[arg_discuss] The Online Performance Game. A new genre?

[Global Police]

On Jun 11, 2008, at 2:55 AM, Sjoerd Wennekes wrote:

> - Can you name some other games that might be OPG's?


This is some self-promotion, but SFZero (http://sfzero.org) probably  
fits your definition of an Online Performance Game.  We've called it a  
"Collaborative Production Game", and others have referred it and  
others like it as "mission-based".  Some of our missions later turned  
up on The SOHO Project (a-HEM), so if you're familiar with that  
project then you've got the gist of it.  For SFZero, players create  
the great majority of missions - Jane McGonigal's "This Might Be a  
Game" discusses that aspect of the game in Ch 7.  She has referred to  
games that work this way as "superhero" games - which nicely draws  
attention to their individual-empowerment aspects.

We've been working on a similar project geared toward engaging high  
school students in American History studies.  A Brazillian ARG called  
Teoria das Cordas (Guilherme Coube worked on it, and I'm not sure who  
else) had a component called O Tambor (sadly no longer live at  
otambor.com) which was also similar.  In this game, the "OPG" was a  
narrative component of the larger work.  O Tambor was represented as  
the first stage of a potentially-sinister social experiment being  
conducted by a Sao Paulo psychiatrist, which highlights some of the  
(justifiable) concern over the "crowds do what this website tells  
them" model!

Chronologically-speaking, I think all of these games owe something to  
Miranda July's "Learning to Love You More", which is also assignment- 
driven, but without points (or community moderation, AFAIK) or the  
social networking aspect.

It's been a very seductive model for a widening array of projects with  
educational, community-service, urban exploration, and job-training  
aims, but it's worth noting that those objectives can be undermined by  
the game structure.  Unless things like creativity, detail, daring,  
and presentation are correctly rewarded by the game (or, unless junk  
is discouraged), you'll end up in a situation where many players treat  
assignments as puzzles which should be completed as quickly as  
possible in a way that meets the narrowest reading of the assignment.   
If the game's structure encourages quality of assignment completions  
over quantity of completions, you should end up with a community that  
helps tremendously to encourage noobs to meet those standards, rewards  
great work by other players (whether with points or just respect), and  
drives the social "plot" of the competition in a fun and constructive  
way.  That's particularly important because your project will  
(hopefully!) soon reach a level of participation where your team can't  
necessarily award quality points in a timely and consistent way.   
It'll be interesting to see how much of an impact requiring players to  
make videos has on all of this (if you're already going to the trouble  
of making a video, you might as well do it well, right?)

Whew, that all came out pretty dry, but it's really fun stuff to work  
on, I swear!  Hopefully it gives you a few more things to look at or  
think about.  I don't read Dutch, but the site looks great, and I  
think the focus on video will serve you well.  Best of luck!

-Sean



Sean W. Mahan
The Playtime Anti-Boredom Society (is looking for work!)
sean at paragoogle.com
C:415-430-7378