Fade to Play

The Live Action Scotland Yard game that I participated in last Saturday is returning next Saturday. If you are nearby, I recommend you participate as it is tons of fun and Joel did an amazing job with organisation. Unfortunately, I will be back in Vancouver.

Scotland Yard 2 will be even better! More red shirts! A bigger printed map! Push pins with different colours! Improved rules! More coffee! We’ve gained a few new players since the last game, and I hope we can make this one as fun as the last!

The next game’s on Saturday August 6th, about 11:30am

What you will need:

· Charged Cell phone with Unlimited Weekend Minutes

· TTC Day pass

· A water bottle (most likely)

· Sunscreen (probably)

Relevance: Excellent example of cooperation in game play

update: updated links

An entry in You’re It refers to an article by Jon Udell in InfoWorld.

Jon Udell discusses how tagging is becoming more popular as new applications emerge and how this may be related to information management. I am also using del.icio.us to bundle dynamically bits of information that share with others when friends/colleague are searching for something in particular. As Jon states:

When the novelty wears off, though, I think that tagging will have altered the information landscape in a fundamental way. Here’s an example: I’m often asked a question that begins with “Do you have any pointers to … ?” The answer to such a question is a set of URLs. Two years ago, I would have collected those URLs and transmitted them in the body of an e-mail. Nowadays I’d collect them using del.icio.us tags and send only the del.icio.us URL

Sending a del.icio.us tag is done for two reasons. I want to introduce my friends to the power of social tagging and the concept of folksonomies and I also want to create a shared space where I can continue to store relevant content with them that I may come across in the future.

Relevance: Relates to my thesis interest exploring how tagging may be used as a cooperative tool for searching and sharing information on a large scale.

Today I renewed my subscription to Technology Review. I have found the magazine to be an exception resource for finding information relevant to social software.

Relevance: I used to read Wired but have moved on to Technology Review as I found Wired to be too ad-focused.

This article by Thomas Crampton for the International Herald Tribune discusses how teamwork is desired by some gamers rather than focusing on flashy graphics.

But for all the excitement over photorealism, many gamers here say they are drawn by the fun of team play more than image quality.

“I play a game invented back in 1998, so don’t talk to me about the latest graphics,” said Lasse Stokke, 18, member of Team 9 from Norway. “The point of Counterstrike is that we work together as a team.” The fact that the world cup competition is being played on an older version of the game Counterstrike proves the point, Stokke said.

“The game company keeps telling us we should prefer Counterstrike: Force because of the cooler graphics and special effects,” Stokke said. “But serious gamers want a simple game that allows us to develop a team strategy.”

found via presence-l listserv

Relevance: Although the discussion is about digital games, the information has relevance in mobile urban games. It also suggests that as game designers, the focus should not be on creating a fancy game with cool graphics, but rather on one that fosters cooperation.

In Tuesday’s Toronto Star there is an article by Robert Cribb and Tyler Hamilton.

It is part of a larger series of articles that discuss possible health related issues with mobile phones and whether mobile phones are safe for children.

Many children interviewed for the study, called Future of the Internet According to Kids, said the major allure of cellphones is their “cool” factor.

“They’re a status symbol,” says Patricia Camp, senior research analyst with Milwaukee-based SpectraCom, which interviewed 933 young people, aged 8 to 14, from across the United States, Canada and Europe. The survey is considered accurate within plus or minus 3 1/2 per cent, 19 times out of 20.

The survey shows that young cellphone users spend an average of two hours a day talking on the devices, mostly to parents and friends. That level of daily cellphone chatter among young people is a growing concern to some scientists who see unanswered questions about the long-term health impact of wireless signals, particularly on children, because of their thinner skulls and developing nervous systems.

Relevance: As mobile phone companies, game providers, and advertisers continue to create content and devices for children, this article discusses how canadian companies are tailoring their products to children.

Overview map used for game

Originally uploaded by tyfn.

