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f other smart people leave a comment posted in alternate reality game larp pervasive games posted by stenros september 1 2010 on real and simulation i m reading jean baudrillard s simulations in it i ran into a passage that just has to be reproduced here baudrillard argues that certain simulations will always be seen as real obliterating the difference between the two we presented a similar argument in the book in connection to the ethics of pervasive play and how certain people like police officers do not have the luxury of treating certain things as games baudrillard just makes that argument in a much more eloquent fashion the impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real is of the same order as the impossibility of staging illusion illusion is no longer possible because the real is no longer possible it is the whole political problem of parody of hypersimulation or offensive simulation that is posed here organize a fake holdup verify that your weapons are harmless and take the most trustworthy hostage so that no human life will be in danger or one lapses into the criminal demand a ransom and make it so that the operation creates as much commotion as possible in short remain close to the truth in order to test the reaction of the apparatus to a perfect simulacrum you won t be able to do it the network of artificial signs will become inextricably mixed up with real elements a policeman will really fire on sight a client of the bank will faint and die of a heart attack one will actually pay you the phony ransom in short you will immediately find yourself once again without wishing it in the real one of whose functions is precisely to devour any attempt at simulation to reduce everything to the real that is to the established order itself well before institutions and justice come into play it is necessary to see in this impossibility of isolating the process of simulation the weight of an order that cannot see and conceive of anything but the real because it cannot function anywhere else the simulation of an offense if it is established as such will either be punished less severely because it has no consequences or punished as an offense against the judicial system for example if one sets in motion a police operation for nothing but never as simulation since it is precisely as such that no equivalence with the real is possible and hence no repression either the challenge of simulation is never admitted by power how can the simulation of virtue be punished however as such it is as serious as the simulation of crime parody renders submission and transgression equivalent and that is the most serious crime because it cancels out the difference upon which the law is based the established order can do nothing against it because the law is a simulacrum of the second order whereas simulation is of the third order beyond true and false beyond equivalences beyond rational distinctions upon which the whole of the social and power depend thus lacking the real it is there that we must aim at order this is certainly why order always opts for the real when in doubt it always prefers this hypothesis as in the army one prefers to take the simulator for a real madman but this becomes more and more difficult because if it is practically impossible to isolate the process of simulation through the force of inertia of the real that surrounds us the opposite is also true and this reversibility itself is part of the apparatus of simulation and the impotence of power namely it is now impossible to isolate the process of the real or to prove the real 3 comments posted in pervasive games ethics society posted by stenros august 4 2010 the greatest treasure hunt on record i ran into a piece of treasure hunt history i was previously not aware of apparently in 1904 london sufferend from treasure hunt riots sunday newspaper the weekly dispatch launched what they called the greatest treasure hunt on record in its january 3 1904 edition they had buried medallions that could be exchanged for 50 at the newspaper offices paul slade has written a great piece about the case he has covered other pervasive stuff as well of course what happened was that treasure hunters disregarded the disclaimer mentioned in the paper saying that one did not need tools to find the treasure and that it was buried in a public place instead the crowds started using shovels and the like to go through private gardens thomas wright a west london barrister came home from his lincoln s inn chambers one evening in january 1904 to find a mob of treasure hunters wrecking his front garden one of them had already dug down to the base of the garden railings and was busy trying to dislodge them to see if a 50 medallion had been buried beneath glancing up and down westbourne terrace wright could see that many of his neighbours gardens had been invaded too this had been going on for four days many of the treasure hunters were fined but for about a month the courts were unable to connect the newspaper to the events finally there was an injunction from london county council s parks committee backed by the attorney general which ended the fun naturally the editors of the magazine were disappointed the interest taken in the treasure hunt has far surpassed the most optimistic expectations the paper reported our offices were besieged by crowds waiting to obtain early copies and in the provinces hundreds of people waited at the railway stations in order to secure a copy of the dispatch the moment the newspaper train arrived in our printing works extra machines had to be kept running for long hours to produce the enormous issues demanded by the public and we have again and again found it necessary to reprint the various editions the result has been to raise the circulation of the dispatch to nearly a million copies weekly it is not by the wish of the proprietors that the treasure hunt has now reached its close this has been entirely due to the fact that in certain quarters enthusiastic seekers for medallions have not followed or heeded our repeated and urgent warnings against causing annoyance or doing damage as a natural result of this complaints have reached us and serious representations have been made to us by the authorities such representations we could only treat with the consideration and respect that they deserved and we accordingly decided to bring the matter to a close on friday last 19 of course this was not the only treasure hunt organized by a newspaper the succes was copied aroun europe nor was it the first one according to slade that honor falls on a weekly magazine called tib bits theirs was a more intellectual one and as the one run by weekly dispatch was prompting unwanted interest from the authorities they decided to make their puzzles less pervasive readers would get another serialised story full of clues to hidden booty but this time be asked to mark its location on a printed map the first reader to send in a map marked in the right place would get his prize through the post real world treasure hunts the paper had concluded caused too many headaches leave a comment posted in history pervasive games society space posted by montola july 29 2010 invisible masterpieces in his essay in pervasive games frank lantz talks about masterpieces and pervasive games where is the citizen kane of pervasive gaming washington post gave one answer in pearls before breakfast they had the violin