SOCIAL GAMING

Take 2?

"virtual"
"reality"
World Without Oil
Impact
What's it all about?
oil shock on april 30, 2007
simulate an 8 month energy crisis
people react through audio, video, blog, visual
missions
awards
32 days
60,000 visitors
1800 players
12 countries
foreshadows public reaction
sparks public participation in social issues
game context: awards, missions, and competition offer incentive
Photo
Blog

Video
Example Games
Collective Action
Promotes
Necessitates
within the reality it simulates
based on Tragedy of the Commons

Collective Action Factors of Reality:
   1. ability to identify one another
   2. a record of past behavior
   3. reciprocity

within the game itself
feedback supports and regulates
grants legitimacy to produced work
collective simulation
interdependence of a collective assumption of an alternate reality
Virtual Communities
and Real Life
Community can be formed through gaming by connecting people of similar interests and having them interact in an alternative reality
These people form real connections through this “Second Life” with each other and their environment
Social gaming thrives on the relationship between the virtual community and the real lives of its users
Director of the MIT Comparative 
       Media Studies Program
The authored and edited nine books 
       on media and popular culture
How Second Life Impacts Our First Life...
Henry Jenkins
The last several decades of observation of the digital world teaches us that the digital world is never totally disconnected from the real world.
Even when we go onto the digital world to "escape" reality, we end up engaging with symbolic representations which we read in relation to reality. 
We learn things about our first lives by stepping into a Second or parallel life which allows us to suspend certain rules, break out of certain roles, and see the world from a fresh perspective. 
More often, though, there are a complex set of social ties, economic practices, political debates, etc. which almost always connects what's taking place online to what's going on in our lives off line.
Second Life that operates in parallel to your First Life and as a metaphor to think about the ways we can try things out, learn to think and act in new ways in virtual worlds of all kinds, and then carry those skills back with us to our everyday reality.
What kinds of examples come into mind when you hear the term “social gaming?”
Social Gaming refers to playing games as a way of social interaction, unlike those of the single-player variety.
While all of these examples are valid in their own right...
...we want to show you a deeper meaning of gaming...
S
cial Gam
The Point?
Encourage people to play with real life.
"Playing yourself in a fictional world.
Internet is flexible medium that allows an alternative way to engage with reality
role playing
Future of Gaming
Jane McGonigal is a...
game designer
games researcher
future forecaster
PhD from Cal
we will increasingly live our lives inside massively
       multiplayer games
alternate reality gaming (ARG) is an interactice narrative that uses the real world as a platform, often involving multiple media and game elements to tell a story that may be affected by participants' ideas or actions
force corporations and governemnt to respond and create real social change
together we can build the world we want to live in: economy of engagement

...components of happiness
satisfying work to do
the experience of being good at something
time spent with people (online and face-to-face)
the chance to be a part of something, a system, that is bigger
...games in our real world will become a part of
our lives and be played in our airports, our schools
and will be all around us!
Chore Wars: MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) Game
sign on with roommates, office workers, friends
get points for every chore you do
SharkRunners
You play with sharks in the ocean
Real sharks in the ocean have GPS tags
Blending Realities Experiment
This is a card I played in 
opposition to another card,
showing my disagreement.
A leaderboard provides the competitive aspect to this game.
People rack up their points and in real-time see who is winning.
Here is a card I started, with a response from someone, adding their
thoughts onto mine.
You can also play an investigation card to ask follow-up questions.
Of course, as with all games, there are jokesters that ruin the game for everyone.
Like all MMO games, moderators who pledge to remove erroneous content can not keep up with the sheer size of activity.
as an alternative way to engage with reality as opposed to removing yourself from reality
.
ng
virtual goods/p2p economics
modes of production
virtual goods
examples
Questions
What do YOU think?
What are your experiences?
Howard?
SFZERO
: location based gaming,
organized through the internet,
taking place in "meatspace".
Edward Castronova: synthetic worlds “cannot be sealed completely; people are crossing it all the time in both directions, carrying their behavioral assumptions and attitudes with them."
Instead of simply taking and experiencing designed environments…

Large-scale games (such as WoW) allow the storyline of the game to be shaped by players.

And gamers take the development of storylines into their own hands.
Magic Circle
Thanks!
Jooyoun, Tyler, Justin, Lily, and Hovanes