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RealityGame
MeatballWiki | RecentChanges | Random Page | Indices | CategoriesA RealityGame, at least as it is called here (aka pervasive game), is a game that takes part of its allure from melding as seamlessly as it can with the RealWorld. That is, reality games extend reality into some fiction, somewhat similarly to MagicRealism?. Often the game will use elements of normal existence as part of its gameplay, such by phoning the players or by using top-level websites that behave as if they are real. Many of these games are also reflective and self-aware, adapting in real-time to how the player community has been behaving. For those who have played RolePlayingGames such as DungeonsAndDragons?, this latter feature is quite familiar. Indeed, the main difference between RealityGames and RolePlayingGames is that RealityGames use the RealWorld as their game boards instead of some completely fictional, virtual world.
Examples are small currently, but as the excitement of being engaged in fiction that melds with reality becomes more popular, expect to see dedicated companies running these types of games for subscribers. One example: you can subscribe to dating simulation games that will phone the player, write e-mail, and so on as if the player really were courting a partner. In this way, the player's reality is extended by the virtual lover. Much more intense, ElectronicArts? has created the game [Majestic]. [5 January 2002 -- ElectronicArts? [discontinued] Majestic]
Also, surrounding the release of the movie A.I. by Steven Spielberg/Stanley Kubrick (IMDB:0212720), there has been a virtual game designed by Microsoft with the fundamental premise that today, the RealWorld is set in the same world as the movie in the year 2142. It extends the existing communication infrastructures by using phones, faxes, e-mail, and websites. Even the WHOIS lookups for game websites play into the world. You can read much, much more about this fascinating example at http://cloudmakers.org, and especially [The Guide]. Some interesting events:
- The initial trailers with both the embedded phone number, represented as notches in the end-text "Coming Summer 2001" and the Jeanine Salla, credited as "Sentient machine therapist" in the second trailer. For the latter, the most commonly cited vector into the game was by searching for "Jeanine Salla" on Google. This is much unlike the other examples because the game players fell into the game by accident.
- The game creators had planned events for Sunday 6 May 2001 at restaurants and clubs in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. These were set to begin simultaneously at 10PM EST. At these events, the players received a puzzle that required each city to cooperate with each other. Since the players had to fall into this puzzle by accident, the game masters are clearly aware of the fan community. (You can [read more] about this event.)
- The game masters' reflective mention of a fan-site http://for-evan.com on http://www.familiasalla-es.ro/meditations.htm.
- The [formation] of a DistributedComputing attack on one of the puzzles.
- Paul Cox describes this attack as the establishment of a [Hive Mind] (see HiveMind). However a more appropriate name would have been CollectiveIntelligence, because there was no "overmind" implanting ideas into participants.
And some interesting editorials:
Reality games have been explored in SpeculativeFiction to some level; for instance, in the Hollywood film, The Game IMDB:0119174.
See also DistributedGame, that also explore games that depend on and extend reality.
References
Lankoski, P., Heliö, S., Nummela, J., Lahti, J., Mäyrä, F., Ermi, L. (2004). A case study in pervasive game design: The Songs of North. Proceedings of the third Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction. [ACM]