This workshop is intended for those who wish to explore how games can be designed to directly impact the social fabrics of lived environments such as schools, public institutions, workplaces, and neighborhoods. In specific, this workshop is about how artists, entertainers, educators, policy-makers, and activists can use game design to embolden and empower communities to actively engage in the creative construction of their own realities.

1. Pervasive and
Environmental
Game Design
Workshop
Jeff Watson
@remotedevice
http://remotedevice.net
USC Game Innovation Lab / OCAD University
October 19th, 2012

2. Stirring $#!* Up
With Games!
Jeff Watson
@remotedevice
http://remotedevice.net
USC Game Innovation Lab / OCAD University
October 19th, 2012

3. Workshop Objective
In less than 30 minutes, make a game that will
transform the conference environment, using only
what is in this room…

4. Context: Transforming
Urban Environments

5. Georges-Eugène Haussmann
Urban Planner
Boulevards of Paris,
“Haussmannization”
1860s, 1870s

6. L’embellissement gique.

10. Situationist International
Revolutionary Group
Psychogeography, the
construction of “Situations”
Guy Debord, Constant
Nieuwenhuys, Rauol
Vaneigem, et al.
c. 1957 - 1972

12. “[Only] play can
deconsecrate, open up
the possibilities of total
freedom . . . the
freedom, for example, to
turn Chartres Cathedral
into a fun-fair, into a
labyrinth, into a
shooting-range, into a
dream landscape.”
Raoul Vaneigem, quoted
in Plant, The Most Radical
Gesture, 129.

14. Theory of the Dérive
Guy Debord, 1958.

15. Drift Deck: contemporary dérive practice.
Near Future Laboratory, 2010.

16. Dramaturgy of the Local
Action, not Simulation
Environmental Game
The Social is the Medium
Design: Four Principles
Optimize for Agency

17. Dramaturgy of the Local
The impact of an environmental game is directly
proportional to the degree to which the game is
sensitive to local conditions. The mandates and
design strategies underlying any environmental game
must thus be derived from a careful analysis of the
target environment. While environmental games may
or may not be “high tech,” they must always be “high
touch.”

18. Erving Goffman
Sociologist
Dramaturgical Analysis
The Presentation of Self in
Everyday Life (1959)

20. Action, Not Simulation
Action, not simulation: Environmental games are not
only calls to action. Rather, they are substantially the
action itself, articulated through the procedures of
play as they are manifested in the lived environment.

21. Reality Ends Here (2011-present)
Impact mandates: collaboration, peer discovery, media experimentation
Game actions: collaboration, peer discovery, media experimentation

22. Macon Money (2010)
Impact mandates: build personal connections, support local business
Game actions: build personal connections, support local business

23. Optimize for Agency
Leverage motivation, optimize for agency:
Environmental games activate player agency and
create new social and learning motivations by
providing channels for the expression of existing
motivations.

24. All of us have desires, all at
least who have not become
so pathological that they are
completely apathetic. These
desires are the ultimate
moving springs of action.
John Dewey
Experience & Education

25. The Social is the Medium
Learning, community-building, and environmental
transformation are inherently social operations. The
primary “medium” of the environmental game is thus
the network of social relations, both potential and
real, that exists among its players. In many
contemporary environments, this network exists in
both physical and digital spaces.

27. Workshop Objective
In less than 30 minutes, make a game that will
transform the conference environment, using only
what is in this room…

28. Methodology
• Analyze the space – what’s working, what isn’t, what’s possible, what’s not.
• Identify mandate – what do you want to happen that isn’t happening
already/enough?
• Identify core action of game – focus on action, not simulation. Does the
play of your game directly bring about the kinds of things you want to make
happen? Or does it just call for those things?
• Develop a playable prototype – use what’s available what can be done,
rather than what might be done “if” or “when.”
• Optimize for agency – how does your game leverage your players’ existing
motivations?
• The social is the medium – all lived environments are social environments.
How does your game impact and spread through the social lives of your
players?

29. Thank you!
Jeff Watson
@remotedevice
USC Game Innovation Lab / OCAD University