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