and play. It is designed and played during workshops on location with local groups... usually as part of a local youth festival. I am now working towards having a web interface that is intuitive enough for people to custom design and play these experiences for and in their own neighborhoods at any time! This will be the ultimate goal of this project.
click here for more info on the aims/structure
of the workshops... or click on the images below to see details of the first 2 workshop.
NSW. Half day workshop/participatory design. Sept. 2004. Designed for the Electrofringe festival and funded by dLux media |
Brisbane. Half day workshop/participatory design. Dec. 2004. Designed for the SOOB festival. Self funded. |
game inspirations:
Scoot has learnt from many of it's predecesor games:
General game lover, especially:
RPGs: Dungeons and Dragons
Character Adventures: Zelda
God Games: Sims
ARGs: The Beast
Close Cousins of the LBG genre: (see below)
Geocaching : Geocachers
Close Encounters : C-Level - LA, USA
I Like Frank : Blast Theory - UK/Aust
GeoQuest : Ludigames - France
Bot fighters : Its Alive: - Sweden
AR Quake : Uni of SA - Aust
Location Based Games: a newish genre
There are a number of examples of this relatively new form of game design, all played out within different cultural locations and with different tools of play ranging from mobile phones equipped with location aware technologies (Mogi 2003) to augmented reality devices (AR Quake). However, not all of these examples claim to be designed in and for a unique physical location. Some of the examples that are closest in form to SCOOT are Geocaching, I Like Frank in Adelaide (Blast Theory, 2004), and Botfighters (Its Alive, 2003) as they are designed to enable play in specific locations. Although these games employ innovative uses of technology and result in interesting player collaborations, we found that these games are normally limited to simple treasure hunts, chase sequences and combat scenes that do not necessarily engage participants in the specific culture of the sites they enter. They tend to treat the environment as a ‘stage' for play rather than a potentially dynamic agent with multiple features, histories, local stories etc. In Las Angeles, America, the geocachers have gained a reputation of being ‘geotrashers' who are notorious for using the parks as arenas of play with little concern of the ecological impacts.
However, there have been some projects that are more appreciative of the cultural value of the locations they employ. For example, Close Encounters in Los Angeles (2002) and and GeoQuest of Marseille (Ludigames and France Telecom, 2002). In particular, the creators of Close Encounters, Christina Ulke & Marc Herbst, challenged the newly forming patterns of play by setting up a game that invited "geocachers to proactively step out from the cyber-realm into the charged terrain of racial politics" by sending them into Leimert Park, a middle class African American neighbourhood. The authors insured that the players did not only skim the surface of the site, but encouraged them to engage with the place and people. Evidence of their interaction with locals could be posted on the geocache web site. Similarly, the project 73 Urban Journeys was “designed to explore, experience and capture textual, visual and sensual narratives of the mobile London urban experience” (Jungnickel, 2003). People who travel on the London Bus Route 73, are invited to post stories and images relating to either bus stops or specific seats of the traditional double-decker. These examples have either begun with a narrative taken from the site or invited the players to share their own experiences of the place. Either way the resulting image or story artefacts are an engaging read that inspire a richer relationship to the site.
Many stories post game play reveal that part of the fun of playing is attempting to go beyond the intended design of the game. One Sims player (who wishes to remain nameless) spent days with his Sims characters trying to hide a neglected child from a concerned and persistent social worker (NPC). He went to great lengths to design structures such as fences and moats without bridges. Commonly, the players' justification for such behaviour went beyond simply wanting to break the intended game rules for a laugh. It was also a way of presenting their skill and knowledge of the games parameters. This attitude is consistent across ‘hard core' game players. It is similar to a ‘hackers' mentality: to produce evidence of breaking through a seemingly closed system parameters is its own reward for playing. This reward mechanism is sometimes built into a game design, but a true hacker/gamer would normally try to outwit any institution/system presented to them.
This desire for subversion is of particular concern to the design of location-based games. The challenge is to allow such behaviour as it attracts a type of player that would push the design parameters (almost as system trouble shooters) and creates a sense of loyalty in doing so. If players sense that they can impact the game, their sense of agency is high. Actual or mocked player control and agency is crucial to the success of games longevity. An LBG has the responsibility to enable this without affording too much risk and harm to the player in a physical environment.
A particularly interesting game that stretched the concept of player agency was the Beast (Micorsoft and Dreamworks, Steven Spielberg) which was produced as a publicity activity leading up to the release of the 2001 Steven Spielberg film, Artificial Intelligence (AI).
In early April 2001, movie fans started to notice a series of distributed clues and narratives on film posters that led to web sites that lead to phone numbers etc. It appeared to be some sort of game. However, there did not seem to be any evidence of game rules or rewards. Game clues could be found on web sites, in HTML source code, voice recordings left on phones, and photographs and packages left in public bathrooms across New York , Chicago and Los Angeles.
A fan, Cabel Sasser, began a web based message board ( http://www.cloudmakers.org ) that soon found itself with 7480 members. The Beasts producers claim that over one million people participated in a collective effort to follow and/or solve the narrative, but the Cloudmakers became the most organised and notorious. These groups collaborated to share clues, post theories, solve puzzles, program cracks, create artwork etc. As a collective they became a very successful force as they quickly solved game puzzles, challenging the game designers to constantly produce more complex clues.
When this game came to an end, some players had been so immersed in the experience that they wished to stay engaged with the community they had formed and continue with these collective activities. They would seek out ‘real world' problems (such as the 9-11 attacks on New York ) to resolve using the methods of collaboration they had established while playing the Beast. However, this seemed extreme by some of the Cloudmakers who were less inclined to participate reminding the members that “this is not a game'.
The confusion is understandable as the producers of the Beast always maintained that the Beast was not a game. In fact, the alternate reality gamers now normally refer to this style of game as a TING (This is Not a Game). This is a tribute to the game designers ability to design a series of events that enabled a highly immersive and engaging experience for game players, particularly as it is set in their normal existence of space and time.
It is this phenomenon that I am most interested in: an experience that engages players beyond the virtual environment into the realms of reality. For a location-based game to be successful, it must alter the players perception of their own space, hence increasing their agency and motivation to be collaborative authors of the experience.
As a creative practitioner engaged in the production of located experiences (LBGs), this all raises questions beyond those concerned with game aesthetics and system feedback. The blend of the imagined and the real points to the complex and contextual inter-relationships between the stakeholders, participants, media (the game) and actual world in which it is situated. I am interested in the broader contexts of the potential players of games in order to evaluate their impacts beyond the simplistic and immediate relationship the user may have with the game. The context (immediate and historic) of the player and the game is part of a complex network of social, physical, cultural, historical and social factors.
