McGonigal (2006) - This Might be a Game

From Inventiopedia

McGonigal, Jane E. (2006): This Might Be a Game: Ubiquitous Play and Performance at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century, PhD dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.

This highly interesting dissertation is a must-read for anyone interested in location-based games, or locative media in general. McGonigal starts out from an analysis of the ideas expressed by ubiquitous computing visionary Rich Gold, which she describes as "fundamentally a vision of distributed networks of play and performance" (p. 8) - that is, a vision in which everyday objects are embedded with computational affordances which must be discovered through playful interactions. McGonigal claims that rather than being just a high-tech fantasy that can only be achieved through years of further technological development,

The original design philosophy of ubiquitous computing, particularly as it was articulated by digital artist and Xerox PARC researcher Rich Gold, has in fact been thriving in practice since the turn of the twenty-first century. However, it is thriving outside the domain of computer science. We may not have realized (yet, or ever) the specific technological implementation imagined by the Xerox PARC team. But as for the aesthetic, phenomenological, and psychological dimensions of their envisioned ubicomp world, a significant body of experimental art and entertainment projects have absolutely “enspirited” contemporary network society with the kinds of pervasive and interconnected, but invisible and dissembled, opportunities for social action and interaction described in the earliest ubicomp manifestos. Most importantly, these projects have successfully embedded the phenomenal affordances of computer interaction in everyday objects and places—without necessarily embedding computing technology. (p. 41)

This is the world of ubiquitous games, which she divides into three subcategories:

• ubicomp games: games created primarily to test and demonstrate ubiquitous computing technology, which tend to be played only once or a few times - producing a large amount of scholarly gameplay citations, but not a lot of actual gameplay.
• pervasive games: typically art or design experiments which invade everyday spaces and disrupt unsuspecting bystanders, but which do not let the bystanders take part in the games - thus ending up more as spectacles and performances than as games.
• ubiquitous games: games which take part in the everyday world, often challenging the borders between what is part of the game and what is not, but often without much use of ubiquitous technology platforms (e.g. advanced mobile devices etc).

McGonigal's criticism of ubicomp games and pervasive games is quite convincing, as is her praise for the ubiquitous games. Of particular importance is her analysis of the underlying design philosophy of ubiquitous games, which "challenge and expand our notions of where, when, and with whom we can play" (abstract, p. 1). These games invite their players to become sensitized to ludic affordances of their everyday environments, thus changing the way they look on their surroundings. McGonigal analysis of this process is essential to understand the potential of locative media.

(In passing, it is also worth noting a minor error: McGonigal's reading of Espen Aarseth in her concluding chapter is quite erroneus, and seems to have been based on a misunderstanding of his position. But this does not detract much from her larger argument about the relevance of classical game theory to this genre of gaming (with which Aarseth probably agrees).)

--Anders Sundnes Løvlie 21:13, 3 August 2009 (UTC)