virtuoso joshua bell play on a washington d c metro station in preparing for this event editors at the post magazine discussed how to deal with likely outcomes the most widely held assumption was that there could well be a problem with crowd control in a demographic as sophisticated as washington the thinking went several people would surely recognize bell nervous what if scenarios abounded as people gathered what if others stopped just to see what the attraction was word would spread through the crowd cameras would flash more people flock to the scene rush hour pedestrian traffic backs up tempers flare the national guard is called tear gas rubber bullets etc as it happens exactly one person recognized bell and she didn t arrive until near the very end as pervasive games are ephemeral invisible selective of their audience and require a lot of literacy who would even notice a masterpiece this is certainly topical considering that conspiracy for good used street musicians as gameplay elements 3 35 just last weekend i wasn t there but i assume that non players had as much trouble appreciating them as washington commuters had enjoying bell s performance conspiracy for good had one solution to the problem of invisibility though how about an all singing all dancing bollywood performance a glimpse here 0 48 http www youtube com watch v aujgnviwfms feature youtube_gdata obviously a bollywood number doesn t turn a game into a masterpiece but bell s experience gives food for thought what s the point if no one notices extensive film documentation in the style of conspiracy for good and the amazing race is one solution but it also poses a new question who is the true audience the player or the spectator ps washington post also had a very good methodology for catching the unawares picarello was stopped by a reporter after he left the building and was asked for his phone number like everyone he was told only that this was to be an article about commuting when he was called later in the day like everyone else he was first asked if anything unusual had happened to him on his trip into work of the more than 40 people contacted picarello was the only one who immediately mentioned the violinist that s my new number one favourite method i am currently employed by nokia research center and conduct research on conspiracy for good 2 comments posted in arts street art posted by montola july 27 2010 come out and play 2010 gentrification the game by atmosphere industries david fono of atmosphere industries is our correspondent at come out and play festival he gave his take on it for us again this was my second year attending co p and my second year participating as a designer volunteer and player one thing i ll say about this festival there s certainly a lot to immerse yourself in if that s your bag this year they featured a fairly staggering 40 games over 48 hours last year i felt somewhat guilty about not playing more of the games but this year i sort of accepted the reality even as a designer of street games i often forget that they involve a fairly significant overhead in terms of time and energy for players a one hour game can easily expand to three hours when you include a getting there b meeting up with friends and figuring out exactly what s going on c the inevitable organizational hiccups that come from running events in public space and d sitting down having a drink and recovering after spending an hour doing something that was probably pretty exhausting add in all the usual odds and ends implicated in maintaining a human existence and you re looking at catching maybe a dozen of those 40 games and that s if you re trying really hard and don t have anything else to do but this may be a problem limited mainly to maniacs who travel internationally specifically for the festival moreso than last year i definitely got a feeling of attendance from local residents who were just looking for something interesting to do it s worth noting that last year the festival was largely based in times square because being in brooklyn this time presented a real contrast as a local i spoke to noted no one actually ever goes to midtown manhattan there s too many people there the location last year was electrifying and i was initially disappointed by the movie this year on the surface running or playing a street game in times square seems grandiose and thrilling yet brooklyn seemed to have a more receptive atmosphere field crumpets certainly there appeared to be a lot more parents and children and i felt there were higher numbers in general it was certainly something to see people sign up for games on the opening night last year signups were online some of the games hit well over 100 names and spawned massive waiting lists what s more some games that played very well in this year s environment such as our own probably wouldn t have been possible to pull off in last year s i think a lot of people who dream about creative public space interventions dream about imposing crowds in monumental locations but there s a lot to be said for the opportunities that quiet spaces and friendly people create so the logic behind moving around a festival like this has been made clear to me i quite loved brooklyn but i m hoping next year they ll go somewhere else new and interesting the opening party this year was pretty noteworthy for the very smart decision to pack in a lot of short indoor games the space was bustling despite it being about 150 degrees a couple of games stood out for me human asteroids must have been very fun to play but was probably even more fun to watch within a darkened auditorium both a human spaceship and human asteroids were lit up with glowing white wiring tubing to make them look just like the videogame when viewed from above a really smart use of very basic technology to create a fairly arresting effect mary mack 5000 was the only game i actually managed to play because it was so overwhelmingly clever and also because the lineup was short we re talking about a childhood clapping game done up like guitar hero complete with pressure activated gloves and a hard rock version of a standard schoolyard rhyming song it might not be a pervasive game but it s certainly something the game was unfortunately interrupted by technical problems which i only mention because it s a helpful reminder that innovative games with sophisticated technology tend to always go wrong somehow sometime somewhere the big draw of the night was clearly countersquirt which i certainly wanted to play but darn if it i wasn t about 52 on the waiting list which i only mention because it s a helpful reminder that at the end of the day nothing draws a crowd like a good old fashioned water gun battle the lineup throughout the weekend was fairly diverse and represented a good mix of what pervasive games can be in radar blip i ran around in a field in the dark and avoided flashlights in the one i mostly failed to hunt down other players on the streets with the context of a pretty awesome theme concerning alternate dimensions in the time traveller s knife i wandered around a graveyard while reading and discussing alternative timelines there s just something about these alternate dimensions people and in love s labour s lost i simply tried to pursue a secret gay love affair scvngr on iphone another noteworthy aspect for me this year was a stronger corporate presence from sponsors i mean corporate in an exceedingly loose sense here referring specifically to sponso...