At the recent Serious Gamers Conference in San Francisco, Jane McGonigal gave an overview of ilovebees – an alternate reality game that focuses on collective intelligence – but is really a viral marketing campaign for Halo 2 back in 2005. McGonigal talks of how these games can be used to teach skills focusing collective cognition, cooperation/meaning making, and coordination/formation. http://seriousgamessource.com/features/feature_040307_sgsgdc_1.php
As I read this I kept thinking Slime Mold…but beyond that lovely image, I wondered to what extent collective intelligence tools could be used to shape behavior based on the assumption that the work is representative of a collective. A basic assumption of players is that the game is emergent, which persuades them to buy-in to the conclusion. What if it is not?
1 response so far ↓
1 Gabriel // May 12, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Mmm, Juul talks about progressive vs. emergent play a bunch. He has a sort of litmus test to determine whether a given game is progressive or emergent–if a walkthrough can be provided to complete the game. Given that simple litmus test, ilovebees is certainly progressive (just go onto the wikis and follow the story/steps/sites/voicemail boxes/etc.) but at the same time, it’s very emergent. When those solutions were first discovered, people found their own paths to them and, along the way, they found a whole slew of other random things (ilovebeer was a site that pretended to be a part of the alternate reality, but wasn’t actually!). It’s a hybrid, fo’ sho’.
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