ALTERNATEREALITY

GAMESand why you should care

A Story Margaret’s Honey website gets “hacked” Interested visitors talk to Dana, the webmaster,

about what’s going on Visitors find garbled “mayday” messages,

fragments of a story in embedded code and corrupted images

Ongoing blog/email contact with Dana, mysterious artificial intelligences deepen mystery

A Story, Cont.

A Story, Cont.

Players come across puzzles hidden in the site, leading to more messages

Players are lead to payphones across US Over 12 weeks thousands of players

congregate at phones to hear story fragments, talk to an AI, and perform missions

What’s in a name?

alternate alternate reality? no games? no actually, sort of

Pervasive Gaming(in a nutshell)

(Social) Play Narrative Technology Cross Media & Common Modalities

Pervasive Gaming(in pictures)

cyberspace in-between meatspace

also:

Interesting Numbers

Tie-Ins / Marketing Art of the Heist: 45mil impressions The Beast: 1mil players I Love Bees: 2mil players

Independent Chasing the Wish: 3k players MetaCortechs: 12k players Perplex City: 40k players

The Technology(in a nutshell)

Web (2.0 and otherwise) Blogs, Flickr, Youtube, Twitter, Forums, Websites, etc.

Email, IM, IRC Mobile

SMS, Location/Context-Sensing Telephony

Phones, Asterisk ?

Play

traditional MMO

Pervasive Play

Low barrier Constructive Dynamic Flexible Scalable Community

Narrative

Pervasive Narrative

Immersive Dynamic Flexible

All Together Now Actors inhabit same

space as player collaboration

The Technology(in pictures)

The Technology(in pictures)

Why is this so cool?

Immersive! Novel Meatspace is fun Dynamic - constant improvement Flexible - constant surprise Agile development

Why is this so powerful?

Collective intelligence Collective empowerment Reality <--> Game

“To make people believe is to make them act”

TorGame(long-lasting meatspace)

TorGame(long-lasting meatspace)

TorGame(long-lasting meatspace)

TorGame(long-lasting meatspace)

World Without Oil(preparing for the future by having fun)

World Without Oil(preparing for the future by having fun)

World Without Oil(preparing for the future by having fun)

World Without Oil(preparing for the future by having fun)

The Future

The future of entertainment? Integration with traditional entertainment

media Integration of more recent technology Problem solving Greater emphasis on social networks