Proverbial Sandboy

Someone calling themselves Agent Kirby made this video for Operation: Sleeper Cell. I'm currently so out of touch with the game what we made (I've been watching The Good Life, which makes me think of Morecombe and Wise) that I have no idea whether it's produced by a player or by Law37, but it tickled me. Found via Juliette's Twitter feed.



Operation: Sleeper Cell is unique - you've heard that before haven't you? "First charity ARG", "First tea and biscuit centric ARG" - but I don't mean all that stuff (though it's brilliant and you should play). I'm referring to the fact that our brief, our remit is there for all to see at Let's change the game. Everyone knows what it is that we're supposed to be doing:

1. Raise money for Cancer Research UK
2. Raise awareness of cancer and the work that Cancer Research UK does

That's it. That's the entire remit. That's what we got to go on. You can see what we're supposed to do and judge us on it. It's quite hard to find other cases where someone that's commissioned an ARG and lets everyone know what they wanted. In some cases it's obvious, "promote this film", but what were their specific requirements? I'd love to see the documents or meeting transcripts for other ARGs, maybe one of the big fancy ones for a film company, where the PM team wrangle out an agreement with execs.

Another Serious Game that's around at the moment that I've got my eye on is Jane McGonigal's Superstruct . Players tell the stories of their lives in 2019 through whatever medium they like with respect to six future problems. The Superstruct team (and the World Without Oil team before them) create sandboxes and set the players free. However, the game can't be the unconstrained creative area that it seems to be initially as it also has a purpose: research. From the Superstruct FAQ's:

The Ten Year Forecast team at the Institute for the Future will analyze the player-created game content. We'll prepare an official Superstruct Report featuring our top collective insights about the year 2019, and the best tactics for superstructing society. Highlights from the report will be emailed to all registered Superstruct players in April 2009. Meanwhile, the Superstruct site will stay live and open to the public as an immersive archive, so you can continue to show your friends, family and colleagues the future you helped invent.

It would be really interesting to know what the brief was that the Superstructers received from the Institute for the Future and how exacting it was. They're going to have to analyse the results of game and draw conclusions, but they've got to give the players free rein too. I wish I had enough time to play it.

Anyway - enough idle musings. I've finally realised that black on a white background is much more pleasant to read so I've ditched the old template for the blog. Also, my dead in the water science blog Bacterium I've decided to completely mothball, so expect microbial ecology posts popping up here occasionally, the only thing that was even vaguely pleasing was the type-face for the heading and that photo (taken in Llandudno just before lashing ice-cold rain hit - typical holiday!).