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KIP402 Final Assignment

JBB: An Artblog!
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KIP402 Final Assignment
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Long Time No See Case Study
(screen capture from community.long-time-no-see.org/?page_id=212)
*Spoiler Alert*
I remain divided on the usefulness of the Long Time No See project. A hybrid of technology, design, orienteering, and psychology, a lot of effort has gone into bringing it into being. However you emphatically get the sense that not even the developers know what its true purpose is. Firstly let me describe what it actually is. One or two people are sent off on a walk of their own choosing, following the instructions from an app on their mobile phones or ipad. These instructions range from "Touch the tree while reflecting on its birth..." or "Walk in intermittent rhythm, to the beat of your own drum...". You take photographs, take sound recordings and write responses to questions, and then return to your starting point where you are debriefed and that's it. Afterwards you should be able to access the details of your walk on the website, and see the results of other people's walks. Throughout the before and after briefings, there is a big emphasis placed on "futuring" although nothing about the walk struck me as having anything to do with the future, except maybe for the way the different technologies interracted. Maybe the developers are intending it to have time capsule applications, where it will embarress me in front of my potential grand-children. And the project is also supposed to have ecological credentials, which turn out to be nothing other than a walk in a park.
There are two definite benefits that I found:
1. The project promotes creativity in the participants through their thinking and writing. Projects that foster creative thinking are, in my experience, very worthwhile as they in turn promote innovation, growth, and healing.
2. The project is an excellent example of research in action. Firstly, the participants are asked to research and experience their environment in a way that is vastly different to how you would in a classroom or library. Secondly, with all of the debriefing and questionnaires I've filled in about this project, I distinctly get the sense that I too am being researched on. I would hesitate a guess that a project such as this one could equally have market research implications as community-building ones.
I was lucky enough to have done this walk in the first semester, so could see the results of my walk up on the QUT cube. This was as close as I got to seeing the community-building side to Long Time No See. My experience in doing the walk solo was that it was the opposite of community-building. I found it to be a very lonely hour doing activities with no-one but my mobile phone for company.
First Assignment
1. Introduction to MPEs. What are they and how are they delivered? Multi-Platform Events, also known as Cross-Platform Events or Transmedia Events, are games that occur both on the internet and the real world, not within any conventional boundaries of what normally constitutes a “game”. Another name for them, TINGs (This Is Not a Game), highlights the required suspension of disbelief and secretive nature of their developers. They began their life as organic community-driven phenomena. Phone-Phreaks, led by programmer John Draper, blind and pitch-perfect Joybubbles, Capt’n Crunch’s whistles and Draper’s Little Blue Boxes, would play a cat-and-mouse game with the authorities making long-distance phone-calls for no reason other than it was good sport. This was perhaps the first example of an ARG (Alternative Reality Game). John Draper was one of the inventors of the first Apple personal computers, which he helped create when he was serving time for phone-freaking. Market researchers took note that they presented an ideal way to connect with potential markets of consumers by providing an entertaining accompaniment to a product, and today we are swimming in MPE’s played in secret all over the web and in the real world. The first MARG (Marketing Alternate Reality Game) was The Beast, the game that was developed to accompany the movie A.I. The Beast was never obviously advertised, and its only gateways consisted of hints and bread-crumbs left by the developers. The players of the game formed communities, the largest calling themselves Cloudmakers after a key feature of the story, and helped each other to solve the game, pooling their collective intelligence. The team of games developers had to work around the clock to stay one step ahead of them. Within a matter of hours after the attack on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in 2001, many in the Cloudmaker community were calling for a concerted effort to uncover the identities of the terrorists. It goes to show that MPEs promote action instead of dispondency when faced with crises, and instil fervour in their fans. MPEs are made either to promote a product (Jay Z’s autobiography) or to promote an environmental or socially-progressive cause (Half the Sky Movement) or a combination of the two (Conspiracy for Good). 2. Identify and describe your top 6 criteria for a successful MPE My top 6 criteria for a successful MPE i) Operating on multiple platforms (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, etc.). ii) Intriguing gateway, aka “Rabbit hole”, and a necessary suspension of disbelief from players. iii) Motivation for players to commit- urgency, rewards, validation that you are in on the “secret”, association with a trusted brand, belief in a cause. iv) Unpredictable plot-lines with a script/ plot-map that takes into account every contingency and re-iterates pre-appointed themes. v) Solvable puzzles of varied difficulty with hints if necessary. vi) As Puppetmaster you are responsible for the creation of a whole, imaginative world filled with puzzles, traps, treasure, monsters, villains and other NPCs. 3. An annotated list of relevant existing projects i) Bear 71 Bear 71 looked at the interactions of humans, animals and technology, using