Now that a large percentage of people in are online, or soon will be, there’s a huge potential to harness technology and 2.0 social media to enhance the placemaking process. But, just a minute, engaging a community using social media is nothing new… listening, and I mean really listening to what people have to say about the planning, design and/or cultural heritage of the places where they live is what I’d like to explore. Because quality dialogue, as discussion and debate, depends on authentic participation.
To encourage public participation, collaboration, and transparency, we need to think a little more tangible than top-down online try hard strategies or qualitative bottom-up efforts, and look into the creation of integrated, authentic engagement of the online-offline sort. More and more cities, communities and organisations are looking for game-changing ways to improve their quality of dialogue with their stakeholders. What I’m proposing here is the integration of gamification and social media into traditional placemaking practices, or simply put, big games in public spaces.
… we might call it a free activity standing quite consciously outside ‘ordinary’ life as being ‘not serious’ but at the same time absorbing the player intensely and utterly. It proceeds within its own proper boundaries of time and space according to fixed rules and in an orderly manner. It promotes the formation of social groupings that tend to surround themselves with secrecy and to stress the difference from the common world…” (Johan Huizinga A Study of the Play-Element in Culture.)
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image courtesy of Gentrification
Case in point, although not created or used specifically to collect placemaking data, award-winning street game Gentrification was part of a larger trend in location-based community engagement that has been variously described as live action game of monopoly and public space hacking and random acts of kindness using interactive theatre, transmedia and alternate reality/locative/pervasive gaming. In less detail, a combination of real world action and effective technology; perhaps SimCity blended with a treasure hunt. But whatever the description, (the creators bashfully said: “the larger philosophy behind these sorts of games is turning the everyday world into a playground and an adventure.”) the excitement and attention these kinds of exercises can generate in a community is just the beginning.
It’s a game that’s social and comes at you across all the different ways that you connect to the world around you.” (Sean Stewart, 42 Entertainment)
While it’s unrealistic to conclude that a single game is going to change the world, playfully engaging and convincing the public to make better use of their public spaces, community assets or cultural heritage, is definitely good for both the city and the soul.
Creating the game
Here I’ll provide a step-by-step process for creating a game that’ll work towards determining what is unique and important in the local culture; how to focus on tapping into available resources; and organizing and implementing to create a strong sense of place. For the purpose of this blog post, I’m focusing on a game relevant to the Florens 2012 event, but this process can be replicated, modified and built upon for any event where placemaking could augment the experience.
- to survey the attitudes of the public and the economic system regarding the utilization of the cultural heritage
- cultural heritage economy can be a new driver for growth and a successful new production paradigm that focuses on the preservation, promotion, production and consumption of the cultural and environmental heritage through new synergies between research, know-how, culture and artistic expression
Through telling new stories the unknown, undiscovered city can be laid open to critical scrutiny, to new urban practices, new urban subversions.” (Pile 2001, 264)
- Observation
- Evaluation
- Identifying Problems
- Creativity
- Interactive Narrative/ Mystery/ Storytelling: Storytelling and narrative experiences are central to what makes the game emotive. Use the real world as a platform to deliver a story that can be altered by participants’ ideas or actions, allowing it to respond to the players’ actions, analysis and speculation with narrative that can adapt. Instead of presenting a chronologically unified, coherent narrative, the game should scatter pieces of the story across the Internet and on site, allowing players to reassemble it, supply connective tissue and determine what it means. The game narrative should present a fully realized world: where any phone number or email address mentioned works, any website acknowledged exists, and any game characters will function like real people, not game pieces, respond authentically, and are controlled by real people.
- Role-playing/ Real life as a medium: The game should use the players’ lives as it’s platform. Players should not be required to build a character or role-play being someone other than themselves. This allows them to unexpectedly overcome a challenge for the community simply because of the real-life knowledge and background they might possess. Players should be encouraged to constantly be on the lookout for clues embedded in everyday life. The teams will assume a problem solving role and work together to collaboratively create stories.