Participating in my first urban game as previously discussed provided a unique experience to gather ideas about how communication, play, and cooperation are intertwined within this gaming experience. The five key lessons that I gathered from the game were trust your dispatcher, communicate your every move with them, be aware of your surroundings, follow your instincts, and always keep moving.

Trust your dispatcher
Jessica agreed to be my dispatcher when I announced at the introductions that I needed one as there was a 1-1 relationship between dispatcher and detective. Although I just met her, we immediately went through trouble-shooting ensuring both of our mobiles worked and planning the spot where I would start off at. I decided on Location 21 as it was centrally positioned on the map. From the outset, I focused on following her instructions as we were a team. I didn’t have an awareness of the locations of the other detectives, nor did I feel it was relevant for me. Instead I focussed on following her instructions as believed we both had the same objective of working with each other to capture Mr. X.

Communicate every move
As I trusted my dispatcher, I wanted to cooperate with her and provide her with as much information about me and my behaviour as possible. When I arrived at Station 21 for the first time I contacted Jessica to let her know that I had arrived. As I continued to move to different stations via bus, streetcar or subway, I would let her know where I was as continual feedback would help her know where best to reposition me based on my actual location, not just where she thought I was. I found this information was very helpful to her when I arrived back at the base station and saw a map with different flags representing the different detectives and Mr. X.

Keep Moving
Rather than remaining fairly stationary within a few nodes, I was moving through a wide space of the gaming environment. Continual movement kept me sharp and aware of what was going on.

Be aware of your environment
I didn’t know where Mr. X might be so I had to be vigilent. I was always on the lookout for a person with a yellow ‘X’ because I was focusing on being the one to capture him.

Follow your instincts
This was the most important lesson I received from playing the game. I had a distinct premonition that Mr. X would be a station 21 which is why I decided to start the game there. It is also why while I was waiting there for the first location about Mr. X to be called into me, I chose to create a sign that said “Tagged by Phillip”.

Two hours later as Mr. X was at Station 10, his movements were described as subway-subway-subway. This meant that he was going to jump 6 stations. It also restricted his position to Station 21, 3 or 30. As I was at Station 22 when I recieved the message, we decided Station 21 would be best. When I arrived, I sat outside the station for a minute, and had a feeling he was there somewhere. I thought I would go down the subway stairs to look for him. Halfway down the stairs I saw him and after a brief chase, he was caught.

Talking with Jessica afterwards, I gained insight into her thinking during the game. She had observed that Mr. X was generally remaining within a rectangular space as she recorded each move he made. Her focus was on positioning me where he might be going so that I could fill a hole as well as where he had just been. She also said that the tracking of Mr. X was not an exact science as a few times they had miscalculated the number of subway stops he had passed through. The map was used as a bird’s eye view of the game theatre in which flags were constantly moved as detectives changed position. There was cooperation between the different dispatchers as the game board provided a common object to work together to position the detectives so that Mr. X could be trapped. The map was used to create a pattern of where Mr. X was so that an idea would emerge about where he could potentially be in the future.

I think over the next year we will see other cities attempting versions of this board game. Given the opportunity, I would like to play it in a NYC or London to see how cooperation would emerge within a larger transportation grid.

[relevance] This information will be helpful for people wanting to create and learn from urban games or activities involving play.

updates: updated links

Mr. X is caught by myself

Originally uploaded by tyfn.

I had anticipated today for the last week. I had a feeling that I would enjoy the experience of the Live Action Scotland Yard (LASY) and I did. The game taught me a number of lessons that relate to cooperative spaces, play, and urban ubiquitous games which I will describe in a following entry.

A game map is shown here.

Below an outline of some of my moves over the game (I only participated in the first game). The game began at noon and ended at 2pm. There were 5 detectives, 5 dispatchers (1-1 partnership), Mr. X and his dispatcher = 12 participants.

