Transcript Games with Publics: Creating Play Experiences that Foster Collective Action Elizabeth Losh University of California, Irvine.

Games with Publics: Creating Play
Experiences that Foster Collective
Action
Elizabeth Losh
University of California, Irvine
Serious Games
The Academic as Activist /
The Critic as Producer
The Guild (2007-2008)
Bruno Latour, Making Things Public (2005)
Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games (2006)
AUTHOR
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TEXT
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AUDIENCE
Beyond “Audience” as a Marketing Term
The New York Times
Food Import Folly (2007)
The Night Journey (2007)
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AUDIENCE
Kinds of Audiences
1) collaboration audiences (multiplayer games
that reward cooperation as well as competition in
a reputation economy that is internal to the
game)
2) elaboration audiences (games that inspire
machinima, mods, and the production of new
digital media in a reputation economy that may
be external to the game)
3) opportunistic audiences (games that
encourage users to share information about the
game world, walk-throughs, cheat codes, etc.)
4) regulatory audiences (games that shock
legislators or members of the mainstream media
who often condemn games they have never
played)
5) mixed reality audiences (games that lead to
situated action in real-life cities or other public
places)
Collaboration/Competition
Players accept the basic value-system of the game
as a way to settle disputes.
Practices of game subcultures may extend to online
forums, public tournaments, etc.
As Ren Reynolds has argued, even practices like
“ganking” can be understood as rule-based
interactions.
Runescape
Another Kind of Navigation
The King of Kong (2007)
Elaboration
Using assets from the software and elements of
the design, players generate new derivative
works.
The value-systems represented in these
derivative works may be independent of those of
the original game.
Alexander Galloway and
the Radical Software Group
Kriegspiel (2008)
Javier and Furplay
Cantina Crawls
Red vs. Blue (2003-2007)
Jim Munroe
My Trip to Liberty City (2004)
Anne-Marie Schleiner
Velvet-Strike (2002)
Joseph DeLappe
Dead in Iraq (2006)
Wafaa Bilial
Virtual Jihadi (2008)
Cory Arcangel
Who is breaking the rules?
Who is making the rules?
Opportunism
A split between the recognition of value and
values
Mia Consalvo, Cheating (2007)
Tactical Iraqi
Regulation
May 4, 2006 – House Intelligence Hearing
on “Terrorist Use of the Internet”
June 16, 2006 – “Digital Promise”
Mixed Reality
Games are staged in the landscapes and built
environments of the “real” world, often in ways
that dramatize a social relationships and cultural
assumptions.
Players explore their own identities rather than the
identity of a fictional character.
Adrian David Cheok
Age Invaders
Wafaa Bilal
Domestic Tension (2007)
ARGs frequently comment on other, less
obvious forms of “mixed reality” that are
present in invisible architectures of control
that dictate how social roles are assigned,
economic resources are allocated, physical
distance between human beings is
maintained, and rules governing the
general strategies of cooperation and
competition appropriate for urban dwellers
are formalized
Ian Bogost and Jane McGonigal
Cruel 2B Kind (2006)
Jane McGonigal
World Without Oil (2007)