ARGs and Spying: Worlds Collide

It was only a matter of time that the world of war games delved into the world of intelligence. The American military has now expressed interest in using gaming for figuring out some aspects of human behaviour. Presently, the Intelligence Advanced Research Agency (IARPA) has a request for information for using alternate reality games (ARG) in the intelligence community. From the RFI for their experimental games:

IARPA is soliciting responses to this RFI in order to assess the extent to which Alternate Reality Environments (AREs)i, such as Alternate Reality Games (ARGs), may provide capabilities that allow for high-quality, externally valid social, behavioral and psychological research in near-realworld contexts.

Over at Wired they have some more information in context.

The intelligence community’s blue-sky researchers, the Intelligence Advanced Research Agency (IARPA), announced they’re seeking designers for alternate-reality games, or ARGs. It’s for work, they swear. The project, which goes by the name UAREHERE (as in “you are here”), “may provide capabilities that allow for high-quality, externally valid social, behavioral and psychological research in near-real world contexts,” according to a request for information released this week.
…
While the ostensible purpose of the game is to research human behavior, the specific intelligence function served here is a mystery. Nor does the agency specify who the players would be: The info request notes that recruiting and screening players will be a challenge. Another: determining whether an ARG would even work as a research tool, let alone how to design an ARG.

Go to the Danger Room!



March 19th, 2013 by Adam

Radio Programmes Talk About Immersive Theatre

In a 30 minute segment, BBC Radio 4 looked into the world of immersive theatre and came out alive. In It’s Fun, But Is It Theatre?, they explore what the world of immersive theatre holds and why it’s worth looking into.

If you’re new to the idea of immersive theatre it’s worth listening to, as well as checking out the links they have assembled to some of the more popular troupes creating immersive events. One of the theatre companies making immersive theatre has a great name: You Me Bum Bum Train.

Sarah Hemming, theatre critic for the Financial Times screws her courage to the sticking point and embarks on a series of theatrical experiences, to help you decide whether you too might enjoy this type of theatre trip: the sort that doesn’t involve a stage, a programme, an ice cream at the interval – oh, or a seat. Experiences can range from Lucien Bourjeily’s re- enactment of imprisonment in a Syrian detention centre – “we promise you will be released at the end” ,to a magical storytelling moment by a cosy library fireplace – but is it theatre?

Just think of the future when augmented reality and immersive theatre collide!

The CBC radio show Spark covered immersive theatre back in January. They have a firsthand account of what it’s like to go through Punchdrunk by Sleep No More.

It would’ve been great if they mentioned ZED.TO.



February 25th, 2013 by Adam

Games About Living with Depression

This past week saw two games released that focused on what it’s like living with depression. These games are very serious games dealing with a very serious issue. If you’ve lived with depression please be warned that these games can be a trigger. You may just want to go look at good things instead.

Depression Quest is playable online and is heavy on the text (over 40,000 words!) with a good number of narrative branches to go through. There is, however, only five endings so don’t worry about the game never ending. You can play for free or pay what you want for the game (the developers are donating to iFred).

Having just played the game, I can assure that it is intense. Your options are limited because depression itself limits your options, and more often than not, you can see the other options but they are struck out. The text with the static background provides some context as to why some options are removed.

Clearly, one of the goals of the game is to get people talking about depression. This is a good thing as mental health is often ignored because it is usually invisible. All the online conversations I’ve seen have involved some people comparing their lives to the fictional one in the story; pointing out that the character in the game is better off. One of the designers of the game, Zoë Quinn, has a choice response to that.

The other game that came out last week is Actual Sunlight, and it’s equally as intense. The game’s conclusion is obvious from the start; RPS sums up the game succinctly:

Actual Sunlight is a brutal depiction of a man’s life self-destructing, and it’s a game whose central character can only find hope in his own death. And as such, his own death is the only hopeful moment in the game. Which is just beyond uncomfortable.

Will O’Neill is a Toronto based writer who made the game and was interviewed by Kill Screen. The interview talks about the basics of why he made the game and what it was like to create it.

“Throughout the development of it, I had to remind myself that I wasn’t doing it purely for the sake of trying to viciously rip myself into as many pieces as I possibly could.” he says. “It certainly felt that way sometimes, but that wouldn’t have been honest either: I think life is funny and beautiful, too, and I have a lot of good things, even if I’ve screwed some of them up. I think most people feel this way.”

O’Neill is running an Indie GoGo campaign to continue working on the game, here’s the promo video for it:

Found out about Depression Quest via MetaFilter and Actual Sunlight via Kill Screen.



February 18th, 2013 by Adam

Somethings Never Change: The Dragon Speech

My last post on the need for the game industry to expand it’s storytelling skills and the stories themselves. Chris Crawford who made lots of early computer games (one game in particular I enjoyed was Balance of Power) and helped to found the Game Developer’s Conference (GDC).

In 1992 he gave a speech at GDC that went down in game designer history and in a meeting I was in this week somebody referenced it. Hearing it so casually mentioned made me actually want to watch it, and lo and behold it’s on YouTube. Crawford’s speech is referred to as the dragon speech and captured his enthusiasm for pushing the game industry into more exciting territory.

After watching the entire lecture I can’t help think that we’ve come so far but didn’t cover any distance.

In 2009, influential game designer Jason Rohrer and Crawford hung out during GDC and had some cameras follow them around. It’s a worthwhile watch.



February 15th, 2013 by Adam

We Behave Irrationally if We Don’t Understand the Rules

Game theory is not the same as game design theory but the similarities are striking when they happen. This month a paper has been published on game theory which can help explain some aspects of what happens when a game has complex rules and systems. When we can’t understand a full ruleset we make irrational decisions.

In Complex dynamics in learning complicated games by Tobias Gallaa and J. Doyne Farmer they show that by running gaming simulations with players they can expose non-rational behaviour.

When stuff like this comes out it boggles my mind that people can still stand up in favour of the Chicago School which banks on the idea that people always make rational decisions. This doesn’t even explore what is meant by rational.

Here’s the abstract from the paper:

Game theory is the standard tool used to model strategic interactions in evolutionary biology and social science. Traditionally, game theory studies the equilibria of simple games. However, is this useful if the game is complicated, and if not, what is? We define a complicated game as one with many possible moves, and therefore many possible payoffs conditional on those moves. We investigate two-person games in which the players learn based on a type of reinforcement learning called experience-weighted attraction (EWA). By generating games at random, we characterize the learning dynamics under EWA and show that there are three clearly separated regimes: (i) convergence to a unique fixed point, (ii) a huge multiplicity of stable fixed points, and (iii) chaotic behavior. In case (iii), the dimension of the chaotic attractors can be very high, implying that the learning dynamics are effectively random. In the chaotic regime, the total payoffs fluctuate intermittently, showing bursts of rapid change punctuated by periods of quiescence, with heavy tails similar to what is observed in fluid turbulence and financial markets. Our results suggest that, at least for some learning algorithms, there is a large parameter regime for which complicated strategic interactions generate inherently unpredictable behavior that is best described in the language of dynamical systems theory.



January 17th, 2013 by Adam
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