[11:30] met everyone at statue of Winston Churchill
[11:45] paired up with Jessica, my dispatcher
[12:00] left starting point (between stop 35 and 36) after giving Mr. X 20 minute head start
[12:30] arrived at first location (Stop 21), wait for instructions from dispatcher, to pass time made sign that said “tagged by Phillip” — thinking optomistically
[12:40] received report from Jessica that Mr. X had been erronously caught at Station 3 just as game started. She stated that it didn’t count and that the game would restart again
[12:47] received message from Jessica that Mr. X was on the move. His first station would be Station 3 and that his moves would be subway-subway-subway (3 moves, each subway move – 2 stops). Jessica suggested I head to Station 34 as he may be heading there.
[12:54] Hopped on streetcar 506 and then streetcar 510.
[12:57] Received call at station 27 from Jessica that I should head to station 30, hopped on streetcar 505
[13:01] Ran into another detective that was heading to station 28
[13:03] received call at station 28 from Jessica that I should head to station 16, took streetcar 505 to station 30
[13:20] received call at Station 30, that I should reverse direaction and head to station 44
[13:30] received call from Jessica that I should head to station 7, walked to station 43 and took Bay 6 north
[13:45] passed Station 29, recieved call from Jessica that Mr X had called in from Station 10, his next three moves were subway-subway-subway (meaning 6 stops). He could be heading to one of three stations (station 3, station 21, or station 37). Based on this information and as I was the only one close by to Station 21, she recommeded I head there
[13:47] continued up to station 22 with bus 6,
[13:52] arrived at station 22, changed to streetcar 506, arrived at station 21
[13:57] waited outside station, didn’t see Mr. X, decided to go inside to find him. Saw Mr. X midway up stairs (5 metres away) talking on his mobile to his dispatcher. Rather than walk quietly up to him and tap him on the shoulder, I heard myself say “There you are”. Mr. X looks at me and ran down the stairs, down one of the tunnels, up an escalator and then got about 5 steps heading down the stairs before I tagged him.
[14:00] Game over as I captured Mr X. Handed him signed which read “Tagged by Phillip” and took a photo.

Our paper entitled “Creating Shared Experiences and Cultural Engagement through Location-Based Play” was accepted for the Games and CSCW Workshop at ECSCW 2005 in late September. It is based on our digital dragon boat race case study. Yay!!!!

It is cool that I will get a chance to meet a fellow Canadian blogger I have been following named Sylvie Noël. She will also be in my workshop. She commented on 5 minutes not being alot of time of time for a presentation so I was thinking of ditching the powerpoint presentation and doing a skit. It would be more fun.

I will be a student volunteer so it should be fun to meet other students with CSCW interests. If you are there, come up and say hello.

In an earlier post, Sylvie spoke about blogging at CSCW 2006. I am definitely going to try to blog at ECSCW depending on the network availability. It will be from a student volunteer perspective as I won’t be able to attend on the paper presentations. It may be useful to organise at meetup there with other bloggers.

[update] Relevance: The conference will give me an opportunity to seek out potential PhD advisors in UK/Europe for 2006.

At the DiGRA conference in June, a national group was formed for the support of games research in Canada called the Canadian Games Studies Association.

Relevance: I am interested in the knowledge gained from membership in this group. Although the focus is primarily video and online games, how they are studied and the research questions asked can help me better inform my thesis research and my related ubiquitous games studies.

Last Wednesday in our Ubicomp reading group we discussed the classic paper Pirates!

Björk, S., Falk, J., Hansson, R. and Ljungstrand, P. (2001) Pirates! -
Using the Physical World as a Game Board. Proceedings of the 8th IFIP
TC13 International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction
(INTERACT). Tokyo, Japan, July 9-13.

As this paper is considered a classic in the area of ubiquitous games, we felt it would be a good paper to discuss to understand something about games in general and mobile games more specifically.

From the readings emerged a number of questions that related to this paper and the larger area of games research:

What is interesting about interacting in physical environments?
Why are games important to study?
What is it about game interactions that people are trying to understand?
Are people studying games to attempt to bring social interaction back into game play?
What is the point of physical location and how can mobile game designers effectively manage this notion of location?

Relevance:
As this paper was on of the first regarding mixed reality games research, reading and discussing it may provide insight into why people are doing mixed reality games research today and whether we should explore this avenue ourselves.