webcams to track the movements of a tagged bear in Banff National Park. Along with a documentary about the ethos behind the project, there was an installation at Sundance and online users were invited to make their own webcams open to the general public. ii) Welcome to Pine Point Funded by The National Film Board of Canada, Welcome to Pine Point is an immersive website that tells the story of Pine Point, a mining town that was erected in the 60s and taken down in the 80s. Seen through the perspectives of people who grew up there and suddenly had to relocate just as they were reaching adulthood, Welcome to Pine Point explores themes of nostalgia and memory. It won a slew of awards. iii) Urgent Evoke See Section 4. iv) Bluebird AR The ABC’s first fully online program, Bluebird AR explores the ethics of geoengineering, the deliberate altering of the Earth’s atmosphere to adjust for climate change. The players are encouraged to investigate the big-business side of town in their quest for the truth. Bluebird AR suffered a fairly major setback- there was a possible security breach of users’ personal information. v) Half the Sky Movement Possibly the most heart-warming MPE yet, Half the Sky Movement promotes women’s health, education and empowerment both in the virtual and the real world. The game spreads awareness of the difficult issues facing women in developing and Western countries and makes it possible to spend game dollars to buy things like books or fistula operations for impoverished women. It encourages you to advertise your progress on social platforms like Facebook and Twitter. vi) Out My Window Interactive From Chicago and Toronto, to Bangalore and Johannesberg, Out My Window Interactive explores life lived in high-rise apartments in 13 major cities of the world. Another endeavour funded by the National Film Board of Canada, the documentary tells the true stories of real people’s lives who are forced by circumstance to live in small, sky-bound spaces. The user’s view simulates a 3D with thousand of photographs fitted together. vii) Traces of Hope The British Red Cross is behind this game, where users follow the story of a civil-war survivor and his search to find his mother. viii) Conspiracy for Good An promotional venture for Nokia phones, Conspiracy for Good got gamers to join forces to fight a nefarious corporation that specialised in illegal activities. Missions were played out across London with real-world NPC actors to guide the players through the action. ix) Locked Room See Section 4. x) Village for Dementia-sufferers See Section 4. xi) Nine Inch Nails Trent Reznor is a big believer in getting extra content to his fans in an age where the music industry is scrambling from the onslaught of pirates. Reznor sees MPEs and other multi-media as just other creative tools in his artist’s tool belt. Knowing that his willing fan base is immense, Nine Inch Nails MPE players were given near impossible tasks and puzzles to solve. xii) The Beast The first MARG (Marketing Alternate Reality Game) was The Beast, the game that was developed to accompany the movie A.I. The Beast was never obviously advertised, and its only gateways consisted of hints and bread-crumbs left by the developers. The players of the game formed communities, the largest calling themselves Cloudmakers after a key feature of the story, and helped each other to solve the game, pooling their collective intelligence. The team of games developers had to work around the clock to stay one step ahead of them. xiii) Jay Z- Decode Made to help launch his autobiography Decoded, as well as promoting the Search Engine Bing, Decode released one page of Jay Z’s book at a time in different locations throughout New York. xiv) Tarsus Club A particularly sinister MPE that is out to promote the movie The Conspiracy, which is currently showing on Netflix. When I started playing the game, I fell off the trail pretty quickly and ended up being asked by the Bilderberg group if I would accept cookies from their website. Sufficiently freaked out I logged off. xvii) Spooks MPE Another television show that has launched an MPE to help promote it. xviii) Lost MPE Early MPE that promoted the television show Lost. Some parts of the game appeared on the show unbeknownst to non-players. xix) Dark Knight (Why So Serious?) Promoting the movie, the Dark Knight. xx) Hunger Games (The Capitol) Promoting the movie The Hunger Games. xxi) Prometheus’ Weyland Industries Promoting the movie Prometheus. 4. An in-‐depth critical analysis of at least 3 significant MPE projects i) Escape the Room Imagine you and your archaeological expedition are suddenly trapped in an ancient Egyptian tomb with no obvious means of escape! Welcome to the phenomena known as The Locked Room. Players are funnelled into a room which is sealed off from the outside. Within the room are a sequence of puzzles players must solve to eventually open the doors to their freedom. While not conforming to the digital requirement of what constitutes an MPE, Escape the Room is an impressive little ARG. If you don’t solve the puzzles in a set amount of time (normally one hour), you lose. First appearing in Japan in 2007, Escape the Room has popped up all over the United States. It’s an ingenious way to use your mind in a faux life-and-death struggle without committing too much time or indeed money. ii) Village for Dementia-sufferers In the Netherlands, a radical practice of care is being developed. The village of De Hogeweyk is an architecturally-designed health centre that emulates everything 1950s. Numbers of Alzheimers and Dementia sufferers are exploding across the world, so this effort is timely. Being surrounded by architecture and living environments they are more accustomed to, patients at De Hogeweyk have a far less anxiety-ridden time of it. The patients have six options for thematically designed decor- upperclass, homey, Christian, artisan, Indonesian, and cultural. Absconding is a common behaviour amongst Alzheimers sufferers, and hospital staff patrol the grounds in civvies. The whole community is gated, and there are fake bus stops to trick up the most determined