This presentation was part of my contribution to the Best Scene in Town workshop on 14 April 2010 at the Waag Society. In it, I describe three scenarios for the development of games into the near future. I also briefly discuss some key concepts in the field of game design. The goal of this presentation was to inspire and to provoke, as well as provide some handholds for participants to use in their own subsequent work.

1. game design
& the city
Best Scene in Town – 14 April 2010
http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/2009/09/24/chris-foss-5-2/

2. introductions…
I guess the polite thing to do is to start with an introduction. I am Kars and I am the founder
of Hubbub; a studio for social physical games in public space.

3. Here’s a few of our projects: a mix between a game and a rock opera in Monster, a social
photo collecting game in Utrecht and a physical street game in Rotterdam. I could talk about
each of these for a while but I won’t…

4. some of game
design’s values
…because I’m here to represent the field of game design. To start I’ll tell you about a few
things that I think are important to understand if you want to get a sense of how game
designers look at things.

5. games are
about doing stuff
Games are about doing stuff. You don’t read a game, you don’t listen to a game, you don’t
watch a game (although you can do all of these), you DO a game (you play it). So at the core
of any good game is an interesting activity. For a while this was hard to tell since all the
action happened inside people’s heads, but now we’re seeing it more clearly thanks to
physical interfaces such as the Wii.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andyversus/4234209759/

6. play vs. games
Play is what people do ‘inside’ games. They explore the possibilities of a ruleset. But all play
isn’t limited to gaming. There are many playful activities that are not strictly speaking, games
(that lack a goal, for instance). Such as dressing up your cat. A crazy, pointless, useless
activity. Games, essentially, give you a framework for being useless.

7. iterative design
This artificial coral reef wasn’t put there in one piece. It was grown bit by bit. New things
were introduced gradually. It’s the same with game design. The way to get to a good,
interesting game is through iteration. Start small, gradually increase the complexity of the
ruleset and playtest, playtest, playtest. (By making lots of prototypes.) That’s probably the
most practical advice you’ll get in this presentation.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/japes18/2977030949/

8. 3 scenarios for
the future of
games in the city
Ronald asked me to share three bold predictions with you today. Hopefully you’ll find them
inspiring and maybe they’ll also give you a bit of a framework for how you can game in the
city.

9. 1/3
Would you
like points
with that?
The first scenario is about what happens when all mundane activities are turned into games.

10. It’s an extrapolation of things we are seeing now, such as Foursquare (which attaches points
to visits to the pub) and car dashboards like the one found in the Ford Fusion Hybrid, which
attaches a score of sorts to your driving behavior.
http://foursquare.com/
http://www.wired.com/reviews/product/ford_fusion_hybrid

11. The way this future would feel is that you are constantly given points for things you do.
Those points are most likely awarded by businesses and governments, to manipulate your
behavior. For instance, an electrical toothbrush might award you points for loyal brushing
behavior. Those points could result in a discount on your health insurance…
http://www.flickr.com/photos/drewleavy/3321518793/

12. This future works thanks to the proliferation of cheap sensors and networking. These are
barely games. The sensing makes your everyday activities measurable. Then, simple game
mechanics like collecting and rankings are stacked on top. It’s not about make-believe, it’s
about improving who you are and what you do.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/whaleforset/2208612707/

13. 2/3
Be
who you
aren’t.
The second scenario I’d like to share with you is about where I think digital games as an
entertainment medium are headed. It’s about the player as performer, augmented by a large
range of personal technologies.

14. This scenario is an extrapolation of the social physical games we’ve seen emerge on
consoles, such as Guitar Hero. These games are a social activity, you can be a player but you
can also be a spectator. They’re performative. And the tech makes you feel awesome, if only
just for a minute. It lets your pretend you’re a rockstar. Pretending is at the core of these
games and I think that when they collide with lifestyles such as goths (who pretend to be
victorians, essentially) we’ll be in for a surprise… (As another example, you could say parkour
players are pretending to be superheroes, or Super Mario, at least.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/digiyesica/534240394/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sarutasan/54602665/

15. So imagine you could embody your ambitions, the things you aspire to, without actually
having to become them. So if you fancy yourself a bicycle courier you can play the Fixie Hero
game and show off to all your friends. There’ll be tech that lets you pretend to ride a bike
really fast and dangerous without actually, you know, going fast and being in danger. But
you’ll feel like it, and you’ll look awesome doing it. Or you can pretend to be a pilot, a
fireman, an artist, a head of state, you name it.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/sidelong/27638380/

16. So this future is mostly facilitated by progress in post-GUI technologies. It’ll be brought
about by all kinds of wearable, portable, personal tech that’ll amplify various senses and
capacities. They’ll be stylish, fashionable and fit in with your lifestyle. (Not like these MIT
geeks, in other words.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/inju/3785118834/

17. 3/3
Warning:
alternate reality
in progress.
The third and last scenario is about games as tools for proposing and effecting change.

18. It takes as its starting points a recent trend in the design world, called design fiction. It’s
about telling stories about possible futures and making artifacts that represent said future.
Here’s a photo from the Lyddle End 2050 project, which was a collaborative effort to build a
model of an English village as it might look in the future. On the other hand we have things
like alternate reality games that employ a range of media to create the illusion of a coherent
mirror world. Zona Incerta, for instance, was a Brazilian ARG about a big corporation buying
up the Amazon, which caused quite a stir.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stml/3071048711/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGpVgfrYlXU

19. This future has you stumbling across other people’s realities constantly. You might have
some way of filtering them out, or there might be legislation that forces people to warn you
about them. Conversely, you yourself might construct and play in realities that you would like
to see happen (or would like to prevent). It’s culture jamming gone mainstream, in other
words.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/mgallacher/2806204037/

20. This future functions mainly thanks to our overlapping media landscape and the fact that our
experience of reality is already fully mediated. Cheap tools and platforms for media
production make it possible for individuals and small groups of people to produce and run
these games.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stuckincustoms/440698504/

21. anyway…
So those are my three scenarios of the future of games. I hope you find them helpful and
stimulating.

22. coevolution
of games
and cities
All of these in one way or the other, by the way, shape people’s behavior and since people
shape cities, inadvertently, cities will be shaped by games. And vice versa! Because if games
are to leave the confines of flat screen TVs placed in living rooms, we’d better start designing
them for use on the streets.

23. do we put
games in
computers
or computers
in games?
And so, I’d like to leave you with this thought, which I’ve heard Mr. Slavin say at several
occasions, who in turn got it from his colleague Mr. Lantz if I’m not mistaken. Games were
there before computers, so isn’t it strange we often think of them as things you put in
computers? Shouldn’t this be the other way around?

24. thanks!
And that’s that. Best of luck today!
http://www.sci-fi-o-rama.com/2009/09/24/chris-foss-5-2/