Playing for keeps

I recently came across this very intriguing cover story from SF Weekly: "Future Games:
She wants to harness the power of the communal cerebellum her games create and put it to work solving real-world problems."

Later this month, Jane McGonigal (the "she" in question) and her collaborators—one of them a node of PBS—will launch a game called "World Without Oil." It is purportedly the first large-scale non-commercial alternate reality game (ARG) which focusses on a real-world puzzle. (Although ARGs generally begin online, they are designed to spill out into daily life.) In the WWO game scenario as currently presented, eight friends learn that the world may face some kind of oil emergency on April 30, and they try to figure out what to do about it. So will all the people who choose to play along: potentially millions of them.

One immediate benefit from the pre-launch phase of the game is that interested prospective players are "teased" with links to reputable articles about peak oil issues which may be unfamiliar to some of them. Additionally, wikis are typically built to support ARG play, and this game is no exception; at the very least, more people will become better informed, perhaps more engaged, concerning limited resource issues.

Less tangible, perhaps, are the benefits which may accrue through the development of collaborative skills—skills in all-too-short supply in this culture of hyperindividualism.

It is impossible to know what the game designers have envisioned or how they may choose to limit or guide the play. Because this particular game has little or no budget, however, game "content" will largely be generated by active players. This might provide an opportunity for knowledgeable players to influence the scope and direction of play. Some players, for example, might find a way to point out that a short-term oil crisis is of less concern than The Long Emergency.

And anybody who has read The Tipping Point can't help but wonder if ARGs may prove to be particular "sticky" and "contagious" ways of sharing information.