escapees. Patients can go to traditional grocers and get their hair cut in a traditional barbershop. iii) Urgent Evoke A marketing campaign of the World Bank (whose stated mission it is to reduce global poverty), Urgent Evoke encouraged players to finish missions that would bring about social change. Intended to appeal to African youth, Urgent Evoke was set up so that it could be played on the mobile phone system that was used throughout the continent. For whatever reason, the game was relatively unplayed in Africa. The developers also intended that teams of players would be mentored by real world activists and social change advocates, but this was hampered by technical and personal problems. The feedback given by many players regarding their findings was in many cases blurry and implied that missions were skipped. Since the first season of the game there has been a call from teachers to implement a version that can be run in the classroom. References http://www.webcrunchers.com/who-is-john-draper-aka-captain-crunch/ http://www.seanstewart.org/beast/mcgonigal/notagame/paper.pdf foryourconsideration.ca/bear71/ http://www.wordsinspace.net/media-materiality/2012-spring/?p=263 http://www.worldbank.org/en/about/what-we-do http://www.lifehacker.com.au/2010/10/abc-warns-bluebird-ar-viewers-about-security-breach/ http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/abc-launches-first-internet-only-reality-drama/story-e6frg996-1225855207807?nk=5957eb107d330472dd996a52ad622dc2 http://if.com.au/2010/04/29/article/OSKYEMSNCQ.html http://www.gamezebo.com/2013/03/07/half-sky-movement-game-review/ http://www.wordsinspace.net/media-materiality/2012-spring/?p=924 http://jayisgames.com/archives/2008/10/traces_of_hope.php http://www.wired.com/2010/08/conspiracy-for-good-a-recap-of-an-arg-by-the-creator-of-heroes/ http://blog.midem.com/2011/08/mike-masnick-connect-with-fans-cwf-reason-to-buy-rtb/#.U-vGykiW_7s http://peopleslab.mslgroup.com/peoplesinsights/tag/bing-decode-jay-z/ http://mashable.com/2014/04/26/escape-room/ http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2014/02/inside-an-amazing-village-designed-just-for-people-with-dementia/
Tarsus Club
It's freaking me out- I can't figure out if its real or it's a game. I think I had better stop.
The Tarsus Club is a membership only annual retreat for global innovators with an emphasis on strengthening global networking, leadership skills and relationship building.
*Spoiler Alert*
In the movie, The Conspiracy, which i saw just last week, a conspiracy theorist who has been working with a team of amateur journalists disappears, and the journalists who have started to believe the man follow up on the leads that he told them about. They gravitate towards the Tarsus Club, an international society of super-rich industrialists and businessmen who seek to bring about a New World Order. The journalists meet a contact who agrees to take them to an initiation ceremony, and horror ensues. The movie seemed like it would be an ideal launching pad for a MPE, and when you google Tarsus Club, you are led to this website. There is no "generate a user id" function, but there are hints of leads on the page that would lead you further into the TING. I will now attempt to play my first TING...
(all images come from TSR publications, the last two come from the D&D Expert Players Rules)
When contemplating the notion of an Alternate Reality Game, I think back to the days before computer games had alternate reality credentials, when I was a nerd before nerds were cool. I played Dungeons and Dragons in the Eighties- with my family, neighbourhood friends, school-friends- my Dad even took me to a D'n'D session at university when he was a tutor, and I got closer to finishing the adventure than the undergrads. I have been in the Dungeons and Dragons closet a long time, so when I come across a subject like this where we are EXPECTED to set-up a game with a Dungeon Master, with PCs and NPCs (Dungeons and Dragons terms) and monsters, mazes, puzzles, booby traps and treasure- it feels slightly surreal. Dungeons and Dragons was controversial for two reasons- it was denounced by Church and community groups for leading young people to devil worship, and suicide. Neither of these happened to me, and I have kept all my old manuals for sentimental reasons. These days I far prefer nestling into a long night of Skyrim, the ultimate nerd x-box game, where there is no judgement for being a fantasy nerd.
A really interesting element of D'n'D was it's alignment system. In the basic version of the game, which I first played, it consisted of Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic. In the Advanced version of the game, they expanded it to also include Good, Neutral, and Evil, which made nine alignments- Lawful Good, Neutral Good, Chaotic Good, Lawful Neutral, True Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, Lawful Evil, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Evil. Characters of the same alignment could talk to each other in their own sign language. Paladins (holy knights) could only be Lawful Good and Lawful Good characters would only adventure with other Lawful Good characters. Chaotic Good was the preferred alignment if you had a Robin Hood character in mind. True Neutral characters were distant from the affairs of men and was the necessary alignment of druids and mystics. In many games, frictions between players occurred because they were playing with their character's alignments in mind. Chaotic Neutral characters were a true surprise if they popped up in your party, because they would do everything in their power to be unpredictable, which often led to tensions within the party when they were under pressure. No computer game that I know of has yet come close to the intricacies of the D'n'D alignment system, where you have to make decisions based on what you imagine your character to be thinking.
Possible Causes for KIP402:
-World Peace!
-Heal the Bees and plant more flowers in your neighbourhood
-Make the world's ageing population comforted if and when they are struck with dementia
-Help the Homeless
Ciao for now,
Nick Drake