So even though I employed the term “big games” in my Masters project, I’m not a fan of it- especially when it is used to describe an entire genre (which I call appropriative games). In order to illustrate my hesitance with this term, I thought it best to examine a fairly composite definition of “big games.”

The particular definition I am using is from New Media Literacies Media Producer Profile Series. The 7th edition of the series”Learn About Big Games!,” includes interviews with appropriative gaming luminaries Ian Bogost, Jane McGonigal and Mattia Romeo. The definition itself, is found in a linked Word document.

Big Games:
Games for big groups of people in real world spaces (such as a park or the
streets) that use mobile communication technologies like cell phones to link
people together in gameplay.

Big groups of people… I have yet to be presented with compelling reason as to why the participation “big groups” of people would be a defining characteristic of play. How many is big anyway? If big is 20 people and only 18 show up, do you lose your big game license? I understand that 100 or so people doing something “weird” in public adds to the spectacle, but spectacle isn’t gameplay. If spectacle is something you are concerned with, I might suggest that you are more interested in performance than play.

Additionally, I believe that there is largely unexplored potential for single-player and small group appropriative gaming experiences. Let’s face it when the big companies come along and want to market appropriative games, the single player experiences are going to be the moneymakers.

In real world spaces… I’ve heard often heard the appropriative gaming movement referred to a “return to playing in the real world!” …some of us never left. By simply defining this gaming movement by saying its games take place in the “real world,” the primary operational quality of this medium is ignored. These games appropriate space. They are played in environments not originally designed to accommodate them, and do so with significant alteration to that environment. Whether this happens in New York City or in World of Warcraft is of little consequence to gameplay.

use mobile communication technologies… I think computation (well, the designer’s use of technology/computation) is a key attribute of appropriative games. Particularly, there are non-computation appropriative games which I will call “big games” until I can come up with a better term. “Pervasive games” are appropriative games that employ technology and computation that individuals most likely carry with them or have access to on a day-to-day basis. Finally, “ubiquitous games” are appropriative games that make use of technology and computation that most people don’t have daily access to.

Ultimately I think that most definitions / frameworks that attempt to frame appropriative games make good sound bites, but fail when one attempts to do more specific work with them. Furthermore if appropriative games are to deliver on some of their immense potential, more specific theoretical and conceptual work definitely needs to be done.

My Masters project “Pervasive Games Are Not A Genre! (They are a sub-genre.)” is now online. Falling somewhere in-between a thesis and design document, the project addresses the recent emergence of what has been called (among other things): Pervasive games, ubiquitous games, street games, big games, alternate reality games, mobile games, location-based games, total games, cross media games, augmented reality games, ambient games, location-aware games, mixed-reality games, etc. The primary failing of existing work done in this area is that it fails to identify and address the primary characteristic of this gaming genre: the appropriation of space for play.

As such, “Pervasive Games Are Not A Genre! (They are a sub-genre.)” is an examination of the genre of appropriative games and its three sub-genres ubiquitous games, pervasive games, and non-computational big games.

Excerpt:

Appropriative gaming is a genre of games that are designed for environments not originally intended to accommodate them. Appropriative game designers study an environment (city streets, rural fields, virtual worlds, etc.) and create innovative methods by which to temporarily reallocate the environment’s natural affordances in the service of focused gameplay. The genre of appropriative gaming encompasses such works as Assassins, Pac-Manhattan, and ARQuake.

The frameworks that are developed to facilitate these gaming experiences are typically not permanent. An infrastructure for an appropriative game is often erected for a single game session and torn down as soon as play has concluded. It would be inappropriate to attempt to characterize this guerilla tendency as being either positive or negative for the genre. These flashpoints of activity may appear to inhibit the genre’s proliferation while posing a significant design challenge, but they remain principal to the genre’s aesthetic. Additionally, this pro tem inclination does not prevent the design of persistent appropriative games. However if the presence of an appropriative game significantly alters the permanent physicality of an environment, it ceases to be an appropriative game.