- Online – On Site: Two groups of players should be considered, those which are on-site, tracking and playing in the physical world and their online team members that can be connected virtually to the game action. Players can monitor game progress via the online networks or their mobile smartphone. (more ideas in Technology)
- Rabbithole/ Trailhead – A rabbithole, or trailhead, marks the first media artifact, be it a website, contact, or puzzle, that draws in players. You can employ a number of trailheads in several media types to maximize the probability of people discovering the game. Typically, the rabbithole is a website, the most easily updated, cost-effective option.
- Time Constraint/ Timeline: The story should take place in real-time, and evolve according to the players’ responses, leaving “white space” for the players to fill in. Information can be delivered in “bytes” of information on a timeline triggered by events or challenges met. Once played, the game should not be replayable virtually.
- Technology/ Connectivity: Players interact directly with each other, but rely on the Internet as the central binding medium. The aim being a sense of immersion in a real-life (but ficional) scenario. Social media connectivity with a combination of mobile/smartphone app solutions is a low cost solution to implement social networking spreading into Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare, to name a few. As the players progress through their challenges, Twitter with relevant hashtags (#playflorens2012 ?) should be used in order to maximise on the social networking spread and for online players to track progress with their on site teams. Extra-game event broadcasting can be performed in an online medium where others can perceive them, for example creating Foursquare badges for the event and Facebook pages or groups.
- Social Networks/ Connectivity: Focus on leveraging the player’s social network. Game challenges should only be possible if players in teams “shares” the game with friends (via the social network hosting the game) or gets them to play.
- Rules: Do not aim for any fixed rules—players will discover the rules and the boundaries of the game through trial and error. The game encourages two main activities: searching for information, and the economy (sharing and selling) of information. The gamemaster should allow the rules of the game to change as the gameplay takes place; as in real-life, players should be able to determine the “rules” either through trial and error or by setting their own boundaries.
- Collaboration/ Community: The outcome of the game is influenced by the players’ effort. Compound actions that require several players to perform actions by leveraging collaboration across teams. Design the game to be directed at a collective of players that share information and solutions, and incorporate individuals possessing almost every conceivable area of expertise. While the game might initially attract a small group of participants, as the participants come across new challenges they will try to find others with the knowledge needed to overcome an obstacle.
- Social Meaning/ Altruistic / Delayed Reciprocity Actions: Build in actions that have only explicit benefits for somebody else than is performing the action, or those which require the players to perform actions to help others under the assumption that they later will be helped should be considered to heighten the virality of the game.
- Evolving Game Play Design/ Continuous Goals: The games assigned specific goals for users to attain. As they advance in the game, the goals becomes more challenging and time consuming. They also provide frequent feedback with their performance. Every action will translate towards a certain goal that will be used to attain higher gaming capitals. Players should be encouraged to earn points by completing a wide variety of different tasks, often with a focus on creativity, exploration, community, or performance with the final outcome towards placemaking of cultural heritage.
- Economy/ Virtual currency: Create an economy of collaboration and knowledge exchange using gamification. Players/teams could receive points or badges to indicate their progress and accomplishments by performing a variety of actions. With the in-game currency players can buy upgrades that would otherwise take much longer to earn/find through achievements. (Some upgrades are only available via the virtual currency.) By accumulating virtual currency, it provides an intrinsic benefit to gamers as it is an avenue to boost their accomplishment and showcase their expertise of the game. The achievements are visible to their network of friends.
- Victory Conditions: This game has a variable, quantifiable outcome, with no victory conditions. That is, the game never really ends and no one is ever declared “winner”.
- Simplicity: Bearing in mind that our target player is not usually your typical “gamer” sort, the game should strive for simple rules and ease of game play, the goal being a pick-up-and-play experience that people from almost any age group or skill level can enjoy.
This post is a submission to be part of Team Florens where themes around the economy of cultural and environmental heritage, including, “developing and promoting cultural identity” will be debated at Florens 2012 Cultural and Environmental Heritage Week. A nine-day biennial event that explores how culture can generate economy. Join us!